It will soon become a common sight at Taiwan's tourist attractions to see groups of mainland Chinese tourists taking commemorative snaps. This photo was taken at the Chutien Station on the southern link railway in Pingtung. (Hsueh Chi-kuang)

"Koujiao is their word for kou-xiangtang [chewing gum], tudou means potatoes-definitely not peanuts like it means in Taiwan! A jiudian is a hotel or restaurant for them even though it refers to a girly bar here, the word we use for calculator means desktop computer to them...."

In a training class for tour guides sponsored by the Tourism Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, the teacher is trying to familiarize guides with differences in common terms used in the Chinese spoken in mainland China as opposed to that spoken in Taiwan, to avoid misunderstandings. Guides will certainly be able to make their charges feel more at home if they can casually drop in a few mainland colloquialisms when addressing the first groups of mainland tourists to come to Taiwan under recent policy revisions.

In order to make mainland Chinese tourists-who have already become the goose that lays the golden egg in the global travel industry-feel welcome in Taiwan, businesspeople here are charging their batteries and boning up on their studies. Government agencies, meanwhile, are tightening up inspections of facilities at key tourist attractions. Premier Liu Chao-shiuan personally made a circuit of Sun Moon Lake, even including an unscheduled inspection of the public toilets. He expressed the hope that visitors to Sun Moon Lake would leave with the feeling that no description could match the feeling of actually being there and seeing it for oneself.

As it spruces up to greet the expected influx of cross-strait tourists, Taiwan is essentially doing a complete "physical exam" of its travel experience. In opening the front door and trying to make itself the ideal host, what is the impression that Taiwan wants to leave on mainland visitors?

The bells ringing in the international tourism industry have one clear meaning: The gloves are off in the battle to attract visitors from mainland China!

On June 19, US secretary of commerce Carlos Gutierrez held a cruise-boat dinner in Washington DC, giving the red-carpet treatment to the first 240 mainland Chinese tourists allowed to travel in the States purely for recreation, in the hopes of leaving these honored guests with a good impression of the US.

In the past, mainland China only allowed its citizens to visit the US for study, family reunions, or business. But last year, mainland China and the US signed a new memorandum on opening up travel for purely touristic purposes. It is hoped that by 2011 the number of mainland Chinese visitors will rise from the current level of 250,000 per year to 600,000. Though these numbers still are not big, the openhandedness of these tourists makes them hard to ignore. According to US Commerce Department statistics, Chinese visitors spend an average of US$6000 (about NT$180,000) per person, the highest of any country.