More people to visit Taiwan

    Residents from 11 more Chinese mainland cities can now visit Taiwan on individual tours, starting from April 15, authorities announced on March 18.

    The fifth batch of approved cities are Haikou, Hohhot, Lanzhou, Yinchuan, Changzhou, Zhoushan, Huizhou, Weihai, Longyan, Guilin and Xuzhou.

    Since the first pilot* scheme in 2011, residents from 47 mainland cities have been given permission to enter Taiwan on individual tours.

    Seven killed in Guilin

    Seven tourists were killed and 25 others, including eight Taiwanese tourists, injured when they were struck by huge rocks tumbling down* a mountain in one of China’s most popular tourist spots on March 19.

    The rocks hit the group of travelers at around 9:25 a.m. as they waited to board boats in the Diecai Mountain scenic area in Guilin in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

    Four were killed at the scene and three of the injured later died in a hospital.

    Sino-Japan security talks

    China and Japan began their first security talks in four years on March 19 with both sides stressing the importance of candid* dialogue.

    Deputy foreign ministers from both countries met on March 19 for a day of talks.

    “The best way to dissolve the concerns is to hold direct dialogue,” said Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama.

    Statue stolen from China

    Chinese relic experts have determined a 1,000-year-old Buddha statue containing a mummified* monk, which is now in possession of a Dutch private collector, is a relic stolen from an East China village in 1995.

    The Cultural Relic Bureau in East China’s Fujian Province said on Sunday that judging from research and media reports, experts have confirmed that the statue on show in the Hungarian Natural History Museum was a relic stolen from Yangchun Village in Fujian in 1995.

    (SD-Agencies)