About 170 students, teachers and family members filled the Brussels Chinese Cultural Centre on October 10 for a Mid-Autumn poetry recital and lecture staged under the title “Sharing This Moonlit Moment”. They came from the University of Mons, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the University of Louvain, the Brussels Confucius Institute and the centre’s own Chinese classes. People’s Daily’s Brussels correspondent reported the evening on October 11, and Xinhua’s Brussels correspondent reported the same event on October 12.
The Lecture That Opened the Evening
The evening began with the China story lecture rather than with the poetry. Ludivine Destrée, a senior marketing manager at the European Travel Commission, spoke on “Ten Years: Meeting Chinese, Then Living in China”, tracing how a language became a career and a life.
She started in 2008, curious about how Chinese characters are written and about how fast the country was changing, and signed up for classes in Brussels. From there she studied in Tianjin, joined events around the Shanghai World Expo in 2010, and went on to study international relations at Beijing Foreign Studies University. She then worked in Beijing for several years as the chief representative for China at the Wallonia tourism office, putting her Chinese and her cross-cultural experience to work in tourism promotion between Belgium and China. She is now responsible for Asia and Asia-Pacific marketing at the European Travel Commission, still linking the two tourism industries.
“When I first started learning Chinese, I thought I was learning a language,” she said. “In fact, I was building a bridge between two cultures.”
Poems, Songs and a Skit in Chinese
The recital itself was hosted in Chinese and French by Nunzia Sorrentino and Célia Huart, translation students at the University of Mons. Teachers and students from Mons, from the Brussels Confucius Institute and from the centre’s classes put on more than ten items, and the programme leaned on classical poetry. “Spring River in the Flower Moon Night”, “Prelude to Water Melody”, “Quiet Night Thoughts” and “Mountain Travel” were read in turn, each one carried by a learner reading aloud rather than by a professional host.
Singing took over after the poems. The chorus sang “The Crescent Moon” and “The Moon Represents My Heart”, a soloist offered “What the World Gives Me”, and a skit titled “A Mid-Autumn Call Across Time” mixed old and new settings and drew the biggest reaction of the night. A children’s rhyme, a tai chi fan routine and a calligraphy demonstration closed the programme.
Performers ranged from grey-haired adults to small children, with the largest group made up of young people still studying the language. They had rehearsed and walked the stage beforehand, and many chose to wear Qipao and Tang-style dress for the evening. After the last item everyone shared mooncakes, the one part of the Mid-Autumn custom that needs no translation.
Why the Room Mattered
The event was one of the cultural centre’s 2026 Mid-Autumn series. Its purpose is narrower than a festival: it gives Chinese learners in Belgium a stage for the language they are studying and for whatever art they can bring to it, and it puts them in a room together with the teachers and the families who hear them practise all year.
Participants said afterwards that using Chinese and spending an evening inside the culture had been a happy experience, and that they were already looking forward to the next Mid-Autumn. The Xinhua report of October 12 confirmed the same figures and the same programme, listing poetry recitation, song, calligraphy and tai chi, and the same estimate of about 170 people drawn from Belgian universities, Confucius institutes and Chinese-teaching institutions.
