China's Central Television Station (CCTV), the flagship State-owned telecast giant, has sent invitations to hundreds of millions of Chinese worldwide, in a goodwill push to greet the upcoming Chinese traditional festival for family reunions.

A gala party in Beijing and a string of TV programs to be made by Chinese singers, musicians, dancers, acrobats, and other artists from home and abroad will be staged and put on a live television show around September 18, the day this year’s Mid-Autumn Moon Festival falls on.

It is a Chinese tradition for all the members of a family to reunite, as well as to dine, have a picnic or watch TV programs, and have fun together during the festival. Many migrant workers toiling in the cities usually take a train or bus ride back home to visit their beloved ones.

As Hong Kong and Macao came back to China's embrace in the late 1990s, hundreds of millions of Chinese at home and abroad are increasingly hopeful that Taiwan will one day be present at the Chinese family table.

CCTV once staged a special Mid-Autumn Festival show in Xiamen, a coastal city opposite of Taiwan, to display mainlanders’ care for the islanders.

This year's party organizing group has sent out invitations by means of TV, radio, internet, newspaper, and magazine advertising to Chinese worldwide. According to the group, 80 million invitations were sent out by sina.com, China’s biggest portal website, on August 10.

It is reported that the 80 million invitations is the largest ever in the world and the organizers have applied it to be booked by the Guinness World Records.

CCTV-1, CCTV-3, and CCTV-4 will broadcast the gala-performing party live and some TV stations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao are also interested in telecasting the event.

(China Daily August 25, 2005)