CMG unveils 2025 Spring Festival Gala's theme, logo

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

CMG unveils 2025 Spring Festival Gala's theme, logo

China's forest and grass coverage rate has exceeded 56 percent thanks to its greening efforts, according to a report released on Thursday by the National Greening Commission.

The country's afforestation areas surpassed 3.56 million hectares in 2025, the report said, adding that it had also restored nearly 4.93 million hectares of degraded grassland last year.

These achievements have brought China's forest coverage rate to a remarkable 25.09 percent, with forest stock volume totaling almost 20.99 billion cubic meters.

Last year, the output value of China's forestry and grassland industry reached nearly 11 trillion yuan (about 1.6 trillion U.S. dollars), the report revealed.

Ecotourism remained popular, recording over 3 billion trips in 2025, it said.

China also celebrated its 48th National Tree Planting Day on Thursday, with tree planting and afforestation activities held across the country in recent days.

China's forest, grass coverage rate surpasses 56 pct: report