Traditional Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival celebrated in Egypt

The China Cultural Center in Cairo marked the upcoming Chinese mid-autumn festival with music and poetry recitations performances on Thursday evening.

Several Egyptian student winners of a just-concluded recitation contest of Chinese literature attended the event held in the Egyptian captial, impressing the audience with the recitations of iconic classical and modern Chinese poems.

At the show, beautiful melodies flew from an ensemble of the pipa, erhu, dizi and other traditional Chinese instruments, which was arranged to stage between each recitation performance.

The ensemble from Jingdezhen, a world-famous "porcelain capital" in east China's Jiangxi Province, performed a melody of a well-known Egyptian folk song, sparking cheers and applause from the audience.

Mohamed Ramzy, a junior student of Chinese language at Cairo University, was awarded the first prize in the Sept. 9 contest for his performance of "Spring River in the Flower Moon Night" by Chinese seventh-century poet Zhang Ruoxu of Tang Dynasty.

"The activities let us know more about the Chinese culture," Ramzy told Xinhua, adding that there are many commonalities between Egyptian and Chinese culture.

"I believe that Egyptians and Arabs can understand he Chinese culture through our charming traditional music that brings an atmosphere of tranquility and beauty," said Xu Li, a dizi player from the troupe.

Being an ancient Chinese tradition, the Mid-Autumn Festival is annually celebrated with family gatherings and mooncake sharing on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar when the moon is the fullest and brightest. It falls this year on Sept. 29.

The recitation contest had gathered around 20 students from different Egyptian universities and provinces, generating three second-prize winners and six third-prize winners.

Egyptian teachers of the Chinese language, friends and family members of the Egyptian students, local employees of Chinese companies operating in Egypt, as well as Chinese diplomats and other guests attended the Thursday event.