Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, becomes the stage for the country's most outstanding advertisers this week. Beginning from Thursday, leading Chinese advertising agencies and representatives of overseas companies will gather in the city until Sunday for the 11th China Advertising Festival, CCTV reported Wednesday.

This is the first time for a city in western China will host the most authoritative advertising festival in the country. And this year's event has attracted a record number of entries vying for the China Effie Award, the nation's highest honor in creative advertising.

Yang Jun, vice-chairman of Ad Festival Organizing Committee, said, "We have received over 3,600 works for the Effie Award contest, which is the most in the history of the ad festival. We have put all of them on display and allocated specific exhibition areas for them according to their medium. In addition to traditional advertising in print, television or radio, the exhibition also features advertising on the Internet. "

On-line advertising, especially Flash work, is showing appeal for a growing number of young people in China, and makes up one of the highlights of this year's festival. Almost all major Chinese gateway websites have contributed their latest advertising works to the exhibition. Several varieties shows scheduled for display during the festival, and award ceremony on the last day of the event are also hotly anticipated.

The first China Advertising Festival was held in 1986. Before Chengdu, the venue rotated among several major cities in eastern China.

(CCTV.com October 28, 2004)