Cojocaru Gabriela
Main achievement
Actress in China
About
Gabriela Cojocaru, originally from the village of Sagaidac, Cimișlia district, has distinguished herself as a successful actress and blogger in the Chinese film industry and showbiz, after settling in China over a decade ago. Trained at the Choreography College in the Republic of Moldova, where she began dancing in her teens, she debuted in her adopted country as a dancer, a kindergarten teacher, and a model, rapidly progressing to roles in Chinese film productions, including comedy series about the daily lives of medical workers. With appearances in numerous films, advertising projects, and TV shows, Gabriela has captured the attention of over 2 million subscribers on platforms such as Douyin (Chinese TikTok), Touyin, and Weibo, adopting the artistic name Li Xiaoxiao and fluently mastering the Chongqing dialect. Her career in cinema and digital media has been marked by a remarkable integration into Chinese culture, first learning the local dialect before Mandarin, which brought her overnight fame through an amusing story with a taxi driver posted online. She has collaborated with television channels such as CGTN, visited the Embassy of the Republic of Moldova in Beijing to promote her home country and the Bureau for Relations with the Diaspora, expressing her desire to build bridges between the two nations through tourism, investment, and digital content. Her success in Chinese showbiz, where she is considered a phenomenon due to her comedic style and contrasting foreign appearance, has transformed her into an unofficial ambassador for Moldova, enthusiastically promoting local culture, products, and traditions to millions of Chinese users. Gabriela's childhood was marked by the absence of her parents, who went abroad for work – her father when she was three years old, and her mother when she was five – and she was raised by her grandparents in her native village, a source of inspiration for her artistic passion. Living in the city of Chongqing, which she has called "a second home" since 2014, she considers her Moldovan origins the foundation of her success, acknowledging the influence of family values in adapting to such a different culture. Although intensely active in China, Gabriela periodically returns to Moldova, visiting official institutions and sharing experiences that inspire the diaspora, dreaming of projects that will bring the two peoples closer.
