"I felt a dream was fulfilled. I could see the fortresses of Chiang's army in front of me," she said.

Three years later, when all restrictions were cleared for mainland tourists, Chen and her husband joined tens of thousands of mainlanders to visit the main island of Taiwan.

Officials said the number of mainland tourists to Taiwan -- a forbidden land in the past -- could exceed 1 million in 2010.

"That figure means a lot," said Lee Chien-jung, advisor to Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation. "Issues lingering for decades have been settled in the recent two years. People have long waited for this kind of exchange."

Cross-Strait exchanges particularly warmed up after the Kuomintang, led by a new generation of leaders, won the 2008 Taiwan local elections and ended the rule by a pro-secession administration of the Democratic Progressive Party.

This week, Xiamen and eight other cities in Fujian host the second Straits Forum -- a dialogue for people at the grassroots on both sides of the Strait. More than 10,000 residents of Taiwan are estimated to attend.

Jia Qinglin, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, told the forum Sunday that sincere communication was at the core of cross-Strait exchanges.

"People from the mainland and Taiwan should visit each other more often," said the top political advisor.

The giant loudspeakers Chen and her colleagues used have been laid to rest. One of the speakers, about 2.88 meters high and 4.74 meters long, is now located at an outdoor war museum at Dadeng island, about 6 kilometers away from Kinmen.

Last year, Chen and Hsu toured the museum together and had a picture taken with the loud-speaker.

Their stories and the picture are now displayed at the museum.

Not far from the museum, business is brisk at a Taiwan goods market. The hottest items on sale, traders say, are bottles of rice liquor that were brewed in Kinmen's air defense shelters and meat cleavers made of abandoned shell casings.