A DVD shop in Tehran [China Daily]

Flying 10,000 meters above the Silk Road that has connected China and Iran more than two millennia, I found that Urumqi lies exactly half-way between Beijing and Teheran.

Thanks to modern technology it took only hours to cover a distance that took caravans months or even years to complete, in ancient times.

The long history of cultural exchanges that took place through the Silk Road can be felt even today. Someone from Northwest China can easily find Farsi words that are instantly recognizable. Not only religious terms such as namaz (prayer) and akhung (Muslim cleric), but also many words used in daily life are the same, such as nang (bread) and piyaz (onion).

Of course, you don't have to come from Northwest China to feel welcome in Iran. Walking the streets of Tehran, I was greeted with ni hao every day, and I would reply with the Farsi equivalent, salam.

When I first arrived in Iran, I often hesitated to take photographs of people on the streets, afraid that it may not be appropriate. I was soon relieved to find that many Iranians were equally eager to take pictures of me with their cell phones. In the end, we both took a lot of pictures of one another.

Before landing at the Imam Khomeini International Airport of Tehran, my knowledge of Iran was limited to a few films such as Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry, soccer players such as Mehdi Mahdavikia, and knowing that it is an Islamic republic. I reckon this is typical for the average Chinese.

One of the questions I often asked Iranians was, "Do many Iranian men have four wives?", while one of the questions I was often asked was, "Does every Chinese eat cats and dogs?"

The answer to both questions was, of course, no. I realized that if I felt offended by the cats and dogs question, Iranians probably felt the same by my question.

Every day that I was there, I got to talk to many Iranians. After learning that I was from China, the most common comments were: "The Beijing Olympics were the best ever"; "President Jiang Zemin has visited Iran"; and "Yao Ming is a great basketball player".

Often, I would be surrounded by a group of people, all eager to ask questions, some with the help of an English interpreter. Besides the one about eating cats and dogs, many asked, "How many letters are there in the Chinese alphabet?" and even "How much is your salary?"

Some wanted me to give them Chinese names, while others asked for my contact information in China.

I enjoyed getting to know the country by interacting with its people. Though we live in times when modern communication has shortened the distance between people, personal experience remains the most reliable way to understand a people.

One of the few TV reports about Iran that I had seen in China was a demonstration against the United States in which people shouted angry slogans, leaving me with the impression that every Iranian hated the Americans.

"No, that's not true. The intense relationship is only between the governments of Iran and the United States. Iranian people are friendly with everybody, including Americans," said Mehdi Moazami, a 29-year-old Iranian whose favorite singer is Britney Spears.

Moazami, who has a Bachelor's degree in English, speaks fluent English with an American accent, which he attributed to watching Disney cartoons.

Quite a few Iranians that I met seemed very interested in Western culture. In Esfahan, the second city in Iran that I visited, not far from a big poster in the Imam Khomeini Square that read "Down with the U.S.A.", I found advertisements for courses offering coaching for tests such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the International English Language Testing System (IELTS).

"More and more Iranian people are interested in learning English," said Ensieh Ghanadzadeh, a 24-year-old female English teacher with the Kish Institute, a government organization devoted to teaching foreign languages. "If you speak good English, you won't be unemployed in Iran."

The country has four English-language newspapers - Tehran Times, Iran News, Iran Daily and Kayhan - and many English-language magazines. Surprisingly, I also found a bookstore in Tehran that dealt exclusively in Western magazines.

Before I left China, a colleague had told me that the National Geographic had a story on Iran, but in my hurry to leave, I forgot to borrow a copy from the library.

This bookstore had everything, from Time and Newsweek, to Economist and National Geographic, so I asked a shop assistant if she knew about the issue of National Geographic that had the Iran story.