Illustration: Liu Rui
 
By Dan Ben-Canaan

By mid afternoon, most of the Spring Festival travel rush is over. It is the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year and homes across the vast motherland are preparing for the largest annual family reunion.

As times are changing, some critics say that Spring Festival may not be the most important of Chinese holidays. They mention the Qingming Festival, the Mid-autumn Festival, and the Lantern Festival among others.

But the ever growing travel rush that precedes the Spring Festival shows that being with the family has been and remains of great significance and value to all.

On this evening, members of the family will recount their past year's experiences. They will be decorating the home with New Year ornaments, preparing a festive meal, dusting a table with white flour and making delicate dumplings, engaging in small and big talk, and at eight o'clock they will turn on their television set for chunwan, CCTV's Gala on the Chinese Lunar New Year's Eve.

Launched in 1982 as successor to Beijing Television's irregular broadcasts, which date back to 1956, the yearly four-hour-long song and dance extravaganza celebrating the Chinese Spring Festival is the most watched program in China, with more than a 93.6 percent audience share.

Having aired for almost 30 consecutive years, the program has become synonymous with family tradition and an important part of the Chinese national culture. It has become a cultural icon and a symbol of national unity.

As such, chunwan will be part of China's collective historical memory, and in a fast changing world, it will bridge the present with the past.

As families are becoming smaller, and some of the young may choose their own way to celebrate the event by traveling, surfing the Internet, watch-ing DVD movies on their computers, chatting or sending SMS messages, or visiting friends for a night of mahjong and card games, chunwan is a cultural bridge between generations.

There is nothing wrong with a variety of other choices. They are all part of the celebration and they pose no danger.

Furthermore, the economics, business, and politics of chunwan are reserved for gossip, and no one should care about it.

As a cultural icon, chunwan carries no money value. Nevertheless, If CCTV profits from it, that is great.

What counts are the content and the ability of the producers to adapt to ever-changing times. These may either preserve the gala for the future, or place it on the shelves of the past.

For many, the program is a bond. For others it may be a background only.

It is an evening that connects urban with rural areas, links common values and provides shared experiences in China's collective national heritage and oral history.

Yan Lili, 30, and Zhang Chen, 29, say that the CCTV New Year Gala is an important part of the night's celebration.

Li Yanqing, 31, from Tianjin, says that he watches only "some items that interest me," but the show "gives a proper background for the whole evening."

For Wang Liwen, 30, from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China, "The program is like a big dinner table with many kinds of dishes, and everyone has his own taste and favorite dish."

Some critics have called for a cancellation of the CCTV New Year Gala. They say that the program holds no value, that it is outdated and thus will gradually become part of the past.

There is nothing wrong with constructive criticism when it points to ways of improvement.

It is easy to find fault in everything. They should offer rejuvenating ideas instead.

Li Yanqing suggests that every valuable event may have its enemies. "As for chunwan, the audience may have a love-hate relation with it precisely because it is important. But for me, it conveys family reunion, prosperity and pride." The program, he says, "provides a common background for all."

For the CCTV New Year Gala to be in a win-win column, it should not be seen as entertainment only, but as a cultural icon that mirrors the nation.

To be a past and future winner it should restore its youth, pay attention to the content and the faces, implement new methods and concepts, and thus stimulate the old and the young alike.

The author is an Israeli professor and director of the Sino-Israel Research Center at Heilongjiang University. bencanaan@ gmail.com

 Chunwan still a decent choice on eve of the Spring Festival