The train from Yiwu arrives in Belgium on Oct. 25. (People's Daily/Ren Yan)

The first freight train from eastern China’s Yiwu city, a famous marketplace for small commodities, arrived in Belgium on Oct. 25, opening a new link between Europe and China.

The train, loaded with 82 Twenty Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) of cargo, arrived in the European country after a 17-day journey.

The 200,000 products it carried, mainly skincare products, cosmetics, electronic products and home appliances, were delivered to different countries in the region through local distribution channels.

The new service is part of the cooperation between Yiwu city and the Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) proposed by Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba.

“We have expected the freight rail route for a long time. With it, European consumers can receive commodities they bought from China one to two days faster than before,” said the general manager of a logistics company in Liege, Belgium.

The express train route offers a helping hand to China-Europe freight train services. According to the International Post Corporation, last year, China was the source of 38 percent of the total cross-border parcels heading to Europe. In 2017, Switzerland alone received more than 10 million parcels from China, a local newspaper reported.