The new year celebrations have got going in earnest. For the first evening a big group of us from CEAC were fortunate to be invited to a family dinner which made an odd but convivial grouping of Western artists and Xiamen caterers. The food was abundant and varied, friends of the family dropped in to say hello and the telephone rang often with ‘xin nian hao!’ greetings exchanged.
As the night wore on the fireworks started up and the TV spring festival galas went into overdrive. The Olympic opening ceremony from 2008 did not come out of the ether, these Spring Festival shows have been working a similar line of high-tech syncronised group spectacle for a while. It is funny to observe that the street in China can appear quite chaotic and full of many competing, often amplified voices, yet these stage shows are the antithesis of all of that. They are self-contained, slick and reflect a single vision.
