More than 10,000 people in Taiwan are expected to come across the Taiwan Strait from this weekend to attend a weeklong grassroots-level forum to be held in the Chinese mainland's boomtown Xiamen starting Saturday, organizers said. The annual Straits Forum, now in its second year, will feature 25 activities including leisure chats, galas, and religious worships, instead of formal dialogues and policy-setting negotiations that dominate other major mainland- Taiwan exchanges. Lin Weiguo, a senior Taiwan affairs official of Fujian Province, told reporters that Taiwan's ruling party Kuomintang's vice chairwoman Huang Ming-hui, New Party chairman Yok Mu-ming, People First Party secretary-general Chin Ching- sheng and Non-Partisan Solidarity Union chairman Lin Pin-kuan will be among the participants from Taiwan. However, Lin said about 80 percent of the Taiwan attendants this year were non- officials and over 60 percent were from central or southern Taiwan. Celebrities from across the Strait are to perform in a grand gala on Saturday night following a short opening ceremony. Kao Chin Su-Mei, a 45-year-old Taiwan aboriginal artist who will perform at the gala, said people-to-people exchange should top all forms of cross-Strait interaction, whether it be economic, cultural or tourism-focused. Kao said she hopes this year's forum will serve as a platform for ethnic minorities across the Strait to learn more about each other. With the theme 'Focus on livelihood, benefit both sides of the Strait', the forum will gather people from across the Strait to discuss cooperation on agriculture, tourism, banking, investment, publishing, and ethnic culture preservation, among others, organizers said. As part of the forum, participants will even jointly worship their shared ancestors, gods, and legendary figures revered on both sides of the Strait. On Saturday, thousands of Taiwanese surnamed Zheng and people from the mainland paid tribute to Zheng Chenggong, a naval general who forced Dutch invaders to leave Taiwan in the 18th century, at the foot of a giant statue of Zheng in Xiamen, Fujian Province. Zheng, who died aged 38 in southern Taiwan, lived in Xiamen for 14 years and based his naval forces here. Some Zhengs from south Taiwan worshipped Zheng Chenggong here on Saturday consider themselves the ancient naval general's descendants. And it was the first time for many of them to return to their ancestral hometown. '(The Straits Forum) covers a wider range of topics and has become a truly rewarding event,' New Party chairman Yok Mu-ming said in an interview with Xinhua. Comparing cross-Strait exchanges to water that should be kept flowing lest it become stagnant, Yok Mu-ming said exchanges across the Taiwan Strait should be carried out on a regular basis. The Straits Forum would further broaden and deepen exchanges between the mainland and Taiwan, he said. Aside from the over 10,000 Taiwanese guests expected to join the week-long festivities, the unofficial forum also attracted 77 Taiwanese reporters from 53 Taiwanese media groups, almost double last year's figure, Zhu Qing, director of the information office of the Fujian Provincial government, said Saturday. He pledged to provide facilities for Taiwanese reporters' work during the Straits Forum. He said Fujian will build the forum into a platform for cooperation across the Taiwan Strait to benefit people on both sides of the Strait. Xiamen, a coastal city with a population of 2.52 million, had been a flashpoint of cross-Strait rivalry in the 1950s and 1960s, after the Kuomintang lost the civil war with the Communist Party of China and fled to Taiwan in the late 1940s. Cross-Strait exchanges warmed after the Kuomintang, led by a new generation of leaders, returned to power in 2008 Taiwan election, ending the eight-year rule by pro-secession Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party. 