The 9th China Art Festival is slated to open in Guangzhou on May 10. A series of cultural activities including performances, forums and fairs will be held over two weeks to showcase the history, innovation and development of Chinese culture. 

During the art festival, a number of fine art exhibitions and shows by famous artists will be presented.

As a key event of the festival, the first China Excellent Stage Fair, hosted by the Ministry of Culture, will feature as many as 100 plays and operas, performed in a bid to provide a platform for the works to enter the market.

The fair will be the largest ever held in terms of scale with the purpose of building a stage for the works to attract a greater audience and go abroad, according to the organiser.

The fair will cover an area of 7,250 square metres with 400 exhibition stands, including State-run troupes such as China National Opera House, the National Theatre Company of China and provincial-level performance groups as well as eight productions from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and several overseas works.

Classic Italian opera Turandot by Guangzhou Opera House will raise the curtain for the festival. Hong Kong Dance Company's Qingming Riverside, an epic dance poem from a national treasure scroll painting, will meet Guangzhou audiences in the wake of its debut in Hong Kong and Beijing.

As many as 200 private domestic art troupes will also perform at the festival with genres ranging from opera, musical drama, local opera and acrobatics and many of the performances will be free.

A forum on the international performance market will also be held, with world-leading directors, playwrights, costume designers, choreographers and make-up artists expected.