Grand gala celebrates Party’s 100th birthday
One hundred years is a figure that arouses awe, and with the country in a festive mood to celebrate the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, a grand gala that aired on television on Thursday night allowed people to revisit milestones in the rise of the Party.
The gala was staged at Beijing’s iconic National Stadium, also known as the Bird’s Nest, on Monday. Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, joined around 20,000 audience members to watch the two-hour performance.
Titled “The Great Journey”, the four-part epic traced the Party’s century-long history from its revolutionary victories to the construction spree in the early days of the People’s Republic of
China and the unprecedented changes brought about by reform and opening-up in recent decades. Fireworks lit up the sky as the action climaxed.
Around half the stadium was turned into a huge stage, with giant screens and two oval-shaped revolving platforms vividly recreating awe-inspiring scenes, from battles in modern China’s biggest wars to the nation’s ending of extreme poverty, its battles against the severe acute respiratory syndrome and COVID-19, and the country’s exploration of space.
Shen Chen, deputy chief director of the gala, said the performance used nearly 8,000 performers and some choruses of around 8,000 students from over 20 universities.
“The show has been prepared and rehearsed for two years, with the script revised over 100 times due to changes of ideas and locations,” Shen said.
Once the location of the performance was set, in July last year, the creative team behind it decided to make it an epic gala. They then gathered all the performers in Beijing for two months of rehearsals in the stadium from late April.
One highlight of the program mentioned by Shen was the chorusand-dance — The War Flag as Beautiful as a Painting — a performance about the Chinese People’s Volunteers entering the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to help in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (195053).
With around 1,000 performers dressed in military uniforms bringing fierce conflicts to life, one innovative feature of the performance saw a 30-meter-wide, 90-meterlong screen slowly lifted from the ground, with an actor playing a renowned war hero sitting on top of it.
Shen said the performance was a tribute to the many unnamed martyrs who sacrificed their lives to demonstrate the Chinese people’s determination to defend peace.
Zhu Han, a 37-year-old teacher from the Central Academy of Drama, said he was thrilled to join the performance as a dancer playing a Chinese soldier.
A veteran of the stage since the age of 13, Zhu said the performance rekindled the intense national pride he felt after being part of a series of large-scale tributes previously, including those for the 90th anniversary of the CPC’s founding and the 70th anniversary of victory in the World Anti-Fascist War.
He said the actors carried prop rifles — each weighing around 10 kilograms — as they dashed around performing battle scenes under the scorching sun during the rehearsals. It was a special experience that helped him understand Chinese troops’ devotion to safeguarding the country, Zhu said.
Zhu is from Jiangxi province, the revolutionary cradle where the Party established its first rural revolutionary base and he said the show reminded him of the Red culture deeply rooted in his hometown.
Huang Tengshi, an 82-year-old retired official who lives in Beijing, was part of the audience. He said he was very excited when the giant screen showed documentary clips featuring Xi and former top leaders Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.
An audience member or participant in anniversary celebrations in Tian’anmen Square or the Great Hall of the People since the late 1950s, Huang said the Bird’s Nest’s gala was the most impressive and imposing he had seen, giving him a strong immersive experience and stirring his love for the Party.