CCTV public service ads for Spring Festival Gala reflect urbanisation issues

A series of two-minute public service ads will be aired during the annual Spring Festival Gala on the various channels of China Central Television, calling for Chinese people to return home for the traditional festival.

He Haiming, deputy director of CCTV's advertising operations and management center, said that the acceleration of urbanization has seen a large number of rural labourers migrating into cities, causing issues in society such as 'left-behind children', 'empty nesters' and the Spring Festival travel rush.

"We hope these ads will call for more Chinese to go home for reunions, as the emotional resonance of 'home' is the true meaning of the Spring Festival," he said.

Plots focus on the above-mentioned special groups in the community, including left-behind children living in the mountains, migrant workers struggling to make a living in a foreign province and relatives experiencing cross-strait separation.

Here's an overview of the four stories:

1. Wang Zhengnian, a 33-year-old migrant worker working in Guangdong for the past six years, is riding 1350 kilometres back to his home in Guizhou to see his daughter for the new year. In order to save on travel fees, he and his wife Jiang Zhengqiong choose to take a motorcycle route for five days and four nights, braving bad weather on the rugged road home.

2. Liu Chunsheng, a 35-year-old engineer working in Nigeria, is spending 35 hours on eight plane transfers to travel from the west coast of Africa to the northeast of China. The ad documents his bus ride to Nigeria Airport, then to Ethiopia for turnaround flights to Hong Kong and Beijing. Next come domestic flights to Harbin, where Liu finally gets into a car for another few hours' drive to the familiar taste of his parents' dumpling soup. (Picture is at the top of this article.)

4. Li Jingchun, age 72, is reunited with his 63-year-old brother Li Jingqiu after he left Shanghai for Taiwan as a 10-year-old.

According to estimates, the airtime for these CCTV public service ads are worth around RMB200 million. McCann Erickson was the creative agency.