The delegation is from Taiwan's outlying islands of Jinmen, which are just a few kilometers off the Chinese coast.

Louise Watt is following the story for us from Taipei.

Louise, why is Jinmen sending this delegation now?

Jinmen is close to the Chinese coast and it's particularly dependent on China for trade.

After more than three years of no Chinese tourists, they want them back.

Now a delegation headed by officials from Jinmen's local government, with a whole load of representatives from tourism in tow, they're heading to Beijing.

And tomorrow, they're expected to arrive this afternoon, but tomorrow that's when the meeting takes place.

They're expected to meet with the head of the Chinese government agency that's in charge with relations with Taiwan.

Now China stopped its citizens making tour groups, making visits as part of tour groups to Taiwan in 2020.

Those restrictions are still largely in place.

And the delegation says it wants to press Beijing to allow Chinese tourists to come back to Jinmen as soon as possible.

And Jinmen's legislator, Chen Yujian, she's also part of this delegation.

She says that she hopes that Chinese tour groups will be allowed back to Jinmen before China's big holiday, the National Day holiday in October.

That's when millions of Chinese travel.

Chen, she is the legislator of the main, she belongs to the main opposition party, the KMT.

And she says that she wants to revive ties between the two sides after a series of incidents in the waters around Jinmen that have brought ties between Taiwan and China worse than they already were.

In one example, two Chinese nationals were killed in a chase with the Taiwanese Coast Guard.

Taiwan recently handed back their bodies to China and China then released some fissures that it had been holding in detention.

So Chen says she wants to build on this positive momentum in relations, in her words, to get tourists back to Jinmen.

And so Louise, why is Jinmen pushing for Chinese tourists to return rather than Taiwan as a whole?

Well, China and Taiwan have had restrictions on tourist visiting.

That's because of the pandemic and it's also because of the general poor state of their relations.

Well, Taiwan last year, it did lift some of its restrictions on Chinese tourists visiting.

It's already called on China multiple times to allow its tourists to visit Taiwan.

But so far, China has only allowed some tourists to visit another group of outlying islands, Matsu, and they saw the first Chinese tour groups in several years visit in June.

So Jinmen, like Matsu, it's geographically close to China and it has lots of family links.

But being that close, historically, it was on the front lines of conflict.

Back in the 1950s, it saw intense bombardment from Mao Zedong's Chinese forces.

And today, people in Jinmen see themselves as close to China, not just geographically, but also as a bit of a political and cultural go-between.

They depend on China for trade.

Tourism is a big part of that.

So they'll be hoping that this delegation's trip to Beijing helps bring back some of the tourists that have been missing for the past few years.