Moving to the rhythm of better cross-Straits relations

By Xing Zhigang (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-11 07:53

Jack Wu, a jewelry seller in east Taiwan's Hualien county, used to believe mainland people were so poor, they had to live on banana peel and sweet potato. That impression came from his reading of textbooks and media reports covering the mainland during his childhood.

But his first visit to the mainland five years ago changed all of that.

For one, the sight of some mainland cities overwhelmed him - they had more skyscrapers than Taiwan's largest city of Taipei.

"I finally knew the significance of cross-Straits exchanges on the personal level," Wu said on Wednesday.

A mainland tourist (left) joins a musical performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan July 4 2008. More than 750 mainland tourists are on a 10-day inaugural group tour to the island. [China Daily]

His shop was packed with Beijing tourists, who were part of the inaugural mainland tour group to Taiwan.

More than 750 mainland tourists from five cities - Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen, Nanjing and Guangzhou - landed in Taiwan last Friday on weekend charter flights, the first of regular cross-Straits ones in nearly six decades.

Taiwan has banned direct trade, postal and transport services with the mainland since 1949, but the island's new leader, Ma Ying-jeou, has helped open doors to warmer ties.

The two sides last month held their first direct talks in a decade and signed historic agreements to launch the recent travel arrangement, paving the way for more exchanges.

"Boosting business is only part of the benefit from the arrival of more mainland tourists in Taiwan," Wu said.

"What's more important should be its contribution to enhancing mutual understanding among people on both sides."

Lin Wan, a tourist from Xiamen, Fujian province, agreed, saying her visit was aimed at learning more about local people.

The retired teacher and her husband have traveled to many overseas destinations. Although her city stands opposite Taiwan across the 100-km-wide Straits, she had no opportunity to visit the island in the past 60 years.

"We wouldn't have come to Taiwan if we wanted to look at glitzy high-rises or just to sight-see," she said.

"We came in the hope of communicating with our Taiwan compatriots and seeing what their life is like."

Although people across the Straits share a common culture and language, decades of isolation is said to have led to a lack of mutual understanding among them.

Taipei's rigid restrictions on mainland people's travel to the island saw less than 300,000 people allowed to tour Taiwan for business or to visit relatives, since 1987, official figures showed.

Most of the Taiwan travelers to the mainland were business people, despite the fact that the number of mainland visits by Taiwan people has topped 45 million over the past 21 years, statistics showed.

These figures show that a majority of the island's 23 million people have never visited the mainland, possibly missing out on the opportunity to know more about their mainland compatriots.

So the rare chance to meet mainland compatriots could well have been the reason why a number of Taiwan guests at the Howard Beach Resort in Kenting, Pingtung county, rushed out of their rooms to catch a glimpse of more than 100 Shanghai tourists arriving at the hotel on Monday.

"They have had few chances of meeting mainland tourists face to face," said Apple Sun, the hotel's spokeswoman. "We speak the same language but, after all, we have lived apart for so long."

That distance can include culture shock - ranging from the use of Chinese words, to ways of behaving in the public.

Mainland travelers, who commonly say "qiezi" (eggplant) before the camera to smile, can find local Taiwan people saying "kiss" for the same effect.

To help plug such gaps, Sun's hotel has organized a training program to teach staff members popular words used by mainland tourists, with the help of one employee's mainland wife.

Similarly, with the latest group tour arrangement for mainland tourists, which allow for more than 1 million mainland visitors to the island each year, one of local people's biggest worries is said to be the mannerisms of their mainland compatriots.

They worry that mainland tourists will yell, spit, cut queues or light up in non-smoking areas.

Hu Shu-chen, head of Tainan city's health bureau, went as far as to suggest that authorities "disinfect the places where mainland tourists have passed through".

Although she was forced to apologize for her comment, the incident was said to have fully demonstrated a number of Taiwan people's deep-rooted discrimination against their mainland compatriots.

Han Chun-hao, a tour guide with Taiwan's Far Step Travel Service Co. Ltd, said there is no need to play up and exaggerate the difference between Taiwan and mainland people.

"It's unfair to take one part as the whole," said Han, who became a tour guide for mainland tourists 10 years ago.

"Just like tourists from any other place, only a few of them may be ill-mannered."

The 750 mainland tourists of the inaugural tour group to Taiwan have already received favorable reviews from local media, which has devoted much coverage to their travel. The tourists were praised as being well-mannered and polite.

Before the tour group left for Taiwan, the National Administration of Tourism also published rules for mainland tourists, warning them against gambling, drugs, pornography and activities that may harm cross-Straits relations.

Still, Li Jiaquan, a senior researcher with the Institute of Taiwan Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, warned that political interference will do more harm to cross-Straits exchanges than cultural differences.

"Both sides of the Straits should stay alert for the attempt by some people with ulterior motives to hurt people-to-people exchanges across the Straits," he said.

The researcher was apparently referring to the unfriendly attitude toward the tourism program by "pro-independence" forces on the island.

The secessionist groups, led by the "pro-independence" Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), have been strongly against mainland tourists traveling to Taiwan, as well as cross-Straits weekend charter flights, citing their concern over the island's security.

They have alleged that the weekend charter flights may offer a platform for the mainland to adopt a "Trojan horse" strategy against the island.

The "pro-independence" Sanlih TV also broadcast footage of an angry travel agent insisting that mainland tourists' reputation for being boisterous could keep more-refined Japanese visitors away.

Such hostility toward the mainland is not new. Under the rule of former Taiwan leader Chen Shui-bian between 2000 and 2008, the DPP administration was attempting to push for a formal "independence" of the island.

It has also been promoting a Taiwan identity, separate from the mainland, through "pro-independence" moves in a wide range of areas that include culture, education and ideology. As a result, misunderstanding and tension have been lingering in the Taiwan Straits.

"It will be a tough and time-consuming task to build up trust and understanding between people across the Straits," Li Jiaquan said.

Wu Poh-hsiung, chairman of the ruling Kuomintang, has already hailed the launch of the recent tourism and charter flight scheme as "a key step toward creating a win-win situation of mutual benefit" across the Straits.

He said the exchanges are set to help accumulate kindness and goodwill between Taiwan and the mainland through more contact and better understanding among people on both sides.

"The same blood and cultural bond between us can never be cut off," the chairman said.