Debuting in 1983, the China Media Group (CMG) Spring Festival Gala has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s most watched TV program.

For 40 years, it has been a ritual for many Chinese families, at home and overseas, to watch the show on Chinese New Year’s Eve. The Spring Festival gala for the Year of the Tiger will intermingle songs, dances, comic sketches, opera and folk arts, full of tiger elements, cute or powerful, but with harmony and reunion as the main themes. Dive into a world of modern Chinese culture and tradition for a jaw-dropping spectacular of joy, music and drama.

No matter where you are, join us for the Year of the Tiger Spring Festival Gala, the biggest global TV event of the year at 8 p.m. BJT on January 31, 2022 and witness the creative spirit of China!

1 . A Merry and Happy New Year

The tradition of livecasting China’s national television Spring Festival Gala dates back 40 years to 1983. Lasting 4.5 hours each, this annual show holds the attention of millions of Chinese viewers worldwide on the Spring Festival’s Eve, which falls on January 31 this year. It has been recognized as the most watched TV variety show on the entire planet by the Guinness World Records. Generations of Chinese people, home and abroad, associate the celebration of the Chinese New Year with the Gala, with its festive songs and dances, clever skits, funny talk shows and much more.

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2. Spring Breeze Across a Hundred-Thousand Miles

In China, the Spring Festival signals warming weather and the grand awakening of all plants and creatures. It’s the start of a fresh new cycle of seasons. This song eulogizes the vitality and hope bred by spring. May the spring breeze send the best wishes to every corner of the earth and may this song bring you health, happiness and never ending good news.

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3. The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting

Are you curious about the color scheme of this dance, or why the colors of the dancers’ dresses stand out from the omnipresent China red?

It’s an unmistakable tribute to a special genre of Chinese fine art, the Blue and Green Landscape paintings, which originated in the Sui and Tang period and were revived in the Song Dynasty. The unique colors of azurite blue and malachite green come from precious minerals, rendering them an extravagance for Chinese artists as ultramarine blue was for Renaissance oil painters in the West. That’s why this type of landscape paintings were mostly for the royal courts or wealthy families.

One such painting was an 11.9-meter long scroll known as “A Panorama of Mountains and Rivers”, projected on screens above and behind the dancers. It was painted around 900 years ago by an 18-year old genius painter for his Northern-Song emperor patron. Take a snapshot of any section of this painting and it’s your dream screensaver.

The painting “A Panorama of Mountains and Rivers” is now in the Palace Museum.

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4. Flow Like Clouds

You might have seen people practicing Tai Chi in parks or in classes, but seeing Tai Chi grand masters flow like swift clouds on top of the 632-meter Shanghai Tower, the tallest building in China, could be a surreal experience. Not to mention, these performers are the champion masters of martial art competitions in recent years. Much more than a form of physical exercise, Tai Chi moves address the body and mind as an interconnected system to strengthen the body while bringing about inner peace. Tai Chi as a martial art was included in the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list in 2020.

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5.1 The Never Ending Opera Dream

Operas can sound very different across cultures, but did you know there are over 360 kinds of operas just in China? Here is an oversimplified classification of Chinese operas: northern Chinese operas often have themes of battles, with high pitched and powerful singing accompanied by distinctive percussion instruments. Southern Chinese operas on the other hand, with romance as the common theme, often have graceful and flowing styles of singing, accompanied by much more gentle instruments such as the flute and Pipa that are superb in stoking up sentiments.

5.2 Story about Mother of General Yue Fei

These three Peking Opera performers play the mother of a legendary Song Dynasty general, encouraging her son to defend the country.

5.3 The Golden Water Bridge

This performer of Henan Opera plays Li Shimin, the most well-known emperor of the Tang Dynasty. The emperor attached great importance to improving people’s livelihood, defending state borders and resisting invaders. It was his reign that brought about one of the most peaceful and prosperous eras in Chinese history.

5.4 The Love Story of Liang and Zhu

The ultimate romance story in Chinese culture must be that of “Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai”, here sung in Yue Opera.

The story has been around as a folktale for over 1,700 years, from a time when only boys could go to school. Lady Zhu dressed like a boy to attend school and fell in love with her classmate Liang. It was also a time when only arranged marriages were proper. The two lovers died in grief and came back as two butterflies, circling as a loving pair out of the tombs and into an afterlife free to love.

5.5 Fairies Scattering Blossoms

So, by now, can you tell whether this piece of Huangmei Opera is from northern or southern China?

5.6 Taking over of Tiger Mountain

These Peking Opera actors of a tender young age play the heroic soldier who goes deep into the nest of bandits on a snow mountain. This particular segment of the opera is well-known by almost any adult Chinese, but only professionals with years and decades of training can do it right.

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6. Roar of a Tiger Cub

Does every Chinese know Kung Fu? Well, you never know. The next one you meet just might. But to become a martial art master takes years of systematic training. Look at this little boy of 10, who is mischievous and fearless just like a tiger cub. He took an order of delivery from his master and nothing could hold him back. The Tiger comes the third among the 12 Chinese zodiac signs and it’s believed that people born in the year of the Tiger are courageous risk takers, fit for leadership roles and are loyal to friends.

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7. Starry Dreams

These young performers of 5 or 6 years of age are nicknamed “Blue Sky Babies”, because their parents work in the field of aerospace. The little girl who calls out to her mother at the end of the performance, asking her mom to pick a real star for her from the sky, might just be the first kid to actually get it, because her mother, Wang Yaping, is the first female Chinese astronaut to work in China’s Tiangong space station. In fact, she is still there, with two other Chinese taikonauts. They watched the livecast of the gala in space.

“Mommy, please pick a star and bring it back for me!”

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8. Spring Comes to the Lahu People

The Spring Festival is the most important holiday for the Chinese people worldwide and that of course includes the Lahu ethnic people in Yunnan Province. Last year, the Lahu people living in remote areas of the province waved goodbye to poverty. Along with millions of others living in underdeveloped areas in China, they have arrived on the bright path toward common prosperity. This performance shows Lahu people’s traditional song and dance celebration to welcome the spring. In their own language, Lahu means tiger. They are wearing their distinctive ethnic clothing and the gourd serves as their totem.

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9. The Golden Mask

The year 2021 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of modern archaeology in China. It was also a year of major discovery at Sanxingdui ancient site located in Southwest China. Many pieces of exquisite cultural relics were unearthed, after having been buried for thousands of years. This “Golden Mask” dance pays tribute to the one that was unearthed at the Sanxingdui site. The dancers travel through time and space, taking viewers on a journey back to a corner of China from thousands of years ago.

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10. Yellow River and Yangtze River

This male quartet takes us on a powerful ride through the magnificent Yellow River and Yangtze River.

These two mother rivers of the Chinese civilization flow east for thousands of kilometers into the embrace of the sea. They have been in countless pieces of poems, paintings and music since ancient times. Written into this song was a poem by Li Bai over 1,300 years ago, the genius poet known by every Chinese person.  Today, the headwaters of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River in the hinterland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau have become China’s largest national park.

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11. The Chime of Spring

In the last moments leading up to midnight, two significant figures on the Chinese pop music scene, Tan Weiwei and Sun Nan, present one of the most moving songs of the whole gala.

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（Lyrics）

The chime at midnight

is ready to arrive.

I can still remember all that from yesterday

Saying goodbye while waiting

Waiting while saying goodbye

The chime of spring, with steps ever so light

Come, a new day

Come, a new year

The snowflakes are fairy dust of happiness that I offer you

The chime of spring, it’s coming

The hope of tomorrow is rising

I’m waiting to receive you

I’m receiving you while waiting

The chime of spring, warm and sweet

The chime at midnight

carries my best wishes

The chime at midnight

is ready to arrive

12. A Sparking Chinese New Year

How can we not mention the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 which opened during the Spring Festival holiday? Let’s follow the two mascots of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games for a tour of the magnificent stadiums to see how green, innovative and exciting these ice and snow events are meant to be!

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13. Song of the Earth

For China, with its vast territory and 56 ethnic groups, folk songs make up a huge treasure house of music. These songs and tunes from across the country were music of labor, created while people were hard at work. The lyrics are full of local dialects and the melodies are distinctive of local characters. We might not know exactly what they are saying, but the emotions that the music can carry need not be translated.

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14. Memories of Southern China

Are we walking into a painting or are they walking out of a painting? In the background of this performance is one of the most famous paper ink paintings in Chinese history called “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains”, created in the Yuan Dynasty in 1350. These legendary poets reciting and singing their poems in nature embodies the dream life of ancient Chinese literati, to melt into nature and sing its glory.

Traditional Chinese literati consider calligraphy and painting as one art. Poems are often written on the side or top of paintings. This performance of reciting ancient poetry brings the landscape and characters from the paintings alive.

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15. What an Unforgettable Night

For 40 years, the fantastic Spring Festival Gala has been brought to a close with this one particular song named “An Unforgettable Night”, sung by the same singer, Li Guyi, now 78 years old. At midnight of Spring Festival’s Eve, hundreds of millions of Chinese people sing this song together and feel in their hearts the message it carries: What an unforgettable night! No matter if you are at the end of the earth or ocean, no matter friends old or new, come again next year, see you again next spring!

(Notice: Please click the photo above for watching the performance)

（The End）