The dazzling performance at the Spring Festival Gala's sub-venue in Yibin City of southwest China's Sichuan Province features a combination of the city's rich history, culture and modern industrial advancements, according to its organizers.

Hosted by the China Media Group (CMG), the long-running gala this year features four sub-venues in addition to the main stage in Beijing. Taking the grand show to new locations each year has become a new tradition, shining a spotlight on more of China's varied landscapes and cultural traditions.

Hosting one of the four sub-venues for the Spring Festival Gala this year, Yibin is a dynamic city where time-honored traditions and modern vitality coexist harmoniously. It holds many distinctions, including being known as the 'First City on the Yangtze River', being recognized as a 'City of Liquor' for its popular products in the Chinese liquor family, and being rated as 'China's Bamboo Capital' for boasting the world's largest bamboo forest. In recent years, Yibin has also gained more international prominence as the 'Capital of Power Batteries' as a major hub for electric vehicle battery production.

In this year's Spring Festival Gala, the Yibin sub-venue presented a nearly 8-minute live performance, deeply integrating the unique scenery of the river-side city, and its time-honored intangible cultural heritage, with the application of cutting-edge technologies.

"This year marks the 10th anniversary of launch of the Yangtze River Protection Campaign, so we included elements of environmental protection in the gala. We found a suitable site for setting up a stage for the performance on the Yangtze River, taking it as a zero-carbon promotion platform. In the performance, we used a beautiful and freehand style of expression, and incorporated some technological elements, such as drones, and also representatives of the people living in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River who are protecting its clear waters," said Gu Zhigang, head organizer of the CMG Spring Festival Gala's Yibin sub-venue.

In the program, a "finless porpoise" composed of 5,000 drones leaped out of the water. To realistically recreate the movements of this rare animal, the drone array was only 40 centimeters above the river surface, overcoming the unprecedented challenge of airflow and electromagnetic interference from the river surface.

The Yibin sub-venue also highlighted many cutting-edge technological achievements made by Sichuan. For example, the world's leading large UAV, the Wing Loong-2, and 10 Cloud Shadow UAV, capable of vertical take-off and landing, vertical turning and high-speed flight, all made their debut on the Spring Festival Gala stage.

"Developing a low-altitude economy in Sichuan is backed by efficient integration of large-scale enterprises in the aviation industry, as well as favorable conditions arising from the complex terrain and seasonal variations in the Sichuan region. These are capable of providing immense potential for the development of low-altitude economic scenarios across the country," said Zhao Chuangxin, head of the UAV product development department under Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group.

The performance also featured a unique scene on the Yibin Yangtze River Bridge, where historical silhouettes of the old Tea Horse Road and the speeding silhouettes of modern intelligent trains created a scene of dialogue across time. Lifelike robot pandas vividly showcased the unique charm of Sichuan's natural environment through modern technology. Intangible cultural heritage elements such as Muchuan grass dragons and Chuanbei Big Puppetry gave traditional culture a new vitality on the Spring Festival Gala stage.

"Horses were an important means of transportation in ancient times. In the performance, there was a scene in which the horse, traveling in time and space, met the intelligent rail transit system, which is a new and smart urban transportation means today. We hope to use such a impressionistic design to convey the spirit of striving for progress in the new era," Gu said.

Besides Yibin, the other three sub-venues for the Spring Festival Gala this year are Harbin, the provincial capital of Heilongjiang in northeast China known as the "ice city," Yiwu in east China's Zhejiang, which has been dubbed "the world's supermarket," and Hefei, the provincial capital of the eastern Anhui Province which has emerged as a hub for sci-tech innovation.