An exhibition was held in Quanzhou City of eastern China's Fujian Province on Saturday to mark the 63rd anniversary of Taiwan's recovery from Japanese occupation.

The exhibition includes displaying of 123 pictures and about 100 pieces of ethnical relics and historical documents on the development of Taiwan and the exchanges between people from the mainland and Taiwan.

China was forced to cede Taiwan, a piece of Chinese territory since ancient times, to Japan when it lost the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895.

The island province returned to China in 1945 following Japan's unconditional surrender in the Second World War. A formal restoration ceremony was held on Oct. 25 that year for the then KMT (Kuomintang) regime to accept the surrender of the Japanese forces in Taiwan.

Kao Chin Su-mei, a renowned Taiwanese who heads a delegation to visit the exhibition, said the path to Taiwan's recovery has been a miserable experience, particularly for the aboriginal Taiwan people.

"The exhibition is to remind people not to forget this part of history. I hope that the cross-Strait relations will develop in peace, and only a peaceful development of such relations can be called the real recovery," she said.

The exhibition is held in the China Museum for Fujian-Taiwan Kinship in Quanzhou.

(Xinhua News Agency October 27, 2008)