A Chinese calligraphy hangs on the wall of Dr. Eckehard Scharfschwerdt's practice in Altensteig, a small town 60 km west of Stuttgart. It manifests the doctor's bond with the country 7,000 km away. 

Scharfschwerdt spent 15 years working in the countryside of southwest China's Yunnan Province, treating patients and training local professionals before returning to Germany in 2016. He received the Friendship Award from the Chinese government in 2017.

A Sinophile doctor, Scharfschwerdt has been closely following the novel coronavirus epidemic in China over the past weeks and has voiced his support for his Chinese peers.

"I am a doctor. I also worked in hospitals. I know they (Chinese medics) are tired and have been working hard. I saw that many young people working in other cities' hospitals went to Wuhan in Hubei Province to help. I admire them," Scharfschwerdt said in fluent Chinese in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Scharfschwerdt was in China when the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic broke out in 2003. Seventeen years have passed, and the Chinese public health system has improved a lot and its response to an epidemic has been faster and better, he said.

Scharfschwerdt remained in frequent contact with his friends in China, many of whom are medical professionals. Over the past weeks, he contacted them on WeChat almost every day and encouraged them, Scharfschwerdt told Xinhua.

Thanks to weeks of epic fighting and hard-working by medical staff, China on March 12 said the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country is over, hours after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.

"China has worked hard" to curb the spread of the disease, Scharfschwerdt said, noting that it would put great pressure on the healthcare system of any country should an epidemic of such magnitude break out there.

Over the past weeks, the novel coronavirus has spread quickly to about 40 European countries. Scharfschwerdt said that Europe has won some time by China introducing quarantine and strict containment measures, enabling doctors and researchers to study the virus and understand it more.

Based on the experience of Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, "we must work hard to slow down the spread of the virus or else our medical system will be overwhelmed," he said.

"From China and Italy we can learn that the population most at risk is elderly people and people with chronic diseases, so we must find ways to protect them," Scharfschwerdt said, adding that the nursing home in Altensteig has been closed to visitors.

Cooperation across nations is needed in researching and developing a medicine and vaccine against COVID-19, Scharfschwerdt said, noting that timely release and sharing of authentic data will be key to making international cooperation effective.

Scharfschwerdt has also learned from young people in China that Chinese schools did a good job in providing online courses during the school closures. He said that Germany could rely on the Chinese experience if schools here were to be shut down.

Scharfschwerdt returned to Germany in 2016 but he still visits China twice every year. In the future, he plans to organize training programs in Yunnan and take young people from Germany for visits China to help them "find out that China is a beautiful place and the Chinese people are hospitable," he said.