BEIJING -- Five years ago, an 88-minute flight from Shanghai to Taipei traversed the vicissitudes of six decades of troublesome mainland-Taiwan relations.
Sunday will mark the fifth anniversary of the opening of direct air and sea transport and postal services between the mainland and Taiwan -- a move of tremendous practical and political importance. Previously, all such services had to be routed through a third location.
"My mother and I flew from Shanghai to Taipei Songshan Airport to flee the war. I never thought that I could take the first direct flight from Songshan to Shanghai 60 years later," said Fan Kuanling, a renowned artist and businessman.
Yet the privilege was his when he took his seat on that plane, a service run by Taiwan-based TransAsia Airways that landed at Shanghai Pudong International Airport on Dec. 15, 2008. Fan recalled thunderous applause from the cabin when the wheels hit the runway.
Born in the mainland, Fan grew up in Taiwan and studied in the United States. In addition to his achievements in poems, paintings and the business field, he coined the ubiquitous Chinese phrase "Dian Nao" as a direct translation of "computer."
While Fan is a high-profile beneficiary of the opening of direct air and sea transport, the significance of that landmark flight extends across a much broader swathe of the Chinese population.
It put an end to a stalemate between the mainland and Taiwan that began in 1949, when the Kuomintang (KMT), led by Chiang Kai-shek, was defeated in a civil war by the Communist Party of China, which later founded the People's Republic of China.
Many KMT members fled to Taiwan in the aftermath of the conflict, causing many families to be split up.
When Fan led the first economic and cultural delegation from Taiwan to visit the mainland in 1988, the flight had to transit in Hong Kong.
"I was unfortunate to have to suffer from turbulent changes when so young. Yet I was lucky to be able to witness such a huge historic moment in cross-Strait relations," he said.
As of the end of September, 170,000 passenger flights by 22 airlines had carried some 29 million passengers between 54 cities in the mainland and 10 in Taiwan.
Meanwhile, direct sea movements have shouldered 99 percent of cross-Strait cargo transportation and ferried 7.5 million people as of the end of October.
Fan has lost count of how many times he's been to the mainland to attend cross-Strait exchange activities over the past five years, but he's gratified to see the shift from hostility to positive attitudes in mainland and Taiwan residents' views of each other.
According to Tang Yonghong, head of the economic research center of Xiamen University's Taiwan Research Institute, direct air and sea transport and postal services have provided a convenient platform for cross-Strait civilian communications as well as economic and financial exchanges.
Following the opening of these services, Taiwan and the mainland signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) in 2010 to reduce tariffs and commercial barriers between the two sides.
With a series of favorable agreements since then, cross-Strait economic and financial trade has been increasing steadily and reached a total of 744.87 billion yuan (122.68 billion U.S. dollars) between January 2009 and October 2013 -- a feat against the background of global economic downturn.
Hoping for an upgrade to the direct transport system, Tang urged the construction of bridges and tunnels as land links to further boost exchanges between the island and the mainland's coastal provinces.
As for Fan Kuanling, with or without a physical bridge, the time when the shallow Taiwan Strait could not be overstepped is thankfully just the stuff of memories.
