An opening ceremony is held for the Fourth China International Cartoon and Animation Festival in eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou on Monday evening, April 28, 2008. [Photo: CRI Online]

The Fourth China International Cartoon and Animation Festival (CICAF) kicked off on Monday in eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou.

It is the first time that tickets of the opening ceremony have been sold to the public. Kids and their parents, as well as teens and grandparents crowded the city's World Leisure Expo Garden on Monday evening to enjoy the fireworks, music and other wonderful performances.

Irish-Norwegian musical duo Secret Garden, and Chinese stars including David Tao and Jolin Tsai showed up at the ceremony.

The annual festival runs through to May 3, which includes China's May Day holiday. The exhibition area covers about 60,000 square meters, with more than 1,400 exhibition booths. About 300 institutions and enterprises from 17 countries and regions have registered for the festival, said media reports.

The festival attracted approximately 430,000 attendees last year and it's estimated that about 500,000 people will attend this year.

The CICAF is the only state-level and international cartoon and animation industrial festival, co-sponsored by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) and Zhejiang Provincial Government.

In 2006, SARFT designated Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, as the host city for the event.

With years of efforts, Hangzhou has built up a national cartoon industry base, a national digital entertainment industry pilot area, and a national software industry base, and other bases for the national cultural creation industry.