Two of China’s most famous and well-loved pop stars on Thursday stole the show at state television’s annual glitzy, often much mocked marathon show welcoming in the Lunar New Year, singing their first public duet in two decades.
Traditionally, hundreds of millions gather around their televisions to watch the China Central TV Spring Festival Gala, a more than four-hour showcase of skits, music and dance that has been a TV staple since the first edition was broadcast in 1983.
However, it was superstars Faye Wong (王菲) and Na Ying (那英) many people tuned in to see this holiday, singing an old school-style ballad called Years (歲月), with some online polls rating their appearance the most eagerly anticipated part of the show.
While neither spoke to the audience after their performance, fans quickly took to Chinese social media in an outpouring of praise, though some said their appearance was too fleeting.
“Did you see? This is my mother. Isn’t she awesome?” Wong’s singer daughter Leah Dou (竇靖童) wrote on Weibo, attaching a picture of herself as a baby pointing at a photograph of her mother, an image that soon attracted more than 500,000 likes.
Beijing-born Wong’s icy demeanor and eclectic music tastes ranging from syrupy love songs to off-kilter trip-hop and Buddhist-infused folktronica have made her one of the biggest stars in the Chinese-speaking world of the past three decades.
Na, who sung at the closing ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, shot to fame in the 1990s with her hit Conquering (征服) and has more recently become a staple of Chinese TV singing talent shows.
While this year’s show had other crowd-pleasers, including wholesome Chinese teenyboppers TFBoys for the third year running, the Chinese Communist Party was always going to be present.
Several songs praised the “New Era,” a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) political theory about making China even stronger through socialism.
Another skit celebrated China’s relationship with Africa, a key part of Xi’s Belt and Road initiative, complete with an African actress speaking Chinese and quoting Xi.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post said Xi’s corruption crackdown means Beijing’s main jail for top level prisoners is too full to allow family members to come and have a traditional New Year meal with inmates.
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