One speaks always about great British individuals as for instance a Stanley, but in the new born Belgium of the 19th century there were also some that deserve also a mentioning in my humble opinion. I don't now want to point to a Leopold II in whose service Stanley also worked, because nowadays as in Belgium as in the rest of the world his picture is besmirched (and his statues even in reality with red paint).

But I want to point, as I read his story today in the local paper, for instance to a Belgian who arranged for a better relationship between Belgium and China as for instance Leopold II's railway projects in China, a certain Paul Splingaerd, who lobbied for the king's railway projects in favour of course of our Belgian merchant king.

And to add to this cooperation there was in Belgium funded a school for Chinese railway engineers, also with the aid of Paul...
And there a young Chinese came to study at that instutute and fell in love with a daughter of Belgian middle class family. It led to a marriage and the birth of a female writer pen name: Han Suyin.
I read about her childhood in China and the story of her parents' love affair and marriage in her autobiographical work:
"The crippled tree" that I read in 1965 in French translation, not so long after the English edition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crippled_Tree 
and later I read nearly all her autobiographical or in English, or French or Dutch translation.

I would say about both: "What a lives"

Paul Splingaerd

https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/art-culture/43271/the-belgian-mandarin-how-one-man-laid-foundations-for-120-years-of-sino-belgian-cooperation/

During his 14 years in Jiuquan, where he was made Third Grade Mandarin with sapphire button – the highest grade for a foreigner – he ran the Suzhou smallpox clinic, and fostered understanding and appreciation of Westerners, their culture and their technology.After his Jiuquan assignment, Splingaerd was called upon by agents of Leopold II of Belgium to use his understanding of the Chinese language and protocol to negotiate revisions to a contract for the construction of the Beijing-Hankou railway.His successful efforts were rewarded with a knighthood, and Splingaerd received a medal designating him a Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Couronne (Order of the Crown). He passed away in 1906 in Xi´an, China.
https://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20210122_96434545


And Han Suyin née: Rosalie Tchau. 

Mother: Marguerite Denis, grandfather Georges Denis. Belgium (I think French speaking bourgeoisie Antwerp) (the Denis family also known in Britain from "animal" documentaries)
https://studylibfr.com/doc/5563507/ascendance-maternelle-de-han-suyin--rosalie-tchau-
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/04/han-suyin
PS: As I did already all that reserach for other boards and this one too, I am gone a bit "deeper" in on the subject...

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/04/han-suyin
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/s/han-suyin/
Han Suyin (simplified Chinese: 韩素音; traditional Chinese: 韓素音; pinyin: Hán Sùyīn; 12 September 1917 (some sources say: 1916) – 2 November 2012)[1] was the pen name of Elizabeth Comber, born Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chou (Chinese: 周光瑚; pinyin: Zhōu Guānghú).She was a China-born Eurasian, a physician, and author of books in English and French on modern China, novels set in East and Southeast Asia, and autobiographical memoirs which covered the span of modern China. These writings gained her a reputation as an ardent and articulate supporter of the Chinese Communist Revolution. She lived in Lausanne, Switzerland, for many years until her death.



And about her life and some contradictions that I even met during reading five autobiographical works, starting with "The Crippled Tree"
https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/nq25778.pdf
And coincidentally finding this this afternoon:
http://karen-shepard.com/2017/08/09/dragon-ladies-2/

I want not to comment about Karen Shepard, as I understand it, the daughter of a non biological adopted daughter of Han Suyin?
But during reading through all Han Suyin's autobiographies including the one about her Belgian mother Marguerite Denis and including if I recall it well the suicide of her sister in the US?, I have always thought that Rosalie Chou had a lot in common with the behaviour and attitudes of her mother. And I have only this check to compare with what she wrote about her own mother...and it is perhaps not rational and perhaps only a feeling...?

Further to Han Suyin...

As I many times think to have seen during my life...about men and women for instance on the bridge between two cultures, or having family all over the world, as I knew some Afro-European mixed family, who had family in Belgium, France, England and the US and of course in Africa too...that they had a much broader "world view" than most citizens of a country focused on themselves and their country...

As I recall from Han Suyin's autobiography: the meeting and short love affair if I recall it well with the Walloon Louis? and when he is in trouble with his family for a heritage, she can't understand that they make all that fuss about such trivial questions...seen with her visions of a broadminded and free fought world citizen...?

That is my first preliminary trial to try to express some difficult to describe question