Front Line Now Front Door : China’s Coast Luring Visitors From Taiwan

Wu Anbao, a soldier in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, spends his days manning a telescope focused on heavily fortified islands controlled by troops from Taiwan.

But Wu’s job is not to prepare for battle. His mission is to help tourists, many from Taiwan, look out at the defiant Nationalist Chinese flags and anti-Communist slogans brazenly mounted on Dadan, the nearest island, less than 3 miles away.

“Now that our Taiwan compatriots have started coming, we are all very cordial,” Wu, 21, explained. “We aren’t thinking about political differences. We all are Chinese, and it would be best to have a united country.”

The Fujian province coast, for 30 years the front line in what Chinese Communists and Nationalists agreed was an unfinished civil war, now has become the scene of determined efforts to win the friendship of Taiwanese visitors.

Goal Is Reunification

The immediate aim is to deepen contacts with Taiwan and attract capital to assist Beijing’s modernization drive. The ultimate goal, however, is the peaceful reunification of China.

Taiwanese fishermen who run into rough weather, or have goods they wish to trade, are welcomed at Chinese harbors such as Dongao Village on Pingtan Island, a favorite drop-in point only 78 miles from Taiwan.

Believers in Mazu, a sea goddess who is a patron saint for many in Taiwan and along the Fujian coast, are now free to worship at the ancestral temple of the faith.

Communist officials do all they can to woo investment from Taiwanese capitalists, offering a variety of tax breaks and other incentives.

The unrelenting good-will campaign--extending throughout China, with the attitude that no guest is more welcome than one from Taiwan--is paying off with a gradual lessening of Taipei’s wariness of entangling ties with the mainland.

330,000 Visited Mainland

In 1987, Taipei granted approval for residents of Nationalist-controlled Dadan to legally visit relatives on the Communist mainland. Although restrictions have not officially been relaxed fully, even Taiwanese without mainland kin now make trips with no fear of punishment. According to statistics in both the Chinese and Taiwanese press, about 330,000 Taiwanese visited the mainland in 1988.

Nationalist authorities began in November to allow limited numbers of citizens of China to visit ailing relatives in Taiwan, or to attend the funerals of family members. About 40 people had made the trip by mid-December.

Five students from China studying in the United States arrived in Taiwan on Dec. 20 for the first such visit by mainland students or scholars since the 1949 victory of the Communist revolution. Taipei also has announced that it will begin allowing visits by “outstanding intellectuals” from the mainland.

Trade Is Still Indirect

Under Taiwanese law, trade and investment with China still must be conducted indirectly. Often, funds are funneled through Hong Kong, where indirect trade was expected to total nearly $2.5 billion for 1988, the official China Daily said. Taiwanese investment in Fujian alone amounted to $50 million, according to provincial government statistics.

Some members of Taiwan’s business community are calling for legalized direct trade, while the Taiwanese fishermen-traders who sail into harbors on Pingtan Island or elsewhere simply ignore Taipei’s efforts to curb them. These businessmen mingle with ordinary fishermen who stop for refuge from storms or simply to take a look at China.

“Coming here for a few days is a chance to see the motherland,” one Taiwanese fisherman, who gave his name only as Chen, said in an interview.

Lin Zhengyi, general manager of the Pingtan-based Haitan Trading Co., a government-run firm that promotes trade with Taiwanese fishermen, said direct trade developed naturally as political tensions eased in the early 1980s.

‘They Had No Choice’

“When their boats encountered strong winds and heavy waves, or they ran out of gasoline, they had no choice but to come here,” Lin said of the fishermen. “The only way to save their lives was to stop on the mainland. Whether they might be shot or captured by the Communists was a secondary question.”

And, he added, “When they came, we warmly welcomed them. They ate and drank. They tasted the liquor of their ancestral land, which they hadn’t drunk for decades. And sometimes they were sick, and took traditional Chinese medicine.”

Fishermen began taking extra liquor and medicine back to Taiwan as gifts or for resale, Lin said.

“Then more people in Taiwan asked them to buy things, and it developed into a business,” Lin said. “It became barter trade--’You give me a few dozen pounds of fish, and I’ll give you two or three bottles of good liquor.’ This kind of thing is like a tide that cannot be blocked.”

Exports Have Doubled

Lin said his company last year sold about $200,000 worth of goods to fishermen-traders from Taiwan and that this year the value of such exports has doubled. He said he believes a larger volume of trade is carried on by people in Pingtan without the services of his company.

But Taiwanese who visit the mainland almost always remain convinced of the superiority of life on their prosperous island--which is one factor in Taipei’s willingness to allow such visits.

“People’s lives in Taiwan are more comfortable,” Lin Pi-hsia, a woman from Taipei, said while visiting the telescope lookout site in Xiamen. “. . . We’d like to teach them the good things from our experience.”

The Nationalist-held islands off the Fujian coast--especially Jinmen, better known as Quemoy--became famous in 1958 when it seemed that the United States might be drawn into fighting between Communist and Nationalist troops. But the Nationalist army, which has held the islands ever since its 1949 defeat on the mainland, stood firm against a fierce 44-day artillery bombardment, and no invasion materialized.

Peaceful for a Decade

The old battlefront now has been fully peaceful for a decade, but it is only in the past year or two that large numbers of Taiwanese have been able to visit the Chinese side.

An even more important destination for Taiwanese tourists is the recently restored Mazu temple on Meizhou Island, north of Xiamen.

According to legend, Mazu was a fisherman’s daughter named Lin Moniang, born in AD 960, who possessed magical powers that enabled her to repeatedly rescue fishermen facing death at sea. It is said that she ascended to heaven at the age of 27, from the place where the ancestral Mazu temple of Meizhou now stands. In later centuries, as families from the Fujian coast settled in Taiwan, they carried with them the tradition of Mazu worship.

Important Role for Cult

Such shared cultural roots fuel hopes in Beijing that the Taiwanese someday can be coaxed into agreeing to reunification. Chinese authorities, in promoting tourism to Meizhou, seem to have realized that the cult of Mazu could play an important role in strengthening a sense of shared identity.

“In Taiwan we also believe in Mazu, for this place and Taiwan are part of the same ancestral land,” said a woman who led a Taipei temple group in worship at the Mazu temple in Meizhou.

“This year it’s become possible for us to travel here,” said the woman, who identified herself only as Su. “Our Mazu in Taiwan told us to come back here for a reunion. . . . In the past, brothers and sisters were scattered. But the day is coming when they will reunite again.”