China Media Group (CMG) on Friday released the official theme and logo for its 2025 Spring Festival Gala, marking the start of the Year of the Snake in the Chinese lunar calendar, coming in late January 2025.
The theme of the 2025 Spring Festival Gala is "Year of the Snake, Keep Your Spirits Awake!", CMG announced.
The Chinese lunar calendar divides time into 60-year-long cycles and represents each year with a combination of Chinese characters representing the 10 celestial stem, or tiangan, and characters representing the 12 terrestrial branches, or dizhi. For this Year of Snake, which roughly fits the year 2025, the characters are "yi si."
So the logo of the gala is inspired by an ancient form of the character "si" from a form of writing known as the oracle bone script. The logo adapts the character into the shape of snake and then symmetrically reversed and combined to form two "si" side by side and mirrored, allowing the logo to form an infinite pattern when repeated.
The symmetrical placement of the characters resembles the traditional Chinese ruyi pattern, which symbolizes good luck and longevity.
A ruyi is a decorative object widely used in China to express the "hope for wishes to come true," reflecting the theme for the first half of the gala's main theme.
The theme for the second half is a fixed expression in the Chinese language that means "the endless cycle of life."
The Spring Festival Gala hosted by CMG has been an essential part of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration since 1983. The gala includes songs, dance, comic sketches, operas and folk arts.
The annual spectacle, known as the most-watched television program in the world, is broadcast on the eve of the Chinese New Year, when families come together to ring in the new lunar year.
The 2025 Spring Festival Gala will air on the Spring Festival Eve, which falls on January 28, 2025.
CMG unveils 2025 Spring Festival Gala's theme, logo
CMG unveils 2025 Spring Festival Gala's theme, logo
CMG unveils 2025 Spring Festival Gala's theme, logo
CMG unveils 2025 Spring Festival Gala's theme, logo
The situation still remains tense along the Israeli-Lebanese border although Israel and Hezbollah have reached a ceasefire agreement that took effect on Wednesday.
Israel's security cabinet on Tuesday night approved a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah, paving the way for an end to a nearly 14-month conflict between the two sides which, according to Lebanese health authorities, has killed 3,823 people and wounded 15,859 others in Lebanon.
The ceasefire took effect at 4:00 Wednesday, and over the next 60 days, the Lebanese army will regain control of its territory, while Israel will gradually withdraw, and civilians will be able to return home.
However, a China Media Group (CMG) reporter who went deep into Israel's northern border saw fewer vehicles driving on the road, and felt that more interference was encountered in telecommunications including the use of the GPS, which is a countermeasure by the Israeli side to disrupt Hezbollah's missile launches, indicating the entire area near the Israel-Lebanon border remains in a relatively high state of alert.
At Kiryat Shmona, one of Israel's northernmost towns, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not lowered public security defenses in this place.
Israeli media have analyzed that the implementation of the ceasefire agreement is still full of uncertainties, and the possibility of a conflict cannot be ruled out if the agreement breaks down.
Kiryat Shmona, one of Israel's northernmost towns which is just three or four kilometers away from Lebanon, is one of the areas most severely attacked by Hezbollah rockets and missiles before the ceasefire. In previous clashes between Israel and Hezbollah before the ceasefire, people there could hear the sound of the Israeli army firing long-range artillery almost once every few minutes, including some sporadic gunshots and the sound of some Israeli drones hovering in the air for a long time. After the ceasefire, everything seems to have returned to somewhat calm.
However, the CMG reporter could still hear loud explosions, possibly from artillery firing, in Kiryat Shmona. Local media reports said the Israeli army discovered signs of activities of so-called Hezbollah militants in a village in southern Lebanon, and then bombarded the area with long-range artillery.
It is not clear what impact this move will have on the implementation of the ceasefire agreement, but it also fully illustrates the complexity of the implementation of the agreement.
Tensions remain on Israel-Lebanon border amid Israeli-Hezbollah ceasefire
