The Hong Kong airline company which flew a Buddhist relic to Taiwan on Saturday tried to challenge the Taiwanese government's ban on direct transportation links by demanding a direct flight from Xian to Taipei while the plane was in the air, the Chinese-language media said.
The relic, believed to be the remains of a finger of the Sakyamuni Buddha, arrived at CKS airport on a chartered plane from Dragonair (港龍航空).
To meet the restrictions set by the Taiwanese government, the plane stopped over in Hong Kong's airport, stayed on the runway for about half an hour and flew on to Taipei bearing a different flight number, according to the report.
While the plane was en route from Xian to Hong Kong, Dragonair asked Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄), head of Taiwan's Buddha Light International Association (佛光會) and one of the organizers of the relic's trip, to allow a direct flight to Taipei because it would be "inconvenient" to stop over in Hong Kong, the report said.
Wu declined the request, saying the flight must abide by Tai-wanese regulations, according to the report.
Taiwan does not allow direct flights between China and Taiwan. Flights between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait must stop over in a third country, usually Hong Kong.
The government has maintained the requirement even though Hong Kong has been under Chinese rule since 1997.
Beijing has consistently refused to open dialogue with the Taiwan-ese government on direct transportation links, saying Taiwan needs to recognize the "one China" principle before any negotiations can begin.
China has also tried to keep the Hong Kong-Taiwan air link negotiations on a private level by demanding that airline companies, instead of government officials, represent each side in the negotiations, thereby effectively denying the talks an international status.
A direct flight from Xian to Taipei could have set the precedent for a "domestic flight."
Taiwan opened direct shipping links between some of its outlying islands and the Chinese coast at the beginning of last year, but Bei-jing has largely ignored the move.
Thousands of Buddhists paid tribute to the relic at the National Taiwan University stadium yesterday. The relic was greeted by some 100,000 chanting people when it arrived on Saturday.
The relic is being displayed in the stadium until tomorrow and will then be moved to the Chinkuangming Temple in Sanhsia.
It will next be displayed in the Fokuangshan monastery in Kao-hsiung County, as well as in Tai-chung and Nantou, before being returned to China on March 31.
Unlike the arrival in 1998 of a reliquary from Thailand reputed to hold a tooth of the Buddha, no high-level government official participated in Saturday's events except for a number of lawmakers.
Premier Yu Shyi-kun was scheduled to participate in a religious ceremony for the relic at 7:30 pm on Saturday but the organizers abruptly canceled the ceremony and took the relic to the NTU stadium, according to the Chinese-language media.
The organizers cited the exhaustion of the monks who escorted the relic from China as the reason for the change, but the Chinese-language media quoted unnamed sources as saying Beijing had pressured the organizers to prevent Taiwan's top government officials from participating in events surrounding the relic.
The finger relic was brought to China some 200 years after the Buddha's death, according to historical documents.
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