January 25: National Palace Museum

Today the four of us went (twice actually) to the National Palace Museum in the north of Taipei. In the morning we toured the main museum as part of our Chinese class. The main museum has a huge collection of pieces that were taken from the Imperial Palace when the Nationalists retreated from the mainland. The collection is so large, especially for calligraphy and water color, that it cannot be all shown at once, and so is rotated often. The bronze pieces were most interesting to me. They were all old--from Before Christ times--and many of them were records of old kingdoms and warlords. At that time the most durable way of recording important events was etched in bronze, so all kinds of big pots and water vessels were covered in ancient Chinese writings. Very cool. Also interesting was the jade pieces. Most of them were actually from the reign of one Chinese emperor who was very interested in Arabian jade. Apparently, some of the pieces were actually Chinese jade that had been made to look like the Arabian jade by ancient merchants so that they wouldn't have to make the long and dangerous trip to the middle east. Even at that time counterfeit goods were a problem! At this time, the Arabs had better techniques, and their jade plates and bowls were worked very fine and thin so as to be translucent. Another neat thing at the museum were the curio boxes. These boxes contained very miniaturized and detailed reproductions of an emperor's treasures. They were playthings for young emperors and so had secret locks and compartments.

After the museum we took a quick look around a nearby garden. The garden, whose name most closely translates to Garden of Benevolence was once the personal garden of Chiang Kai-shek and is very peaceful. Large interconnecting ponds were filled with some of the largest goldfish that I have ever seen. Instead of writing about it, I think I will just post pictures.




After lunch, we met up with some Taiwanese students and went back to the museum. This time we saw a special exhibit on Baroque paintings. The paintings were from the Hapsburg rulers in Austria and were pretty good. I am not cultured enough to know a whole lot about them and only the titles were in English so I don't have a whole lot to report. The subjects were mainly Greek myths, portraits, or religious. Still, very good to look at.