China's tin city of Gejiu in southwestern Yunnan Province will hold its first international tin culture tourism festival from November 18 to 22, a local official said Wednesday.

The five-day festival will feature a string of activities, such as lantern exhibition, aerodonetics and fire balloon show, forum on tin culture, trade fair and performances by a famous Vietnamese art troupe, said Wang Pixun, an official of the Gejiu city government.

The city will receive an expected number of 10,000 officials, delegations, business people and tourists from France, Poland, the US, Japan, Vietnam, Hong Kong and other countries and regions, Wang said.

Gejiu, known as the Capital of Tin in China, 280 km away from the provincial capital Kunming and 170 km from Vietnam, is one of the first places that manufactured tin in the world and is the biggest tin production and distribution center in China.

The city's tin reserve accounts for 27 percent of the world's total, statistics show. It manufactures 50,000 tons of tin each year, taking up one quarter of the total output in the world.

(Xinhua News Agency October 20, 2005)