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South China Morning Post
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
China's Spring Festival Gala delivers rock 'n' roll, robots and political messages
China's Spring Festival Gala on Tuesday evening featured a robot dance performance, an American rock band and hi-tech visual effects, while delivering political messages that reinforced a unified national identity and criticised bureaucratic inefficiency. Advertisement The annual variety show first aired in 1983 on state broadcaster CCTV. It remains a key cultural event in China during Lunar New Year , also known as Spring Festival. Recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's most-watched annual TV programme, this year's five-hour live broadcast drew a record 2.8 billion views – 690 million more than last year, according to preliminary statistics. One of the most striking performances of the night was an AI-driven dance segment called 'Yangge Bot'. Directed by filmmaker Zhang Yimou, the segment featured 16 humanoid robots from Unitree Robotics joined by dancers from Xinjiang Arts University. They performed a synchronised yangge dance, a folk dance popular across northern China. Advertisement Dressed in floral cotton jackets, the robots twirled handkerchiefs – tossing them and catching them mid-air – and spun in perfect sync with the music and their human counterparts.
South China Morning Post
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
China's Spring Festival Gala delivers rock 'n' roll, robots and politics
Published: 10:01pm, 29 Jan 2025 China's Spring Festival Gala on Tuesday evening featured a robot dance performance, an American rock band and hi-tech visual effects while delivering political messages that reinforced a unified national identity and criticised bureaucratic inefficiency. The annual variety show first aired in 1983 on state broadcaster CCTV. It remains a key cultural event in China during Lunar New Year , also known as Spring Festival. Recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's most-watched annual TV programme, this year's five-hour live broadcast drew a record 2.8 billion views – 690 million more than last year, according to preliminary statistics. One of the most striking performances of the night was an AI-driven dance segment called 'Yangge Bot'. Directed by filmmaker Zhang Yimou, the segment featured 16 humanoid robots from Unitree Robotics joined by dancers from Xinjiang Arts University. They performed a synchronised yangge dance, a folk dance popular across northern China. Dressed in floral cotton jackets, the robots twirled handkerchiefs – tossing them and catching them mid-air – and spun in perfect sync with the music and their human counterparts.
