[Photo provided to China Daily]

A six-episode TV series looks at 40-years of reform and opening up through the stories of those that felt - and are still feeling - the changes it brought the most, Xu Fan reports.

When Thai business-man Dhanin Chearavanont visited Shenzhen in 1979, the present-day megacity was merely a poor village with a population of around 12,000.

However, the tycoon - from a Chinese immigrant family in Bangkok - believed then, that China would rise to become a huge economy.