First group of mainland tourists ready for Taiwan visit

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Source: CCTV.com | 06-30-2008 19:32

The first group of mainland tourists to Taiwan have finished packing. Today, China's National Tourism Administration discussed their preparations at a news conference.

760 people are in the first group.

Zhu Shanzhong says through the joint efforts of the mainland and Taiwan, preparations are nearly complete for the history-making trip starting on Friday.

Zhu Shanzhong, spokesman of Nat'l Tourism Admin, said, "The first batch of visitors to Taiwan composes of tourists and officials for communication and inspection. The head will be the director of the National Tourism Administration. The tour group will stay there for 10 days and the communication and inspection officials will stay for 7 days. "

760 people are in the first group. There are more than 350 from Beijing, 100 from Shanghai, and 100 each from Jiangsu, Fujian, and Guangdong provinces. They are divided into five sub-groups which will depart from Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Xiamen and Guangzhou on July 4th.

Li Renzhi, Execitive director of Asso. for Tourism Exchange Across the Taiwan-Straits, said, "The mainland and Taiwan will jointly strengthen supervision on the markets in both sides, to make sure that tourists will enjoy quality services."

Opening up to mainland visitors is expected to boost Taiwan's economy. Under the bilateral agreement, Tiawan will receive no more than three-thousand mainland tourists a day. However, Zhu Shanzhong says the actual number of visitors will be decided by the market. From July 18th, residents from 13 municipalities and provinces in the mainland will be allowed to visit Taiwan.

The first group of mainland tourists will take the newly agreed-upon, weekend charter flights to Taiwan, which start on July fourth. The service used to only operate during four major Chinese holidays. The mainland and Taiwan have agreed on a total of 144 charter flights in July.

Editor:Zhang Ning