[Photo/Xinhua]

TOKYO -- The 2019 China Festival, a fair that presents Chinese cuisine, specialties, culture and entertainment to the Japanese people in an effort to promote bilateral friendship, kicked off on Saturday in downtown Tokyo.

In the two-day festival in Yoyogi Park, where a spectacular stage and some 100 booths selling Chinese cuisine and specialties were set up, Chinese and Japanese artists will give shows, and groups of art performance from China's Hubei,Heilongjiang and other places are expected to present performances with local and ethnic characteristics.

People lined up in front of the various booths to taste traditional Chinese cuisine, including Sichuan spicy cuisine, dumplings and others.

Kong Xuanyou, the Chinese ambassador to Japan, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony, saying that the China Festival is a platform for people to get to know China closely and carry out non-governmental exchanges between China and Japan.

Kong hoped that through various activities of the China Festival, Japanese people can experience China's time-honored history of 5,000 years, feel the traditional cultural ties between the two countries, understand China's development and changes in the new era, and find new common values and emotional resonance.

As this year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and Japan has entered the new era of Reiwa, the Chinese side hopes to take the China-Japan Youth Exchange Promotion Year in 2019 as an opportunity to promote mutual understanding, develop friendship and inject new momentum into bilateral relations, he said.

Yasuo Fukuda, former Japanese prime minister and chief advisor of the executive committee of the festival, said that the festival serves as a platform for people-to-people exchanges and it is a meaningful part of cultural exchanges, which are the foundation of state-to-state exchanges.

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the two neighbors should re-examine bilateral relations and think about how to achieve friendly development through exchanges in the future, he added.

The festival is hosted by the Chinese Embassy to Japan and the executive committee of the 2019 China Festival for the fourth consecutive year this year.