Mainland tourists celebrate first lunar New Year in Taiwan

Special Report: Spring Festival Special 2009

TAIPEI, Jan. 31 (Chinese media) -- Thousands of Chinese mainland tourists have

enjoyed their first Spring Festival holiday in Taiwan this year, thanks to the

warming ties between the two sides in the past year.

More than 10,000 tourists had arrived in Taiwan from Sunday to Thursday,

the first five days of the Chinese lunar New Year vacation, according to the

Taiwan tourism department.

The arrivals peaked on Monday, the first day of the lunar New Year, when

more than 3,000 mainland tourists landed on the island.

"I was moved by the kindness of local people," said Yu, a tourist from

Beijing who declined to give her full name. She arrived on the lunar New Year's

eve together with her 80-year-old father and teenage daughter.

Like many others arriving on the same day, they were greeted with a banquet

dinner and a party organized by local travel agencies.

"I feel comfortable as the customs and foods here are quite the same as we

have in Beijing," she said.

Taipei's "National Palace Museum", home to about 600,000 items of cultural

relics taken from Beijing's Forbidden City in 1949, was often the first stop on

the agenda of mainland tourists.

"They were obviously absorbed by the collections here. They stayed much

longer than we expected," said Gu, a tourist guide of the local Far Step Travel

Service who led a group of 22 Beijing tourists.

Many mainland tourists also came to meet family and friends.

"About 20 percent of our clients went to Taiwan for family reunions," said

Liu Xiaojun, spokesman of the Shanghai CYTS Tours Corporation which organized

travel for about 400 Shanghai people during the vacation.

Lo Sheng-lai, a pastry chef from Taiwan who works in Shanghai, sent his son

and daughter with a tour group.

"This is their first Spring Festival with grandma and grandpa in Taiwan,"

he said. "For years, I had thought of taking them to see where I grew up, but it

was too much trouble for my family to travel across the Straits because my wife

is not a Taiwan resident."

Improving cross-Straits relations and key policy changes in the past year

facilitated reunions and the booming tourism business.

At a historic meeting between the mainland's Association for Relations

Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF)

in June last year, Taiwan agreed to open to mainland tourists in July. They can

stay in Taiwan for 15 days.

At the meeting, the mainland agreed to allow residents from 13 provinces

and municipalities to tour Taiwan. On Jan. 20, it extended the arrangement to

another 12 provinces.

The two sides also worked to improve air services.

Before last July, charter flights were only available during four major

traditional Chinese festivals and flights had to cross the Straits by way of

Hong Kong airspace.

The two sides added the charter flights at weekends in July and then daily

in December.

Also in December, flights were allowed to directly cross the Straits for

the first time since 1949.

A direct flight from Taipei to Shanghai is only about 80 minutes, down from

two hours and 42 minutes for the Hong Kong route.

"More than 95 percent of our seats to Taiwan were booked," said a clerk

with the Shanghai Airlines. The company operated eight return flights to Taiwan

daily during the Spring Festival vacation.

The Taiwan tourism department expected about 14,000 mainland tourists to

come to Taiwan from Jan. 24 to Feb. 1.

"If every mainland tourist spends about 290 U.S. dollars a day in Taiwan

for seven days, they will bring about 28.4 million dollars of revenue," said

Chen Jaw-ming, a senior official with the Taipei Association of Travel Agents.

"We had made careful preparation for the first high season travel by

mainland tourists," Yao Ta-kuang, chairman of the Taiwan Travel Agent

Association, told Chinese media.

The association sent staff to airports and main tourist sites and assist

local travel agencies to receive mainland visitors and solve potential conflicts

between the two sides, he said.

"Judging from the feedback we received so far, mainland tourists are

spending a happy Spring Festival on the island. There was no problem."