Celebrating New Year in the cinemas

The Spring Festival holiday, now the country's most lucrative box-office season, was once considered a cinematic dead zone.

In the early 1990s, it was common for theaters to shut down during the first few days of the Chinese New Year. That convention was overturned in 1995 with the release of action giant Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx, which became a hit during the holiday, pioneering the concept of hesuidang — a term that has since expanded to encompass the entire New Year and Spring Festival period.

This piece of cinema history was recently revisited at an event hosted by the China Film Administration and organized by the China Movie Channel at the China National Film Museum. The gathering marked the 120th anniversary of Chinese cinema, while promoting newly released and upcoming titles vying for the holiday audience.