Ring the changes

While much ado has long surrounded the lunar New Year's Eve TV galas, Dec 31 is becoming another night when stars shine on the small screen.

Clad in black leather pants and a blazer, Avril Lavigne strode onto the Jiangsu Satellite TV stage half an hour before 2012 began.

She raised her arms, pointed her finger in the air, and shouted to 10,000 fans, who screeched back at her. The pop-punk queen thanked them in gasps of Mandarin: "Xie xie (Thank you)！ We love China!"

Hundreds of kilometers away, Faye Wong - draped in a red skirt-cape - performed her new song, Wish, for Hunan Satellite TV's New Year's Eve gala.

It was a far cry from Lavigne's set. The Asian pop diva, who is half-retired from showbiz, ushered in 2012 with Buddhist-style anthems.

And as the clock's minute hand approached the stroke of midnight, actress Zhang Ziyi and actor Huang Xiaoming appeared at the gala of Shenzhen Satellite TV to raise awareness about kidnapped and street children. Zhang sang a romantic ballad before the end of the show, which attracted nearly 20,000 fans.

They were among the hundreds of international stars who joined the New Year Eve galas, or kua nian wan hui, across the country on 2011's final day.

Watching CCTV's Spring Festival gala has long been a lunar New Year ritual for hundreds of millions of mainlanders. But audiences, especially youth, are tuning in to local TV stations for the Gregorian calendar's countdown to the New Year, as a growing number of stars take to the stage for these galas.

"New Year's Eve galas are a new trend for TV stations in China," says Zhang Lihua, of Hunan Satellite TV, which became the first local station to stage a New Year's Eve gala in 2005.