The visiting Kuomintang (KMT) delegation headed by KMT Chairman Lien Chan arrived at the imposing Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) at around 8:50 a.m. on Wednesday in east China's Nanjing city.

It is the first time that the top leader of the party paid tribute to the Mausoleum of the KMT founder since the party lost a civil war and fled to the island province of Taiwan in 1949.

Lien was accompanied to the Mausoleum by his 60-member entourage.

On March 12, 1925, the revolutionary forerunner died of illness in Beijing and, in 1929, the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum was built in Nanjing at his behest. A grandiose ceremony was held to place his remains in the mausoleum. Since 1949, the Communist Party of China (CPC)-led Chinese government has paid top priority to the protection and maintenance of the mausoleum.

Now capital of the coastal province of Jiangsu, Nanjing was once China's national capital when the country was under the rule of the KMT from the 1920s to 1940s.

On Wednesday afternoon, the delegation was scheduled to visit the former presidential office during the KMT rule of China and the Confucius Temple, built in 1034 to consecrate and worship the ancient Chinese thinker and educator Confucius.