Photo: Xinhua

Amid warm greetings from local villagers, former chairperson of the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) Ma Ying-jeou and his family members returned to the burial site of ancestors and commemorated his grandfather in Shuangyang village of Xiangtan county in Central China's Hunan Province on Saturday.

While reading the oration for his ancestors in local dialect, Ma, choking with sobs and said his dream of coming to pay tribute to ancestors came true. He was also deeply touched to see the grave of his grandfather who he had never met.

Respecting funeral rites to commemorate the ancestors is an important part of Chinese people's education of morality, Ma told the media after the ceremony.

Ma and his family members had received warm greetings from local villagers and Ma also responded in local dialect.

Before arriving at his hometown in Hunan, Ma and his delegation had visited several mainland cities, including Nanjing, Wuhan and Changsha. He will later go to Chongqing and Shanghai before returning to the island of Taiwan on April 7.

Song Tao, head of both the Taiwan Work Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, met with Ma in Wuhan, Hubei Province on Thursday.

Song welcomed Ma and several Taiwan compatriots to visit the mainland for more exchanges in the future, and affirming Ma's contribution to the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations.

Observers said that Ma's trip to the mainland makes him the first former Taiwan leader to visit the mainland in 74 years, which is expected to write a new chapter in the development of cross-Straits relations.

Global Times