Family of Canadian actor-host Christopher Downs. [Photo provided to China Daily]

China's hit musical series Beaver Songs recently staged its first concert gala at the National Aquatics Center (Water Cube), which drew scores of celebrities and young fans of the cartoon beavers.

Beaver Songs, or Beiwa Er'ge in Chinese, has been running on streaming-video sites of iQiyi, Tencent, Youku and LeTV since 2012. The three-minute, 444-episode sing-along cartoon mainly features popular nursery rhymes in China and adapts classic ancient poems into songs.

In the series, the protagonist beaver, named Beiwa, plays diverse characters in the tales depicted by the rhymes.

The cute animated images and sweet tones have made the series a huge hit, accumulating nearly 40 billion clicks on average every year.

Yang Wei, producer of the series, says the gala aims to raise the public's awareness of songs for preschool children.

"Most of songs sung by Beiwa were created by composers several decades ago. We are short of good rhymes tailored for preschool children nowadays," he says.

Yang hopes the gala will draw more attention from top musicians to take time and direct their creativity on nursery rhymes.

The gala, titled Kids' Choice, was held on Jan 18 and live aired by Alibaba-owned TV broadcaster Tmall Box and the leading streaming-video site Youku.

Nearly 50 celebrities, including Hong Kong veteran Christy Chung and Canadian actor-host Christopher Downs, showed up at the gala with their children.

Kyana Poppy Downs, the 7-year-old daughter of Downs, says singing the nursery songs with her parents has become a family entertainment, and she was excited to see her animated idol Beiwa in the gala.

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