FROM Paris to the towns of Cuincy and Etrechy, a Shanghai Expo show filled with thousand-year-old Chinese cultural heritage has amazed audiences.

The variety show was among Shanghai government's large-scale promotion activities for the 2010 World Expo - the Shanghai Week in France from November 24 to 26.

The show featured nine programs of China's most precious cultural heritage, such as Kunqu Opera "The Poeny Pavilion," the guqin (seven-string zither) composition "Flowing Water" and the Tibetan folk song "Amai Ahong." There was also a song from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and a puppet show from Fujian Province.

The shows were greeted by thundering applause and viewers queued up to buy puppet souvenirs afterward.

The Shanghai Week in France began with the Chinese cultural heritage concert at the century-old theater, La Salle Gaveau, in Paris on November 24; it then moved on.

The week included a Shanghai Expo promotion meeting and an exhibition about Shanghai Expo at the Palais des Congres in Paris from November 27 to December 2.

Guests included Jean-Bearnaud Bros, adjunct of the mayor of Paris for tourism; Pierre Simon, director of the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Vicente Loscentales, secretary-general of the International Expositions Bureau.

"Promotions like this are a very good way to attract visitors to Expo," said Loscentales. "I even read about Shanghai Expo and the Shanghai Week in France in Le Monde, the most important French newspaper."

To attract visitors, the Shanghai government will continuously hold such World Expo promotions at home and abroad.

Organizers plan Expo activities in South Korea, Japan, Spain and the United States next year, and in London, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia and Africa in 2009.