China Media Group (CMG) on Monday released the official mascot for its 2025 Spring Festival Gala, as the Year of the Snake in the Chinese lunar calendar is approaching.
Based on the image of a cartoon snake, the mascot is named "Si Shengsheng", and was designed to match the theme of the Spring Festival Gala -- "Year of the Snake, Keep Your Spirits Awake!"
The outline of the mascot's head and the shape of the patterns on its cheeks are derived from a silver "Ruyi", a traditional Chinese ornament representing blessings and auspiciousness, unearthed in Shaanxi Province from the Tang Dynasty (618-907).
Its head is decorated with a bat pattern and its tail is embellished with a long knot representing longevity in Chinese culture, making the entire mascot represent blessings and good luck.
The shape of the eyebrows and eyes of the vivid mascot is taken from the pattern of snake-shaped bronze cultural relics unearthed from the Sanxingdui Ruins, one of the world's greatest archaeological findings of the 20th century in southwest China's Sichuan Province.
This pattern is also widely seen on bronze and jade items in the Central Plains region, showing the diversity and unity of Chinese civilization.
Some of the patterns on the mascot are carved with cloisonne craftsmanship, and the filigree inlay art was also used to sketch out a variety of flowers on the mascot, implying that the spring is back.
Green is the main color of the mascot, symbolizing spring and vitality, and a variety of traditional Chinese colors are also used in the design.
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 be on the air on the lunar New Year's Eve, which falls on January 28, 2025.
CMG unveils mascot for 2025 Spring Festival Gala
CMG unveils mascot for 2025 Spring Festival Gala
CMG unveils mascot for 2025 Spring Festival Gala
A World Health Organization (WHO) medical epidemiologist on Sunday sought to ease public concerns over a hantavirus outbreak linked to a cruise ship, stressing that the virus is not airborne like COVID-19 and that the average person has no reason to worry.
Spain began evacuating passengers the same day from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius, which had anchored earlier off the Port of Granadilla on the island of Tenerife.
The MV Hondius departed Argentina on April 1 with more than 140 passengers and crew from 23 countries on board. The ship has reported eight infections, including three deaths. Six of the cases have been laboratory-confirmed as Andes virus infections, caused by a rodent-borne hantavirus endemic to South America and the only known hantavirus strain capable of limited human-to-human transmission.
Boris Pavlin, a medical epidemiologist with the WHO, said the cruise ship affected by a hantavirus outbreak had been carefully managed by Spanish authorities and posed little risk to the general public. "This is not COVID. The average person does not need to be worried about hantavirus here in this setting. These folks are being managed very carefully, very deliberately, by the Spanish authorities; they're getting off the ship, they are getting into small boats, they are being spaced apart in the buses so there's no risk to one another. Even if one were to become symptomatic -- we know that none of them were symptomatic as they have been leaving the ship -- they're going straight to their aircraft and they're being taken to their respective national jurisdictions," he said.
Pavlin said the exact source of exposure remained under investigation, but the initial cases appeared to be linked to a pre-cruise land excursion in South America.
"From what we understand of the initial cases, there was -- as one does often on a cruise -- there was a land-side excursion before the cruise in which places were visited that are home to these specific rodents that are associated with the Andes hantavirus. These are not worldwide rodents; the long-tailed rice rat is very specific to the Andes Cordillera region of South America, and that's where people who are exposed to the rodents were. So it was in one of those places they were exposed. We don't know exactly because there are several possibilities, and I believe that the Argentinian authorities are actually even going to look at that and try to do some animal sampling to get to the very bottom of it. But that part's not unexpected at all," he said.
The official praised Spanish authorities' handling of the ship and described the response as a closely coordinated international effort.
"This has been an extremely cooperative, collegial international effort. The Spanish authorities are very diligent and deliberate about what's happening here. There's nothing that would surprise us. I think that somebody might become exposed; we want to obviously make sure that people who are coming off the ship are not newly exposed to one another as they get off and go to their respective places, and we're not seeing that," Pavlin said.
But while the immediate disembarkation process had gone smoothly, he emphasized that health officials were not letting their guard down.
"However, the contact tracing and follow-up of every person who has been in even the lightest contact with the patients will continue until a maximum incubation period. In any case, there are contingency plans should someone become ill, and we know that it doesn't just spread like wildfire, so even if they were to become ill, we don't expect a large outbreak after this," the official said.
Cruise ship hantavirus outbreak "not COVID," poses low public risk: WHO expert
