Chinese poets connect with European readers in Romania and Germany

The Berlin gathering opened on Sept 17. The visiting poets read original works on the moon and the Mid-Autumn Festival, including The Mid-Autumn Moon Waxes and Wanes, Playing Chess with My Son on Mid-Autumn Night and The Moon on Paper.

Du Yong'en, a student in the center's Chinese language classes, recited Su Shi's Prelude to Water Melody: When Will the Moon Be Bright? A young student named Maya earned warm applause for her expressive recitation, in Chinese and German, of an excerpt from Goethe's Chinese-German Book of Seasons and Hours. The readings brought together works from different periods, styles and countries, spanning more than a millennium.

Yu also delivered a lecture on two currents in modern Chinese poetry: colloquial poetry and image-based poetry. Tracing the development of modern Chinese verse, he examined their different approaches to writing, artistic expression and the literary debates surrounding them, offering German listeners an introduction to the range of contemporary Chinese poetry.
Children from the Berlin Chinese Children's Choir and the Canzonetta choir performed The Moon Is Rising in Chinese and German, sharing the warmth of the festival across languages. Yu also sang Schubert's Serenade, bringing a European musical classic to a program featuring Chinese poetry.

On Sept 18, the China Cultural Center in Berlin, Magdeburg's municipal library and the German-Chinese Friendship Association of Saxony-Anhalt jointly held a reading of contemporary Chinese poetry in Magdeburg.

Literature enthusiasts from Saxony-Anhalt and members of the friendship association gathered at the city's central library, where a performance on the guqin, a traditional Chinese seven-stringed zither, set the mood for the evening. Wu, Ya and Yu read representative works, giving German readers a sense of their individual voices and the diversity of contemporary Chinese verse.