Taipei 101, the world’s tallest skyscraper, stands as the pride of the modern Taiwanese capital, but it is around the lowlier blue-roofed Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall that hundreds of mainland Chinese tourists buzz daily.
The tourists, who come under the guise of various exchange programmes as direct links between China and Taiwan remain limited, are all eager to get a glimpse of an island about which they could only read in censored textbooks during the Cold War period.
Chiang is the top draw.
Once the arch-enemy of China’s ruling communists, he fled to Taiwan in 1949 after his Nationalist Army was driven from the mainland by Mao Zedong’s forces. His Kuomintang (KMT, or Nationalist) political party ruled in Taiwan for decades amid a tense military stand-off with his foes across the Taiwan Strait.
Though his death in 1975 altered little, cross-strait tensions have stutteringly eased in recent years, and the tens of thousands of curious Chinese tourists who now visit make a beeline for historical sites in his honour.
The memorial hall in downtown Taipei, with its distinctive blue Chinese-style roof and white walls, is a must-see, according to tour guides.
Clutching cameras and moving in large groups, the tourists shoot the mammoth bronze statue of Chiang inside the hall, an image unlikely to be seen anywhere back in their homeland.
Then they pore over the rich photos and documents on display depicting the dramatic life of Chiang.
Another popular stop is Chiang’s mausoleum, about 40km away from the capital city, and the Taipei martyrs’ shrine where 390, 000 killed in battle with the communists more than half a century ago are honoured.
“Chinese tourists are particularly interested in everything relating to Chiang, his wife Sung Mei-ling, and son Chiang Ching-kuo,” tour guide Edven Lin says.
“Souvenirs bearing the Chiang family’s images or symbols, like watches, key rings and postage stamps, are snapped up. They hope to take something back to the mainland so they may show off to their friends they are the first ones to have visited the island after a half-century ban.”
Mainland tourists try hard to slip into the crack of limited civil exchanges. Government figures show about 118Â 900 Chinese tourists have visited Taiwan since a total ban was lifted in 2002.
Most of them travel here in the name of business groups or attending academic seminars, some of the reasons permitted by Beijing, and pay up to 20Â 000 yuan ($2Â 500) for a tour of the island via a third place, mostly through Hong Kong and the Philippines.
Outside the memorial hall, 47-year-old Zhang Zhi, general manager of Chongqing Lingda Automotive Textile in China, clearly recalls the memory of bitter hostility between the communists and the KMT.
“It is part of my vivid memory,” says Zhang, from China’s inland Sichuan province. “I remember when Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975, a mainland newspaper carried a one-line story. It simply said: ‘The people’s public enemy Chiang Kai-shek died in Taiwan’.”
The tensions only began to ease after Mao’s death in 1976, which was followed by China’s economic-reform programme launched by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1977, Zhang says.
“From that time on, the government has gradually shifted its focus from ideology to economic development,” Zhang says.
It was also at that time that Taiwan’s dynamic economic development, led by Chiang Kai-shek’s son Chiang Ching-kuo and which enabled Taiwan to become one of the “Four Little Dragons” in Asia, started to catch Zhang’s attention.
“Unlike his father, Chiang Ching-kuo was the target of less vitriol from the mainland authorities,” says Zhang, a father of two children.
On his maiden trip, Zhang has found that things and the people here are not as he was long told. “People here are very nice,” Zhang says before concluding his seven-day trip.
Zhang’s 13-member business group also travelled to Mount Ali and Sun Moon Lake — the two scenic spots also on the must-see list of Chinese tourists in central Taiwan.
People in China were always taught how beautiful these two places were and that they must strive to take back the island from the KMT government, he says.
The group also paid homage to Teresa Teng, a popular Taiwanese songstress better known by her Chinese name Teng Li-chun to tens of millions of fans in the Chinese communities worldwide in the 1980s and 1990s.
“As her songs were banned in the mainland, I used to keep myself in the bedroom secretly listening to her songs,” chuckled Wu Kuntong, another member of Zhang’s group.
The 45-year-old Wu, who was born in China’s north-eastern Changchun city and now lives in his parents’ hometown Guangzhou, says Teng was so popular in Chinese karaoke bars that there was a saying: “By day, Deng Xiaoping rules China, but by night, Teng Li-chun rules”.
However, Teng, whose father was a KMT soldier, never stepped on the soil of the Chinese mainland before she died from an asthma attack in Thailand in 1995. She had vowed not to travel to the mainland as long as it was governed by the Chinese communists.
Civil exchanges resumed in 1988, one year before Chiang Ching-kuo’s death. He lifted the decades-old ban on family reunion, touching off Taiwan’s massive investment in China and promoting mutual understanding.
Against that backdrop, Zhang says his company had formed a joint venture with a Taiwanese firm to produce textiles for use in cars.
Zhang and Wu both shun direct attacks Taiwan’s current government, the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), but say they are optimistic about reunification between Taiwan and the mainland.
Tensions between Taipei and Beijing have risen since DPP leader Chen Shui-bian was elected to the Presidency in the 2000 presidential polls, ending the KMT’s 51-year grip on power.
Chen has rejected Beijing’s “one China principle”, which regards the island as part of China’s territory, saying “one China” is simply a topic open to discussion.
“From the point of view of China’s thousands of history, 50-odd years is a very short period of time,” Wu says.
Mindful of the vast difference, especially the mindset in democracy, between people of the two sides, it may take at least 20 to 30 years to get rid of the hurdles to the cause, Zhang says.
“However, one thing is for sure. Something must be done to avoid war. The cost of reunification must not be high,” Zhang says. — AFP