By Chang Ailing, China Features

    BEIJING, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- "This is really a dream coming true," pointing at his picture on the bank of the Suez Canal, 70-year-old Zhang Boyin said in excitement.

    "Suez has been a textbook name to me for decades. But now, you see, I've really been there," Zhang added.

    Zhang, a retired professor of Beijing University, was one of thousands of Chinese traveling to Egypt early this year. For most Chinese like Zhang, Africa was like a faraway and amicable relative.

    "It is our African brothers that carried us into the United Nations." Zhang easily recalled late Chinese leader Mao Zedong's famous assertion when talking about China's connections with Africa.

    In 1971, China resumed its legal status in the United Nations largely due to support from the developing world, including many African countries. Also thanks to the long-time adherence to the one-China principle by those countries, the attempts by the authorities of Taiwan -- an island province of China separated from the mainland after a civil war in the 1940s -- to join the United Nations have ended in failure 13 times since the 1990s.

    Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao summarized China's attachment to Africa during his visit to Egypt last June, saying that China "feels indebted to" the African people. "We should never remember the benefits we have offered nor forget the favor received," Wen quoted an old Chinese proverb as saying.

    With their income increasing, the Chinese people begin to show increasing interest in Africa, which they were familiar with only from textbooks.

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