Celebrating a festival of love and legends

Tiantai, a town in East China's Zhejiang province with a history of 1,800 years, will host the 2025 Qixi Festival Gala, an annual program to celebrate Chinese Valentine's Day.

The gala will air on China Central Television's CCTV-1 and CCTV-3 on Friday, the day of the festival.

The town's Zhexi stream, a tourist attraction paved with red cobblestone and flanked by traditional buildings, will serve as the main stage. The show will feature spectacular displays, including 1,000 drones that will create dazzling visual effects.

According to the organizers, the gala will leverage the natural scenery to evoke imagery from the Qixi Festival's founding legend. The tale tells of a cowherd and a weaver girl — the youngest daughter of the Heavenly Emperor — who fell in love and married. Their union, however, enraged the Heavenly Empress, who forcibly separated them. Once a year, on the seventh night of the seventh lunar month, they are allowed to reunite by crossing a bridge formed by magpies across the Milky Way.