Stephon Marbury, US basketballer who played in the Chinese Basketball Association from 2010 to 2018.[Photo provided to China Daily]

"The reform and opening-up is influential to everyone who has lived in or traveled to China over the past a few decades. We've tried to interview those who are representative," says Li Degang, director of one of the six episodes.

Known as an actor who is perhaps best known for his roles in Brotherhood of Blades and I Am Not Madame Bovary, Zhao Lixin has a lesser-known past which reflects a generation of Chinese youngsters who have studied abroad.

A former student of The Central Academy of Drama, he earned a scholarship to study at the Russian Federation State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow in the late 1980s.

After graduating, he went to Sweden, becoming the first Chinese actor recruited by the Swedish National Theatre. In 2000, he chose to return to China, which, since then, has seen an unprecedented expansion of its film and television industries.

In the documentary, Zhao returns to Sweden when he is invited by the country's tourist authority to shoot a promotional flick.

It's the first time he has returned to Sweden in 18 years, and in the program, Zhao recalls his early struggles and how he overcame the language barrier to rise from a no-dialogue cameo to become the leading actor of the Swedish theater's adaptation of La Celestina, a Spanish classic.