Publishers in east China's Fujian Province opened a book fair Friday at Jinmen Islands (also known as Quemoy islands), a Taiwan-controlled region in the Straits.

This was the first book fair organized a mainland region in Taiwan, said Xie Shengxin, deputy general manager of the Fujian Provincial Foreign Language Book Store.

Book publishers on both sides of the Taiwan Straits including the Fujian-Taiwan Book Company and Fujian Provincial Foreign Language Book Store attended the fair.

On sale were more than 30,000 books from the Chinese mainland and 3,000 kinds of books from Taiwan in the fields of literature, arts, history, social sciences and technology.

Xie said the fair will be an important experiment on promoting non-governmental exchanges between the two sides and developing the Chinese culture.

(Xinhua News Agency July 23, 2005)