During the course of my not-so-long career as a reporter, I had come to feel I had experienced the phenomenon of media enthusiasm, having witnessed many high-level, even top-level meetings.

However, on Tuesday, I attended a landmark meeting between the heads of cross-Straits affairs from the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, and I realized I had been wrong.

The formal meeting between Zhang Zhijun, head of the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, and Wang Yu-chi, Taiwan's mainland affairs chief, was scheduled to take place at the Purple Palace Hotel in Nanjing.