Mainland China-Taiwan tourism turned a corner 17 years ago. But that was then
- Beijing’s tourism chief Shao Qiwei’s 10-day visit to Taiwan in 2005 paved the way for mainland tourists to travel to the island
- It’s difficult to imagine a high-profile mainland tourism representative again touring Taipei 101 or the Lungshan Temple as a harbinger of better times
“The head of [the China] National Tourism Administration yesterday arrived in Taiwan for a 10-day visit to pave the way for mainland tourists to travel to the island,” reads a South China Morning Post report.
No, the visit was not in response to this month’s relaxing of Covid-19 restrictions, unfortunately; tourism chief Shao Qiwei visited Taiwan in October 2005, when the relationship between Beijing and Taipei was thawing rather than freezing.
Although tourists are beginning to return to Taiwan – after more than two-and-a-half years of border controls, international arrivals now need only to monitor their health for a week and obtain a negative rapid antigen test result the day they land – it doesn’t look as though any from mainland China will be joining them for the foreseeable future.
On October 13, “245 tourists in 20 tour groups arrived in Taiwan, mainly from Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea and Singapore, on the first day the nation lifted restrictions on inbound tour groups imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic,” according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA). The first 45 arrived in two groups from Thailand.
“According to the [Tourism] bureau, 3,630 more people in 230 tour groups will arrive in Taiwan by the end of October.”
As well as Asia, visitors are expected from Europe: “Frankfurt airport [in Germany] is the most important hub for flights from Europe to Taiwan and China Airlines, Taiwan’s flagship carrier, is set to increase its flights on the route from five to seven per week in November, back to the pre-pandemic level,” reports CNA.
Munich, Germany, and Milan, Italy, are other European cities that will have their air links to Taiwan fully restored in the coming weeks.
But even if they were willing and able, no tourists from Hong Kong, Macau or mainland China would be admitted due to concerns over national security, as the rattling of sabres becomes deafening.
The sentiment was very different 17 years ago, when Taiwan’s tourism authorities were welcoming with hope Shao and his delegation, which included heads of 31 mainland provincial and city tourism bureaus.
“Mr Shao’s visit, though defined as private, has been considered highly significant for Taiwan, which has seen a sharp decline in tourist numbers in the past few years,” reported the Post on October 29, 2005. “Beijing’s planned permission for mainland tourists to visit Taiwan would help bolster the sagging tourist industry, Taiwanese travel agents said.”
The permission alluded to – to allow mainlanders to visit Taiwan for leisure purposes – was cautiously implemented in steps in the years that followed. Then, on July 4, 2008, the first direct flights across the Taiwan Strait took off – and landed to great excitement.
“Jia Jijin, a journalist with Southeastern Satellite TV based in Fujian province, was among the beaming mainland tourists waving to the crowd of officials and reporters watching the historic event,” reported the Post. “She tried three times to report on the arrival of about 100 tourists via Xiamen Airlines, which landed at Taipei Sungshan Airport.”
Jia explained to the Post, “I was overwhelmed by the huge crowd of [local] reporters”, who surrounded her, to find out what she thought of Taiwan. “I will introduce myself to scenes in Taiwan and the hospitality of the Taiwanese people during my 10-day stay.”
The warmth of that hospitality waxed and waned along with diplomatic relations over the following decade.
In 2015, the year before Tsai Ing-wen became president of Taiwan, 4.1 million of the 10.4 million visitors to the island were from the mainland, according to Tourism Bureau data. By 2018, however, when individual travel had gained in popularity at the expense of group tours, the number of individual travellers from the 47 mainland cities where such freedom was permitted had dropped to 1.07 million.
A few months later, sketchy reports of a new coronavirus began spreading – and we all know what happened next.
It’s difficult to imagine a high-profile mainland tourism representative such as Shao again touring Taipei 101, the Lungshan Temple and Taichung’s Sun Moon Lake as a harbinger of better times.
And even if they were to do so, it’s unlikely they’d be as thorough in their inspection of the island’s attractions: “His group briefly toured the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, where Mr Shao appeared uneasy due to the political sensitivity of the memorial, which was built in honour of the Chinese communists’ former foe and late Kuomintang leader.”
M on the Bund documentary trailer up now on YouTube
In 1984, a young woman with the first initial “M” landed in Hong Kong.
She has stayed in China ever since, winning over the well-heeled metropolitan dining/socialising public with a series of much-loved restaurants.
Five years after arriving, Michelle Garnaut opened Hong Kong’s M at the Fringe; in 1999 came M on the Bund, overlooking the Huangpu River, in Shanghai; and in 2009, she began wooing the Beijing crowd with Capital M (clever play on words, that).
All are now closed, the most hardy of the bunch, M on the Bund, ceasing operations on February 15 of this year. As is often the case in this part of the world, a stubborn landlord was involved in the decision.
Fortunately for posterity, director Luo Tong began filming a documentary before the doors were shut for the last time.
One of many regular customers, Luo became very emotional when he heard M on the Bund was closing and he immediately contacted Garnaut, he says in comments published by the That’s Shanghai website.
“With her endorsement, and encouragement, we had complete access – to the venue, the staff, the archives – to shoot what we wanted, and to tell the story of M on the Bund as we saw it,” says the filmmaker.
“This wasn’t just the story of a working class girl from Melbourne, who, against the odds, became one of the top restaurateurs in China; not just the story of the countless people who had been to M over the years. It’s the story of a city, of dynamic change over the course of two decades, and of the endless possibilities that can become real when people are brought together.”
The documentary should be viewable next summer but a trailer – a sumptuous clip in which the plain-speaking Garnaut is revealed in full f*****g flow – can be seen on YouTube now.
What next for M?
And she began an October 14 opinion piece for the Financial Review by saying she was “halfway through a 10-day quarantine ordeal” in a grimy old hotel in Shanghai, which she describes as “an alpha city” that is “dynamic, fashionable, fast, glamorous, elusive, bewitching and is somehow always reinventing itself. It’s the Mecca of China, the place to be. Full of life and full of hope, it gets into your blood and steals a bit of your heart … The people are engaging and self-assured, they’re confident and cocky, glamorous and grungy all at once … and they don’t really care what you think.”
Something tells us Shanghai hasn’t seen the last of the letter M.
