Listen to the voice

Excitement greets start of direct flights
　

WELCOME COMMITTEE: While the Chinese tourists were treated to lavish performances, the Kaohsiung mayor said that behaving ‘naturally’ was a better way to greet them
　

By Shelley Shan
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Jul 05, 2008, Page 1
　

Excitement and chaos marked the inauguration of weekend charter flights yesterday as dozens of charter flights landed and departed at airports around the country.

The first charter flight leaving from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport was a China Airlines flight to Shanghai, which departed at 7:30am, while the first flight departing from Taipei Songshan Airport was Uni Air’s flight to Shanghai, which left at 8am.

Meanwhile, a China Southern Airlines plane with more than 100 Chinese tourists among the 258 passengers aboard landed at the Taoyuan airport at 8:05am, making it the first weekend cross-strait charter flight to arrive from China.

The first one to land at Songshan was a Xiamen Air flight, which touched down at 8:30am after an 80-minute trip from Xiamen City in Fujian Province. The flight carried the first group of Chinese tourists arriving at Songshan Airport.

At both airports, two arrays of fire engines used their tenders to form a “whitewater tunnel” to welcome the inaugural flights as they taxied along the runways.

Taiwanese airlines had all prepared inauguration ceremonies to greet passengers boarding the inaugural flights. They were welcomed not only by dancing lions and Aboriginal performances, but also by throngs of local and international media.

Government officials, airlines’ ground staff, travel agents, performers, reporters and photographers turned Songshan Airport into a chaotic site.

Shao Qiwei (邵琪偉), director of the China National Tourism Administration, was among the first batch of Chinese tourists to take the maiden weekend charter flight to Taiwan yesterday. Shao, who is visiting Taiwan in his capacity as president of the Beijing-based Cross-Strait Tourism Exchange Association, was mobbed by reporters when he appeared in the crowded airport lobby.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) and Master Hsing Yun (星雲法師) were also invited to attend the ceremony hosted by China Eastern Airlines for its first flight between Nanjing and Songshan. Nanjing became one of the Chinese airports offering cross-strait charter flights after Wu’s visit to China in May.

Wu said he hoped that the weekend charter flight service could gradually evolve into regular charter flights.

Ho Huei-ping (何惠萍) was waiting to board Uni Air’s flight at Songshan Airport when she spoke with the Taipei Times. She and her daughter were going to visit her husband, who has been working in Shanghai for about two years.

“It used to take him almost a day to come home,” she said. “The previous time he left Shanghai at 5am, but was stranded in Hong Kong for hours because of rain and he did not arrive [in Taiwan] until 11pm. Now it only takes only about three hours.”

Wang Chi (王崎), a Chinese tourist who took the Xiamen Air flight, has transited flights via Taiwan several times in the past.

“We just want to see some of the natural scenery in Taiwan,” he said, adding that Taiwan was a must-see place for Chinese tourists.

A real estate agent based in Xiamen, Wang said he had been watching Taiwanese cable TV news regularly and probably understood Taiwanese politics better than some Taiwanese did.

Jokin Laspiur Lopez, a manager of Mondragon Corp, is from Spain and works in the company’s office in Shanghai. Having spent a week in Taiwan on a business trip, Lopez booked a flight with Shanghai Airlines that took off from Songshan at 1pm.

Though he was aware that tickets for the cross-strait charter flight cost more than those for flights to China via Hong Kong or Macau, Lopez said the service has reduced the travel time between Shanghai and Taipei from about seven hours to two hours and 45 minutes.

“And to me, time is money,” he said.

The lobby area at Songshan Airport was crowded, as check-in counters were combined to accept both domestic and international passengers.

Customs officials said they did not open any of the charter flight passengers’ luggage, because the customs bureau did not want to incur bad luck for the inaugural Chinese tourist group.

However, they stressed that all luggage had undergone X-ray inspections.

Commenting on the first day of the weekend charter flight service, Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said later yesterday that, on average, a passenger can leave Taoyuan’s second terminal within 20 minutes.

Some took longer than 40 minutes yesterday as a number waited for their team leaders, who were asked to attend the celebration ceremonies, while others were exchanging their money before leaving the terminal.

“The chaos outside the terminal was caused by passionate media who wanted to speak to the tourists,” he said.

At a separate setting yesterday, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said that there was no need to go out of the way to please Chinese tourists and that acting naturally would be the best way to greet them.

Listen to the voice

Tibetan group welcomes PRC tourists to ‘freedom’
　

NOT ALONE: Unificationists and devotees of Falun Gong also took the opportunity to voice their opinions to groups of Chinese tourists that arrived yesterday
　

By Loa Iok-Sin
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Jul 05, 2008, Page 2

Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners and unificationists took the opportunity to highlight their causes yesterday as the first cross-strait charter flights arrived.

The groups welcomed Chinese tourists with placards proclaiming their views outside Taipei Songshan Airport on Dunhua N Road.

“Human rights for China, independence for Tibet,” Tibetans and their supporters shouted, waving the Tibetan flag as buses carrying Chinese tourists passed by. “We welcome Chinese tourists to breathe the air of freedom in Taiwan!”

Chinese visitors waved at the Tibetan demonstrators and took pictures.

Across the street, members of the Concentric Patriotism Association of the Republic of China (ROC) — a group that promotes unification between Taiwan and China — also staged a rally, with signs welcoming “Mainland compatriots.”

Members of the association — one dressed as a Chinese police officer — waved the ROC and Chinese flags.

The demonstrations were peaceful and the Tibetans and pro-unificationists interacted only briefly when a Tibetan demonstrator walked across the street to hand flyers to the other group.

“In addition to seeing the beautiful landscape and meeting the friendly people of Taiwan, I hope that these Chinese visitors will be able to see what a truly free society is like,” said Chow Mei-li (周美里), chairwoman of the Taiwan Friends of Tibet.

Taiwan Tibetan Welfare Association chairman Rinzin Tsering said that Tibetans have nothing against the Chinese people.

“As a gesture of goodwill and friendship, the Tibetans in Taiwan heartily welcome Chinese brothers and sisters visiting this country on the first direct flights between China and Taiwan,” he told a crowd of Tibetans and Taiwanese at a ceremony to launch the Taiwan leg of the Tibetan Freedom Torch Relay at the Liberty Square in Taipei.

“The Tibetans have always maintained that their struggle is against the Chinese regime and its policies in Tibet “[and] has never been a struggle against the Chinese people,” he said.

Rinzin condemned the Chinese government for stoking tensions between Chinese and Tibetans.

“In the aftermath of the recent events in Tibet, the Chinese government has used deceit and distorted images to manipulate the whole Tibet issue to fan nationalism and create a racial divide between the Tibetan and Chinese peoples,” he said.

Meanwhile, a group of Falun Gong practitioners demonstrated outside the National Palace Museum in Taipei yesterday as hundreds of Chinese tourists arrived.

Separately, a Tainan City Government official said yesterday the city had persuaded Falun Gong practitioners to stop their long-term presence in front of a popular tourist attraction.

Director-General of the city’s Cultural Affairs Bureau Hsu Keng-hsiu (許耿修) said an exact date for the group of practitioners — who have regularly handed out information about the persecution of Falun Gong in China — to move from outside Fort Provincia (赤崁樓) had not been set.

Hsu said the city government would allow hotels to decide whether to fly the Chinese flag to welcome tourists expected to arrive there on Tuesday.

Although the group of Falun Gong devotees at Fort Provincia had been asked to move, Hsu said another group of practitioners in front of Fort Zeelandia, another tourist attraction, had rented public space there and would be allowed to stay.