Hosam Farouk Elmaghrabi at the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, at the Tian'anmen Square in Beijing on Oct. 10, 2019.

It was a new working day in the Arabic section of the China Internet Information Center, known as China.com.cn under the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration. As usual, I arrived at the office about an hour earlier and made myself a cup of coffee, which I drank with a piece of wotou (Chinese cornbread). I do almost the same thing every morning. Only this time it gave me a pause and I realized what I had for breakfast was a wonderful concoction — coffee, typically Arabic, and wotou , common in northern China — and my thoughts flashed back to the day when my connection with China started.

It was like yesterday, the day I met this beautiful Chinese girl at a gathering of friends in Cairo, Egypt. She has an Arabic name "Amira," which she picked for herself. Her innocent sweetness drew me in, and her passion for Arabic and Egyptian culture left a deep impression on me. We started dating, and it wasn't long before we got engaged. At the end of May 2005, we took a flight from the Cairo Airport to her hometown, Beijing, the capital of China.

I quickly became accustomed to life in Beijing because I found that China and Egypt have many things in common. For instance, both countries are cradles of splendid civilizations. Meanwhile, knowledge of the huge disparity in territorial area allowed me to understand many differences between the two countries. China is almost nine times the size of Egypt, and this means mammoth statistical figures in many aspects, from the population to the number of minorities, as well as the cultural and linguistic diversity, which encouraged me to explore a new life with great enthusiasm.

I have a sense of affinity with Beijing as if I've visited it before. To learn about the culture, anecdotes and origin of the ancient city, I settled down in a hutong (alley formed by traditional courtyard compounds lining both sides) near Tian'anmen, the entrance to the Forbidden City, and lived there for two years. The attractions of Beijing kept me from thinking about anything else other than building a new life. Chinese people from all over the country and foreigners from all over the world gather in the city, creating rich, diverse cultural elements.