The UK heavy metal band Iron Maiden plays in Beijing and Shanghai as part of its The Book of Souls tour. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Iron Maiden debuted on the Chinese mainland on Sunday, four decades after it was founded.

Having performed the show in Beijing, the British heavy-metal band now prepares to hit Shanghai on Tuesday.

As part of their ongoing The Book of Souls global tour that started in February, the band's musicians flew into the Chinese capital on Ed Force One, a customized Boeing jumbo jet piloted by lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson.

The Sunday concert was held at LeTV Sport, a large indoor space in Beijing, where fans in the thousands turned up, including young children and the elderly. Many wore the band's T-shirts and screamed in excitement as they heard some of their favorite songs being played live for nearly two hours.

"We are very excited about this tour because we play in 35 countries across six continents, especially places like China, where we have never performed before," band guitarist Adrian Smith, 59, told China Daily in an interview ahead of the Beijing gig.

Founded in Leyton, east of London, in December 1975, the band has so far sold more than 90 million albums worldwide, with hits such as Two Minutes to Midnight and The Trooper, landing their first Grammy in 2011 for the song El Dorado.

The ongoing tour is in support of the band's 16th album, The Book of Souls, which was released in September. It is the band's first double CD album and comes five years after its previous album, The Final Frontier. The latest album also climbed to the top of the charts both in Britain and the United States.

"We didn't have much material before going to the studio. You never know where you are going once you start working," says Smith, who co-wrote Speed of Light and Death of Glory, among other songs in the latest album. "We love to work on spontaneity."