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| Lunar New Year Evening Gala in China |
| Though the popularity of the televised event is waning, it is still hard to live without |
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Weiai Xu (iwumuyi)  |
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Published 2007-02-19 14:33 (KST) |
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 |  | |  A scene from "The Rainy Alleys of a Small Town" | | | ©2007 CCTV.com | Graceful, slim girls dance along the tranquil alleys of a small town. In the background, the gentle music of strings and bamboo flutes echoes. All draw a poetic image of a classical Chinese water-ink painting, evoking lovely memories.
This is a scene from a lyric dance titled "The Rainy Alleys of a Small Town" seen in a televised gala in China. For many Chinese, the spring festival gala on China Central Television (CCTV) used to be a must-see on Lunar New Year's Eve.
As an emotional bond between both Chinese living overseas and compatriots at home, the gala is not only televised nationwide but also globally to reach the vast Chinese diaspora. And as a feast of Chinese culture, it has a lot to offer -- eye-catching folk dances of different ethnic minorities and catchy popular songs of the year, among other things.
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FROM THE SECTION |
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| The event has been on Chinese TV screens since 1983, though its prevalence is now waning. Amid lofty expectations and bitter criticism, this year's gala went on the air again, but proved disappointing to many in the audience. A survey conducted by CCTV's official Web site found a majority of viewers responded negatively.
Perhaps this is now inevitable. It is difficult -- and maybe even impossible -- to cater to all aesthetic tastes in a nation where people come from a wide range of cultural and educational backgrounds. Moreover, expectations of the gala grow year by year, as Chinese have a greater selection of entertainment options than ever before.
Nevertheless, the gala did have at least one thing on offer that impressed many. Apart from "The Rainy Alleys of a Small Town," a comedy titled "A Free Cellphone" satirized the flood of fraudulent commercials in the media. It told a story of a young man who had to endure endless medicine commercials when he made calls on a cellphone that he got from a businessman for free. As a result, he offended many family members because relatives heard the medicine commercials and thought the young man cursed them to be sick.
Taking the story to even greater extremes, the young man was forced to use the phone at least five hours a day or get fined, a condition which ultimately drove the young man mad.
The other skit was titled "Speculation." In it, a rooster laid eggs and a businessman came to the owner of the rooster wanting to buy the egg and make a fortune from it illegally. The comedy lashed out at the blind speculation by people in real life to gain wealth, fame and social status.
It's likely that in the future the Spring Festival Gala will no longer dominate the entertainment programing of New Year's Eve. Still, it's hard to give it up.
"When I watch it I feel a sense of time passing. It reminds me every Spring Festival I have experienced. The gala is a mixture of memories," said one Chinese viewer to OhmyNews.
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| http://chinesevan.blogspot.com/ |
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©2007 OhmyNews
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