A video about a master craftsman and his son making headpieces, or "Kui Mao", for a Wu opera troupe ahead of their Chinese New Year tour was featured in the 2026 Spring Festival Gala broadcast on Monday evening.
The China Global Television Network (CGTN) Super Night segment, titled "The Story of the Kui Mao", showed a story about craftsman Mei Lizhong, who has made these iconic headdresses for over 30 years, and is now passing on the cultural heritage to his son.
Wu Opera, also known as Jinhua Opera, is a time-honored art form from east China's Zhejiang Province.
More than a costume piece, each "Kui Mao" conveys a character's gender, status and personality traits.
Built on a paper-carved frame and adorned with delicate kingfisher feathers and shimmering gold gilding, each detail reveals the character's identity.
The annual gala, also known as "Chunwan," was first broadcast in 1983 and has become a hallmark of Spring Festival celebrations in China.
Recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s most-watched annual television program, the show attracts more than one billion viewers each year.
Craft inheritors prepare headpieces for opera troupe ahead of Spring Festival tour
The 2026 Spring Festival Gala hosted and aired by the China Media Group (CMG) delivered a more than four-hour-long feast of captivating cultural performances and entertaining variety acts to audiences tuning in from all around the world as people celebrated the arrival of the Chinese New Year on Tuesday.
Themed "The Steed Gallops, Momentum Unstoppable," the gala opened at 20:00 Monday Beijing time and saw performances being staged at the main venue in Beijing and at four sub-venues set up across the country, as people prepared to welcome the Year of the Horse.
Taking the grand show to a different set of locations each year has now become a tradition for the gala, shining a spotlight on more of China's varied landscapes and cultural traditions.
This year, the gala sub-venues included Harbin, the provincial capital of Heilongjiang in northeast China known as the "ice city," Yiwu in east China's Zhejiang, which has been dubbed "the world's supermarket," Hefei, the provincial capital of the eastern Anhui Province which has emerged as a hub for sci-tech innovation, and Yibin in the southwestern Sichuan Province, known for its ancient architecture and picturesque scenery along the banks of the Yangtze River.
As always, the gala featured a carefully curated line-up of performances, including a host of stirring songs and dazzling dances, enchanting operas, comedic sketches, magic shows and a number of creative fusion performances, all of which highlighted the spirit of the new era, capturing the dynamic beauty of China's future.
This year's gala drew on China's traditional culture and incorporated the spirit of the horse, a symbol of self-improvement and striving forward, into its creative design.
The gala has increasingly taken on a high-tech feel in recent years and among the highlights this year was the appearance of advanced AI-embodied robots, who dazzled audiences with their innovative stage presence and impressive physical abilities, particularly during a highly-energetic Kung Fu performance.
Meanwhile, the CMG's artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC) real-scene special effects technology made its debut with its first innovative application as part of this year's show, highlighting China's technological advances.
The Spring Festival, or the Chinese New Year, is the most important traditional holiday for the Chinese people, and watching the Spring Festival Gala, also known as "Chunwan," on is a cherished part of the celebrations in hundreds of millions of Chinese homes.
Since first being broadcast in 1983, the gala has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the most-watched annual television program on the planet.
The Spring Festival itself was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December 2024.
CMG stages annual Spring Festival Gala as China celebrates Year of Horse
