On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, just before dark, the small square in Liuluo Village brimmed with people, each "armed" with a small stool. Many of them came from nearby villages and towns to catch a glimpse of the Liuluo Village Spring Festival Gala.

This year's gala boasts a total of 23 programs, including a trendy song and dance performance, "The First Day", a traditional Hakka folk song, "Praise for Liuluo", a fashion show, and poetry recitation. All in the village, from the teeniest of tots to the oldest of elders, joined in the fun, bringing the night alive.

Deng Chongying, a full-time resident and part-time gala director, put aside everything else to make sure that the show went off without a hitch. Flitting between stage and backstage, his phone rang off the hook as he tried to coordinate acts.

With numerous villagers taking part, the line between them and "performers" blurred as they entered stage left and exited stage right minutes later. Deng Rumei, who choreographed some of the performances, also provided logistical guidance. Deng Weizhong, one of the founders of the Spring Festival gala, served tea and water to his fellow villagers.

Opposite the stage is the village store run by Deng Yongchao, which was temporarily transformed into a concession stand during the gala. Everywhere, villagers mill about as if the gala were a family-run factory floor.

That the Liuluo's Spring Festival gala has lasted so long is a surprise to everyone.

Located deep in the mountains of Heqing Town, Danzhou City, Liuluo Village lies at the end of a precipitous, winding road. As we drove toward the village, the sun would be on our left before we took a sharp bend, reappearing on our right and then coming back to our left after yet another bend. This went on several times before we finally reached the village.

Forty years ago, getting in and out of here was even more challenging. Despite this, or perhaps precisely because of this, Deng Weizhong, who was in the second grade of junior high school at that time, came up with an idea: a village Spring Festival gala.

The village had only been connected to the power grid at the end of that year. Inspired by CCTV's annual Spring Festival Gala, Deng approached a few of his friends and, together, started planning.

The news spread quickly, and—much to their surprise—their fellow villagers threw their hats into the ring, putting together more than a dozen programs at short notice. On the eve of the Spring Festival in 1986, the program list was finalized.

At that time, the village had just one suitable venue, a piece of cement-paved ground measuring roughly 100 square meters in a fellow villager's courtyard. Before Deng could even ask, the family who owned the house offered the courtyard up.

Each family donated 10-20 cents to buy oranges and melon seeds, tea, and ribbons for decoration. On the second day of the Lunar New Year in 1986, the first Liuluo Village Spring Festival Gala was held right there.

The most popular act that evening was a performance by several young people of the theme song of the TV series The Mad Monk - "My shoes are broken/My hat is broken/My robes are broken/You laugh at me/He laughs at me/My fan is broken..."

Back in the Spring Festival of 1986, the villagers struggled to make ends meet. They had worn-out shoes and hats, with new clothes being a luxury that most could not afford. But Deng Weizhong remembers the genuine laughter and smiles of his fellow villagers to this day.

That year, Deng Chongying had just turned 5 years old. An accident caused him to lose sight in his left eye, something that led to a nagging sense of inferiority. Three years later, together with his elder brother and sister, he performed at the village's Spring Festival gala for the first time.

"My brothers and sisters were afraid that I would be too nervous to remember my lines, so they arranged a role for me without any lines." Deng's first on-stage role was a little patient lying in a hospital bed.

Not knowing what was being performed or how long he had been lying there, Deng had almost fallen asleep when he heard his brother whispering in his ear, "It's over, it's over." He then quickly got up and left the stage alongside his siblings.

In his rush to exit the stage, a nail tore the new clothes he had just received. He was heartbroken, but that didn't stop his father from scolding him. After wiping away his tears, he saw the bright side: "I could make everyone laugh."

Since then, the younger Deng has almost never missed the gala. Here, he gained recognition and respect: "This stage makes me complete."

The village's Spring Festival gala has been self-organized and self-funded since its inception. At first, each family donated just a few cents. Those who could donate one or two yuan were considered "big donors."

Hakka folk songs are always a regular feature of every gala. In their Hakka dialect, the villagers sang about their ideals, labor, and love, accompanied by Western instruments like harmonicas and guitars.

More than a hundred years ago, their ancestors came to this land singing the same songs as they followed the winding mountain paths to their new home, where they settled and multiplied.

"According to the family annals, our ancestors migrated here from Huizhou in Guangdong Province around 1840 during the Opium War." Deng Weizhong can imagine the difficulties faced by his ancestors when they first arrived: Strapped for everything, from land to food and water, "they relied heavily upon each other, developing a sense of unity and mutual care as they worked to build their village."

In 1993, Deng was admitted to Sun Yat-sen University. After graduation, he stayed in Guangdong to work and visited regions where Hakka communities are concentrated. He was able to communicate with them fluently in their shared mother tongue.

Languages are the carriers of cultural inheritance. Even before Liuluo Village held its first Spring Festival gala, it had a well-established festival custom - washing the well.

The village once boasted a communal well upon which all in the village relied. Every Spring Festival, the entire village cleaned the well together, with each family offering up a bowl of coarse salt to aid disinfection.

"It takes a village, and we look after our own." To Deng Weizhong, Deng Chongying, and the rest of Liuluo's residents, this is the reason why the village has managed to keep the Spring Festival gala going.

Night falls, and the lights are lit, illuminating the village stage nestled among the towering peaks. This stage has been 40 years in the making.

From 1986 to 1998, the gala was a mobile affair, being held at the homes of villagers with the largest yards.

During the Spring Festival of 1988, it rained heavily for several days, leaving not a snippet of clean, dry land outdoors. But the villagers didn't allow this to dampen the mood. That year's gala was instead held in Deng Yongchao's living room. More than a hundred villagers crowded in front of and behind the house to watch the performance in the rain, their applause drowning out the pitter-patter of the heavy shower.

During the Spring Festival of 1996, a sudden power outage on the afternoon of performance day threatened to shut things down. With the sunlight rapidly fading behind the mountains, the young people in the village scrambled into the surrounding forest, cutting down bamboo and pouring kerosene on it to create makeshift torches. To power the tape player so that they wouldn't be without musical accompaniment, some villagers brought over AAA batteries from their own homes, connecting them in four rows, each over a meter in length.

"I hope there will be a real stage." In 1998, some villagers donated a piece of land at the entrance of the village for the construction of a stage. Younger residents worked hard cutting straw, carrying wood, and selling agricultural produce beyond the village to raise funds. After a herculean effort spanning months, they finally built what they dubbed the "thatched dance hall," which could accommodate a few hundred people.

Residents of nearby villages praised the edifice, calling it a "mountain village miracle." Sadly, just three years later, a typhoon swept the building out of existence.

Despite the wreckage that lay before them, the villagers held back their tears, went home to dig out their savings, and pooled their money and labor to build an open-air stage on the ruins.

Today, with the help of the local government, Liuluo Village has a tall and spacious stage. So popular and prestigious has the village's Spring Festival become that the event it oversubscribed, meaning that screening and auditions are now part of planning the event.

"In the past, we only had singing and sketches, but now there's a greater variety of acts, and they are much better to watch." Deng Rumei and her seven sisters have been performing on stage since they were young, when their mother directed them. In the village, the ensemble is affectionately known as the "Seven Sisters."