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An ancient trade route used to bring Chinese silk and pottery and tea to Poland, and Polish amber to China in the opposite direction. Now 2,000 years later, an express freight railway is reconnecting the two countries, bringing goods between the Polish city of Lodz, and the southwest Chinese city of Chengdu.

This is where these shipping containers start their journey for Europe. They will cover a distance of 9,800 kilometres to arrive in the Polish city of Ludz in under two weeks.

Dozens of shipping containers leave this station every day, packed with electronics, heavy machinery, shoes and clothes, and taking back mostly food and drinks.”

Tomasz Grzelak knows well about the demand for these products in China. His company operated the very first train that ran from Lodz to Chengdu in 2013. Back then, the train would run empty in that direction. Grzelak soon saw a business opportunity.

"In 2015, we started to analyse the possibility to create the return train from Lodz to Chengdu, because the cost - in this way we can reduce the cost, because that shuttle train means that we can use not empty boxes in the return way, but we can sell the service on the market so we will have additional profit in the business," said Tomasz Grzelak, CEO of Hatrans Logistics.

Grzelak has also just started a Polish food and beverage business in Chengdu. But he says Polish-Chinese cooperation goes far beyond just trade.

"Because of the transit time, so this is for a business. But also because of the people which are involved in the business, this is the growing of relationship. I see for the last two or three years so many relations between Poland and China, with Lodz and Chengdu, so many people traveling like never before. Also cultural area, we transfer exhibition of arts from Lodz to Chengdu, from Chengdu to Lodz, to Vienna," said Tomasz Grzelak.

This “growing of relations” is what politicians from both sides are working toward.

"I’m also trying to set up some ties between local universities to make some exchanges, to send more students to Poland, to exchange professors. Polish presence in China is going to grow, and also Chinese presence in Poland is going to grow, so the market for Chinese people speaking Polish is growing," said Katarzyna Wilkowiecka, Polish Consul General in Chengdu.

An ancient trade route, that’s boosting ties in a new era.