As Spring Festival approaches, business at the duty-free Taiwan Commodity Market in the Pingtan Comprehensive Pilot Zone has continued to thrive, local media reported on Jan 28.

Pan Lianqin is the owner of a shop that sells cultural products from Taiwan. She said that the Taiwan gifts have been top sellers over the past several months, and she had to rent another warehouse to hold imported cargo from across the Straits.

Taiwan food is seeing sizzling sales too. According to Lin Qiaoying, her business turnover on a single day can amount to more than 10,000 yuan at most, with Kaoliang spirits and Shuntai preserved food being the two big sellers.

Inaugurated in June 2014, the market is the second of its kind on the Chinese mainland allowed to sell duty-free Taiwan goods. More than 170 merchants and enterprises have settled in the market and more than half of them are from Taiwan.

More than 162,000 customers have visited the market in Aoqian town in the past seven months, leading to gross revenues of some 60 million yuan ($9.6 million).

After Pingtan was approved to set up a free trade zone (FTZ) in the past December, more preferential policies are expected to be rolled out benefiting cross-Straits trade.

Lin, along with many of her fellows, is more bullish about Pingtan’s future. She said she planned to expand her business by engaging in cross-Straits export and import trade.