Yuan Laifen has lived in Hangzhou for 11 years. Her job is collecting used newspapers, paper boxes and other waste door to door and selling them to recycling factories.
Shen Xiaohua's high-pressure workday begins when she rises at 6 am. The 44-year-old domestic helper then has just 50 minutes to wash, gulp down breakfast and cycle to her employer's home 3 km away. She then starts preparing breakfast for the family she works for, a couple with two children.
The concept of the Chinese dream resonates in Africa more than anywhere else as the continent looks for inspiration
Is Africa now dreaming the same dream as China? Xi Jinping, in one of his first major speeches as Chinese president in Dar es Salaam last year, took the opportunity to draw a parallel between the two.
Doreen Wang, deputy managing director of Millward Brown China
In China, the Chinese Dream stirs hopes and sets expectations; internationally, it provokes questions and elicits concerns. Here I look outside China - exploring attitudes, suggesting responses and warning of the dangers of self-fulfilling prophecies.
The Chinese Dream put forth by President Xi Jinping has captured the hearts and minds of people in China, and to a large extent in Africa. The fervor to embrace the Chinese Dream is understandable, as it seeks to provide a life of prosperity for people in which they can become whatever they choose to be.
Eleanor Roosevelt, America's longest-serving First Lady once said, "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." Nearly a century later, it is safe to surmise that the future belongs to the Chinese people, guided as they are by their national dream.
Much has been written about the Chinese Dream and what it means for the rest of the world and Africa. But from an African perspective while it stands for harmonious and peaceful development, it also offers valuable lessons on how the continent can chart its own destiny.
When we think of the Chinese Dream and the African dream there is something that immediately comes to the mind. Both the dreams focus on the economic and social betterment of people.
A new wave of Africans returning home after studying in China is bringing with them the skills and know-how to help fuel the continent's most important partnership of the modern era.
More than 1,000 years after his death the philosophies of Confucius still guide the lives of many Chinese.
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