Now we turn to the World University Games underway in Chengdu. Deniss Salmijanov from north-eastern Europe is going to compete in the men's 800 meter running event. Yet, before he coming to Chengdu, he was already known to over two million fans in Chinese. Why is that? Our Xu Xinchen finds out.

　　Trained to become a dentist, with a passion for clothes design.

　　Deniss: Especially I am fan of the traditional clothes, so especially that part was very interesting for me.

　　Deniss: These will never get old. These are like Chinese traditional clothes that will be always respected and very beautiful.

　　24-year-old Deniss Salmijanov is a runner from the Baltic State of Estonia. The runner had to overcome many difficulties to reach here – a 24-hour-flight to reach China. And he had to get into a training camp to adapt to the hot weather in Chengdu.

　　XU XINCHEN Chengdu "How do you feel right now?"

　　DENISS SALMIJANOV, Estonian Runner "I feel amazing. I have food. I can rest and prepare for the competitions. Training camp was successful. Everything went according to the plan. It's just a matter of time to focus yourself and not to distract yourself with too much activities. I think everything should be fine."

　　XU XINCHEN Chengdu "But why did you choose to come to the FISU games? Because if I am correct that you even took like a training camp in order to adapt into the climate or the weather here?"

　　DENISS SALMIJANOV, Estonian Runner "Here it's all about title championships. These are not the championships when you go on the one day and run with pacers. This is a race when you have tactics. It's not one day competition. It's three in a row. If you want to compete in the Europeans or the Olympics, you have to come to these kinds of competitions to train and see how things go here."

　　Simply known as Deniss on Chinese social media, the young European runner has garnered over two million followers by sharing running tips and training clips.

　　XU XINCHEN Chengdu "Because two million followers, that's a lot of people."

　　DENISS SALMIJANOV, Estonian Runner "Yeah, about that, you are right because when you see the number, it's just a number. But when you start meeting people, you start to realize that's a huge amount of people. I always wanted to share something or do something interesting, but couldn't find the right place for that. And once my friend from China told me, why don't you try to share your some ideas for the people because running is very popular in China."

　　Things started to pick up from there. Dubbed as the ceiling for running posture, Deniss quickly increased in popularity. And sports here played a very important role to bridge cultural differences.

　　DENISS SALMIJANOV, Estonian Runner "Sport is one of the ways how we unite and unite people. This is, I would say, if person does sport, you immediately find so many common topics to discuss and he understands you from a second."

　　Deniss also told me he has been drawn to China's rich history and the country's technological advances and when it comes to researching for technology, China has wowed him with its fast development.

　　Xu Xinchen, CGTN, Chengdu.