The 2003 Taiwan Delicacy Festival opened Saturday with a ceremony in Tianhe District of Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province, south China.

The first Taiwan Delicacy Festival was held in Hong Kong in 1999.

It was held simultaneously in Guangdong and Hong Kong as from 2002 because Guangdong shared a similar cuisine style with Taiwan and consumer spending in the Pearl River Delta had increased rapidly, said Xu Qiuxiong, general manager of the Hong Kong Office of the Taipei World Trade Center.

Delicacies worth about 4 million yuan (480,000 US dollars) were sold at the last festival. This year, the festival will be held at Taiwan shops in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhongshan and Zhanjiang cities in about 20 days.