Chinese New Year gets snowed in

CCTV's holiday broadcast focuses on blizzards

By CLIFFORD COONAN

BEIJING -- As China struggled to dig its way out of its worst blizzards in 50 years, with millions of people stranded amid power outages, China Central Television included stories about dealing with the crisis in its annual Chinese New Year gala, the country's most popular TV show.

"We will use poems and singing, with background video footage of people combating the snow, to demonstrate the high level of attention and caring of Chinese authorities, the efforts of local governments and the military, and touching stories of a helping society," Zhu Tong, the director of CCTV's art department, told a news briefing.

For more than 20 years, the gala -- which aired on the eve of Lunar New Year, this year Feb. 7 -- has been watched by most of China's 1.3 billion people and is usually a mixed bag of warblers, laffers and ethnic dancing.

This year CCTV sent reporters and editors to snow-hit regions to "collect firsthand material" to produce some "heartwarming stories of triumph over disaster," Zhu says.

Chinese New Year is the only time that China's 200 million migrant workers go home to see their families, but this year's bad weather has crashed the transport infrastructure, and scores of millions of workers have been unable to make it home.

Hunan Television canceled its Chinese New Year's gala due to the blizzard.