On a recent morning in Taiwan, a mob of tourists is thronging around a display case, craning their necks to see and pressing headphones to their ears as they strain to hear the audio tour. But it's hardly the Mona Lisa that they've come to see; rather, the item drawing all the attention was a footed metal cauldron.

This type of Bronze Age vessel, on display at the National Palace Museum, was used by the aristocratic elite of the Zhou Dynasty to burn sacrifices to their ancestors. This particular one is inscribed for a special occasion—the kingly assigning of governing duties in central China, the cradle of Chinese civilization, in 827 B.C. To the mainland Chinese gathered around it, it is akin to the Liberty Bell, and for the first time in their lives they are getting to see it.

"In Beijing we can just see the architecture, but here we can see the treasures," says Xin Lingwang, a bespectacled professor of chemical engineering at Jiao Tong University in Shanghai. Part of the craning crowd on this particular morning, he was one of more than 20,000 Chinese mainland tourists to have toured the museum in the first three months since travel restrictions on mainlanders traveling to Taiwan were lifted starting July 4.

In the 1940s, the Kuomintang troops of General Chiang Kai-shek packed up more than 8,000 crates worth of jade, bronze, porcelain, paintings, and other treasures from the Forbidden City in Beijing, and shipped them to Taiwan, first ahead of the invading Japanese and then the rocket attacks of the advancing Communist army. The KMT couldn't take everything, but they managed to carry the best 655,000 objets d'art from the emperor's Imperial Collection out of China.

For the past six decades, mainland Chinese have been unable to see these works—or anything else in Taiwan—because the government forbids mainlanders from traveling to Taiwanese soil. (Taiwanese have been able to travel to the mainland since 1987.)

Now, mainland Chinese are coming by the planeload, part of a cross-strait travel boom. "This is our tradition, our history," says Xin. "All Chinese people have the aspiration to come here and see this collection. It's the window to look back at our splendid history through various dynasties."

The numbers of arrivals are lower so far than anticipated—in part because China heavily vets those who apply to go—but they increased 27 percent in September compared with August. On November 4, Taiwan and China signed an additional agreement tripling the number of permitted flights to 108 per week from the current 36, meaning that by December, when the new rules take effect, tens of thousands of Chinese could begin arriving in Taiwan every week.

Currently the flights operate as charters, but may expand to commercial flights by next June. According to Taiwan's new president Ma Ying-jeou, whose overtures to China resulted in the removal of the travel ban as well as other obstacles to doing business, more than 50 million mainlanders have expressed interest in traveling to Taiwan.

A joint statement from the Chambers of Commerce of the U.S., Europe, and Japan called the latest agreement "a major development in boosting the investment confidence of both foreign and Taiwan domestic companies" and expected the island to draw new investment to help cater to the tourist influx. So far there are 33 Chinese travel agencies organizing the tours from the mainland.

Accordingly, a number of U.S. and European companies have been scouting around; some 1,500 businesspeople turned up to an investment-opportunities fair held in Taipei in October.

Relations between Taiwan and the mainland, icy for decades because both sides claimed to be the legitimate government of China, started warming in May when the new president took office. Unlike his predecessor, who agitated for Taiwan's independence, Ma, who heads the modern-day KMT party, has launched closer economic and cultural ties with China in order to help the island's sagging economy and end its economic isolation from the rest of the region.

The National Palace Museum has had to add new volunteers to act as docents, according to Chou Kung-shin, the museum's director, as the number of museum visitors jumped 75 percent in August compared with the previous year, to 255,068, in large part due to the mainland visitors. Rag-holding staff follow around tour groups, wiping display cases dirtied by up-pressed noses and eager fingers. Just 1 percent of the collection can be displayed at any given time, so exhibits rotate every few months. Because of the popularity among mainlanders of a Qing Dynasty smoky-green-and-white jade carving of a Chinese bok choy cabbage, the museum has added a special "cabbage collection" package to its gift shop, which includes a small replica of the cabbage carving and a key chain, for around $30. It's frequently sold out.

The position of the Beijing government is that the artifacts should be returned to their rightful place in the Forbidden City, and therefore any foreign museum seeking to exhibit the collection on loan must guarantee that it not be seized and returned to China. Many scholars assert that these priceless pieces might have been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s had they remained in China. As a result, Director Chou is dismissive of Beijing's claim on them. "They should appreciate how well we are taking care of these pieces, the way of presentation and exhibition," she says, particularly after the museum underwent a 10-year, state-of-the-art renovation that was completed in 2006. "They have a beautiful palace [the Forbidden City]. We have a beautiful collection."

But the beauty of China's heritage on display isn't enough to impress some mainland tourists. Most of the mainland tourists come to Taiwan on an eight-day tour that also includes sightseeing trips to Taiwan's mountains, lakes, and other attractions—as well as shopping, judging by the evident purchases of mainland tour groups swarming the lobbies of Taipei hotels. "The [museum collection] is certainly exquisite," says Sun Chunhan, a gruff-looking businessman who owns a car-parts factory in Xian, which is home to China's magnificent collection of terra cotta warriors. "But in mainland China we have more things to see." Now that Taiwan's tourism industry is poised to welcome perhaps millions of his compatriots, government officials may well hope he doesn't spread the word too loudly back home.