娱乐英语新闻:China's box office soared by nearly 18 pct in first half of 2011

BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China's overall box office earnings for the first half of 2011 reached nearly 5.7 billion yuan (881 million U.S. dollars), up nearly 18 percent year-on-year, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) said in a report issued Wednesday.

Domestic films took in 2.93 billion yuan, an increase of 38 percent over the same period last year, while foreign films raked in 2.77 billion yuan, up 1.6 percent, according to the SARFT film bureau.

"Beginning of the Great Revival," a star-studded film marking the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), topped the domestic list, with earnings of 304.69 million yuan as of the end of June, according to the report.

Hollywood blockbuster "Kungfu Panda 2" was the highest-ranked foreign film, pulling in ticket sales worth 596.75 million yuan, followed by "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" (472.06 million yuan) and "Fast Five" (255.14 million yuan), the report said.

China's 2010 box office topped an uNPRecedented 10 billion yuan, according to the report.