Beijing - Beijing Mayor Guo Jinlong said on Friday that he is deeply impressed with Taipei and he hopes the two cities can strengthen economic and trade ties.

Guo, heading a delegation of more than 20 high-ranking officials, scholars and artists, arrived in Taipei on Thursday on a six-day visit to strengthen ties between the two cities.

Beijing Mayor Guo Jinlong holds a gift from Hau Lung-bin, mayor of taipei, on Friday in Taipei. [Jia Guorong/China News Service]

He said on Friday at a lunch reception hosted by Hau Lung-bin, mayor of Taipei, that he was impressed by Taipei's smooth traffic and tidy streets.

Hau said Beijing is rich in traditional culture and Taipei is known for its mix of cultures. It is significant for the two cities to have cultural exchanges, he said.

Tickets to a play and an opera that a cultural delegation from Beijing will perform in Taipei later this month are already sold out.

During the reception, Hau gave Guo a colored-glass dragon figure while Guo presented Hau a traditional Chinese painting.

The Beijing mayor visited Taipei Palace Museum and Songshan Cultural and Creative Park on Friday afternoon.

On Saturday, Guo will attend the opening ceremony of Beijing Culture Week in Taipei.

As part of the Beijing Culture Week, an exhibition on Beijing's modern and traditional arts and crafts opened on Thursday in Taipei. The exhibition will run until March 11.

It features 40 paintings, photographs, sculptures and installation works by artists from Beijing's 798 Art District, an artistic community in an abandoned factory complex.

The exhibit also showcases about 200 traditional arts and crafts works from Beijing, such as shadow plays, Peking opera masks, palace lanterns, clay, dough and silk figurines, traditional kites, paper cuttings and traditional Chinese musical instruments.

And 14 masters of traditional Beijing arts and crafts will demonstrate their skills at the exhibition.

Guo, who is also deputy secretary of the Communist Party of China Beijing Municipal Committee, first met Kuomintang Honorary Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung at the Grand Hotel upon arriving on Thursday afternoon.

Guo is visiting the island at the invitation of the Kuomintang central committee. He is the mainland's first high-level local official to visit Taiwan this year.

"Fruits of the peaceful development across the Taiwan Straits have been hard won," Wu said, adding that efforts should be made to prove to people on both sides that such a peaceful road is correct and especially beneficial to people in Taiwan.

Xinhua contributed to this story.