A tale of two cities

Beneath the pyramids and among the colonnades of ancient temples, the story of Egypt's ancient civilization is being told in fluent Chinese.

Mohamed Hassan Fahmi Hassan, a Chinese-speaking Egyptian tour guide, often places the histories of China and Egypt on the same timeline: When ancient Egyptians were building their temples, what was happening in the distant East? In his telling, two civilizations separated by thousands of miles meet across time and space.

For Ding Yucheng, a young man from Quanzhou, Fujian province, that connection has become part of everyday life. After learning Arabic, he went to Egypt to work in tourism and later married an Egyptian woman, Alyaa Samir.

Their stories are among those featured in A Tale of Two Cities, a fourpart documentary jointly produced by television broadcasters in China and Egypt. The documentary was released on Aug 20, as a project showcasing China-Africa radio and television cooperation at the Seventh Forum on China-Africa Media Cooperation.

Marking 70 years of China-Egypt diplomatic relations, the documentary takes Quanzhou and Alexandria as its anchors.

It follows merchants, tour guides, teachers, cross-cultural families, incense makers and archaeologists, tracing connections between the two ancient port cities through their lives.

Quanzhou, historically known to international traders as Zayton, and Egypt's Alexandria once served as gateways linking the East and the Mediterranean world. Centuries ago, merchant ships carried goods along maritime routes connecting the two regions. Today, what moves between the two countries is not only trade, but also languages, knowledge, skills and personal ties.

In 2019, an Egyptian professor proposed a joint documentary after visiting Quanzhou, a city she had long wanted to see since reading about it in The Travels of Marco Polo.

"She said people often know some of the history, but it had been a long time since anyone had really connected the two countries through a single story. She wanted to do that," recalls Xu Hongwei, chief director of the documentary.