Deputy Mayor of Taichung City Linghu led the delegation today (19th) focused on culture and tourism to begin the cross-strait visit and accompanied by representatives of Office for Hong Kong, Macao &Taiwan Affairs, Fujian Province, the delegation visited Fuzhou Opera House, Linzexu Memorial Hall, the House of Yan Fu in Fuzhou and exchanged opinions with Chinese representatives. Both parties had fruitful discussion and reached initial consensus. It is the hope of both side to further promote mutual exchanges of elite performing groups and accelerate exchanges on culture, tourism, agriculture, and economic development across Taiwan Strait.

In order to promote arts and cultural exchanges across the Strait, Deputy Mayor Linghu led his delegation of Taichung City Government to visit various cultural sites in Fujian and participated in a seminar to exchange opinions about culture and tourism with representatives of Office for Hong Kong, Macao &Taiwan Affairs, Fujian Province. An initial consensus was reached. In the future, both sides will devote to mutual invitations of elite performing groups and learn from different performing forms. Cities will also enhance their exchanges to introduce more extraordinary art creations to the public.

Deputy Mayor Linghu said Taichung City is Taiwan's culture city and Taichung Opera House, as a large public performing space, targets “arts services” and introduction of top domestic and international art works with international production experience, professional venue services, and life aesthetics education to create the rich cultural environment and to enable “arts to exist in every corner of life.”

According to Deputy Mayor Linghu, established for many years, Fujian Opera Troupe has been a repeated winner of dancing and symphony performance and created many wonderful performing works. Taichung City each year also selects elite performing groups of dancing and music. Both sides will target on exchanges between performing groups to integrate into more cultural features and present different cultural and art banquet to more audiences. In terms of venue exchange, in the future, recommended performing groups will be able to perform in venues across the Strait to enable more local participation and appreciation of audience in different cultural and arts performance.

At the seminar with relevant direct agencies of Fujian Province, Putian City, and Pingtan Comprehensive Experimental Zone, both sides discussed and exchanged opinions towards culture, tourism, agriculture, and economy and trade. For culture, in addition to in-depth talks with cultural figures, Taichung City Government would like to exchange experiences of arts organization via visits to understand deeply about strategies and effectiveness of festival planning, venue management, cultural asset conservation, and tourism marketing. In the future, in consideration of features of Taichung City and based on culture and tourism, arts and cultural exchange mechanism and platform among cities will be developed.

In this regard, the Mainland responded positively by saying that it actively supports cultural exchanges among cities and will organize tourism tour groups to visit Taichung and to promote tourism development.

For agriculture, Agriculture Bureau said this time especially seasonal Maogu mandarin was recommended. With the exceptional quality leading all Taiwanese fruits, Maogu mandarin was expected to sell out 300 tons. It was hoped that more consumers across the Strait are able to enjoy Taichung's juicy, tasty, and healthy Maogu mandarin. Furthermore, for flora export, Agriculture Bureau proposed free duties for Lily flowers and flamingo flowers same as Dancing Lady Orchid. The Mainland responded it has heard Taichung's proposal and will study it in-depth and a contact window will be actively developed to improve yields of farmers in Taichung.

Tourism and Travel Bureau proposed that in order to promote cross-strait tourism exchange, Xiamen was invited to take a part in “2020 Taiwan Lantern Festival,” direct-sail of international cruise of “Xiamen-Taichung” across the Strait, development of Taichung-Xiamen air navigation routes and exchanges and visits between tourism authorities and the industry will be facilitated. The Mainland responded it welcomes Taichung to be a part of this tourism expo that will benefit contacts between two dies and further internal discussion will be held. It expected that both sides can soon restart more interactions.

Bureau of Economic Development said this visit included Quanzhou Comprehensive Bonded Area and the delegation will discuss with Quanzhou City Government about the possibility to set up “Taichung City Commodity Sales Center” within the Area with an incentive leasing initiative to help products of Taichung to quickly enter market across the Strait.

According to Taichung City Government, the first-day schedule was fruitful and initiative responses were given at the seminar. In the future, communication and contact windows will continuously developed to quickly restore close cross-strait relationship for positive development of both sides.