Culture exports 'should pass the test of the market'

She is best known for taking this year's Spring Festival Gala to the United States, where all 4,000 tickets for the rendition of the annual cultural extravaganza were sold out days before it opened.

After the success of the mainstay of Chinese families' lunar new year celebrations at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, Li Yuling said the stage is now set for US and other foreign audiences to enjoy Chinese culture at full blast.

"Instead of staging a humble show that might have gone largely unnoticed, we intended to create some powerful ripples," the president of the American Cultural Exchange Foundation said of the Jan 20 event which cost $700,000.