The opening ceremony of the Ningbo and Taichung pavilions were held on Friday morning, and proved highlights of the ongoing 12th Cross-Straits (Xiamen) Cultural Industries Fair.

The two cities, invited as "guest of honor", attended the exhibition to showcase their famous products and promote cooperation across cultural projects.

The Ningbo pavilion focuses on the city's literary industry, creative projects, music industry and film industry.

Ningbo's Tianyi Pavilion - one of China's oldest and most well-preserved book repositories, has become a cultural brand of the city, playing an important role in its image and tourism.

Tianyi Pavilion has joined hands with the time-honored Xinhua Bookstore as well as movie and TV studio Xiangshan Global Studios to showcase the authentic Zhejiang province culture.

The Taichung pavilion is centered on local flavors. The best booths have been given to famous local food brands including its miso-brewing culture museum and Xiaolin Pancake. It is hoped these brands can provide visitors with a true taste of Taichung.

Showcasing the latest trends in integrating tourism with cultural industries, a matchmaking conference for important projects was held at the fair.

Hosted by the culture and tourism administrations from the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, it was attended by the top 30 cultural companies and the top 20 tourism companies from the Chinese mainland, according to organizers.

On Saturday morning, Fujian provincial government announced a new project named "all-fortune tourism". This project will showcase Fujian's cultural tourism resources and major achievements made by the province in recent years, as well as introduce the local investment environment and investment policies to the outside world.

A digital creative industry conference, discussing the current issues on content creation via digital technologies and 5G platforms, was also organized by the fair's organizing committee, a cultural creative industry association from Taiwan, Chinese music brand Migu and the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

In recent years, many entrepreneurs in Taiwan have stepped out of its borders and experienced the rapid development of the cultural industry in the Chinese mainland, said Zhang Zhencheng, a representative of a creative cultural industry association based in Taiwan.

After 10 years' effort, the fair, which was launched in 2008, has grown into a first-tier platform for Taiwan enterprises to stride into the mainland market.

The number of signed projects in the previous 11 sessions totals 1,225, with an estimated signing value of 275.7 billion yuan ($39.2 billion). The trade volume ranks among the top for cultural exhibitions in China, according to Huang Weizhou, deputy director of Fujian Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism.

The 12th session's exhibition area covers 75,000 square meters, with more than 3,500 standard booths in total, a respective increase of 2,000 sq m and nearly 600 booths compared with the session held last year.