Day 9

As Thursday was supposed to continue the trend and be cold and rainy, I decided to spend the day indoors at the National Palace Museum. This amazing institute is closely related to the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City in mainland China. Most of its contents were once housed there, but when the civil war resumed after Japanese surrender in WWII, the Nationalists fled to Taiwan and took with them most of the treasures. As such the museum in Taiwan holds over 600,000 artifacts, including some of the most precious. Coming from a country that was only established in 1776, to see over 8000 years of history for one country. They don't allow photos in the museum, something which thankfully the other guests observed (unlike the Louvre!!). I therefore only took a few iPhone pics of the outside and stole the rest from the museum's website.

Speaking of the other guests, about 9 billion tour groups full of mainlanders, Koreans, Japanese, and others all had the same idea. Therefore the museum was extremely crowded. From my research, I knew to expect the rather, uh... "forceful" tour guides and their crowds but even though I was pretty taken aback by some behaviors. Most of the tours basically did a whirlwind tour of the museum, hitting only those artifacts to be considered the most rare or priceless. As such, if you had the bad luck to be observing something they wanted to see they could be very rude. For example, one female guide whacked at my back and when I turned around surprised, she shoved me away from a display case then continued her tour as if it was no matter. The other main annoyance was their volume level. While there were docents everywhere with signs indicating no loud talking and despite the clever system the museum uses where all members of a tour get headsets linked to a mic that the guide can then talk quietly - or at least normally - into to keep the volume down, most chose instead the hold the microphone at arm's length and SHOUT at it. The members of their tour would also yell at each other across exhibits and generally disturb the quiet reflection one can expect from a museum. Generally my fellow visitors at the museum were not pleasant.

However the museum itself, and the objects displayed were amazing enough that I did my best to ignore them. Whenever they got too much, I would escape to the halls of calligraphy and painting which strangely did not seem to be a huge draw :) Ok rant over.

Walking up the large courtyard to the museum. There is an additional wing to the left that I didn't even have time to enter, and gardens to the right which due to the rain I also skipped.

Meta-photo-moment with a stranger :) Thats the other wing in the background, and note the crowds at 9 am already!

Arch leading to the garden and detail of the railing

Worker raking in the rain, wearing a straw (?) hat

Inside the museum I paid extra to get an audioguide in English. It was actually a pretty slick set-up. It seemed to be an iPod touch housed inside a plastic case that I am sure had RFID chips to prevent theft, and also prevented you from pushing any buttons. There were numbers on all the display cases and when entered you would get an explanation along with photos on the screen. This was handy for when the tour groups prevent long close examination of some of the more delicate and detailed objects. There were also maps of each floor and information including where to buy food, hours etc. It was very nice to have a relaxing source of English information.As soon as I could, I made headed upstairs to the third floor to see the jade exhibition before the crowds got worse. Apparently by afternoon a line forms that can result in up to an hours wait as they strictly control the number of people inside each gallery. The two main things that everyone sees are jade carved into a cabbage or bok choy and a rock that looks just like a piece of pork.

There was lots more gorgeous carvings, but we would be here forever if I showed them all. One of my favorite parts was the paintings and calligraphy. I grabbed some pictures off various websites of some of my favorites, although I couldn't find some of the ones I really liked. Also keep in mind that seeing the originals on their scrolls definitely adds something. The museum had a huge 5-6 meter long digital version of the first painting, 100 horses where the horses moved and the seasons changed. It was really neat and nicely done. I watched it for quite awhile.

There were also lots and lots of ceramics from very very old bowls to more recent but very ornate pieces. There was also bronze swords, armor, temple bells, wine casks, and more all from, you guessed it, the bronze age! (and later) I haven't even touched on the ivory or the wood carving or the furniture. Suffice it to say, it was a big museum stuffed with stuff, and even after spending 9 am to 5:30 pm in the museum, I still didn't even come close to seeing it all! I had to leave though because a post-doc friend of Sonny's Shanky (he's from India) was taking us out to dinner at his favorite Japanese restaurant in Taipei. He did his masters and PhD in Japan, so he would know! We ate lots of dishes, including one small plate of tuna sashimi because I missed it so, a Japanese pizza-esque thing, some sort off egg cake with roe, a clay hot pot sort of fried rice? Sorry, Japanese food is not my forte :) Anyways, whatever it all was, it was really good, and while the most expensive meal we have eaten here, totally worth it. On the way back to the MRT we passed by Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, a huge Japanese department store (its several buildings!) and had a play in the big ad set-ups they had outside.