The following article by Wang Mingjie in Pretoria was written for China Daily Africa and published on 28 April 2017:

Zhang Qiaowen says she fell in love with South Africa when she spent three years at Stellenbosch University, studying for a doctorate in financial management. She is now a lecturer on the subject at Zhejiang Normal University in China and retains her admiration for the country that was her former home.

Zhang says: "I went to South Africa three years ago, curious about the country. I left three years later an admirer of this great nation."

The 29-year-old says she was attracted by South Africa's diverse culture, food and beautiful scenery, but was really won over by th epeople she met while studying.

Zhang was supervised by Professor Pierre Erasmus, who would do anything and everything to assist her research.

"He gave me his research funding to attend international conferences in the UK and, no matter how busy he was, he still insisted on discussing my research work with me at least once a week," Zhang says.

"He reviewed my PhD thesis before he had recovered from surgery," Zhang says.

Zhang says that Erasmus freed her from prejudice about South Africa as well as helping her research.

The kindness she received from South Africans was not limited to Erasmus, she says. People like her PhD colleagues and programme manager were also extremely helpful.

"Those encounters may not be earth-shattering events, but after three years, we have become important parts of each other's lives," she says.

Zhang felt it was important to respond to the kindness she encountered by helping to support four South African school children through their studies with the help of the Imibala Trust, a nonprofit organization that works to improve the lives of children from poor communities.

She says: "Every time we met and talked, I could feel their strong desire to continue their education and change their lives. This made me think how to empower them when they grow up."

Zhang and her friends initiated an ecommerce program, The China-Africa Bridge, to build a platform for young African entrepreneurs to do business with their Chinese counterparts.

Zhang was chosen to represent China and speak at the recent China-South Africa People to People Exchange Mechanismin Pretoria.

Speaking at the first meeting of the People-to-People Exchange Mechanism on April 24, Vice-Premier Liu Yandong said: "The international landscape and the situation in China and Africa may keep on changing, but the importance and necessity of continuously building and improving the China-Africa community of shared future will never change."

Inspired by their time-tested friendship, China and South Africa have been committed to developing a special relationship as between comrades and brothers, Liu said.

Zhang's story is not unique. There are about 2,000 Chinese students studying in South Africa and about 2,300 South African students who have studied in China in recent years.

• Photo on the right: Zhang Qiaowen with fellow students in South Africa.