It takes a bottle of whisky, a great Britain-made specialty, almost 20 days to travel to China, while packaged on a newly-opened freight train linking London to China's Yiwu.

The cargo locomotive, the first rail freight service linking the UK directly to China, departed from Stanford-le-Hope in Essex on April 10, 2017, and then stopped in London and arrived in the eastern Chinese city on April 29.

Other British products packed in with the bottle of whisky on the 7,500-mile Trans-Eurasia journey included vitamins, soft drinks and pharmaceuticals.

Located in Zhejiang, a coastal province in East China, Yiwu is known as a small-commodity trade hub.

The Yiwu-London freight service now makes London the 15th European city to have a direct rail link with China.

It is part of China Railway Express (CR Express), also known as the China-Europe freight train service, which has seen rapid growth since the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013.

So far, CR Express has opened three routes, 51 lines departing from 27 Chinese cities, and has reached 28 cities in 11 European countries.