Happy Costa Rican discovers China is 'very magical'

But the going has not always been smooth. On occasion, he said he found himself dispelling some myths, wrong beliefs and ill-conceived notions about China.

"Imagine you never tried chocolate. Then you'll not know whether it's delicious or not even when other people tell you what chocolate tastes like. A lot of people who have never traveled to China just hear secondhand information about the country, but it's wrong most of the time," he said.

Many young people in Western countries lack in-depth understanding of the richness of Chinese culture and history. They simply see the country as an economic powerhouse, which is a bit of an overgeneralization, even reductionist, he said.

On the other hand, many of the older generation still think China is an underdeveloped country; they don't seem to realize how the country has dramatically developed over the past 30 years. That's because "people like our grandparents never had the chance to interact with many foreigners their whole life".

Mora went on: "But now in my lifetime, I've seen people from Africa, I know people from Europe and I interact with Chinese. This changes me and it changes them as well. Living in a time of globalization, I think it's very important to learn about each other. That's the main reason why I came to China."

Mora is enthusiastic about traveling around China. He has been to quite a few Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, Harbin in Heilongjiang province, as well as Hong Kong and Macao.

Just three months after he came to Beijing, he had started to go out with friends and picked up enough confidence to flag down a cab in Mandarin. In 2019, he went to Tai'an in Shandong province and climbed for more than four hours to the top of Tai Mountain to savor the sight of a spectacular sunset.

Now Mora is planning to explore more places across the country with his hobby of slacklining, an outdoor activity of balancing on a webbing between two fixed points high in the air. At first sight, people may confuse it with tightrope walking.

He fell in love with the activity during COVID-19 and the longest distance that he has walked so far was 1 kilometer by walking back and forth on a 500-meter-long line.

In October, Mora went to Taizhou, Zhejiang province, with his new Chinese friends who also engage in this niche activity, to attend a global highline challenge that attracted nearly 100 professional slackliners from different countries.