Thursday, Mar 21st, Taipei, Taiwan

Greetings!

Today was museum day in Taipei.  One of the top five museums in the world has to be the National Palace Museum.  Why?  What if you could go back in time to 1947, and use an army to steal all of China's artistic treasures from the Forbidden City, and take them to Taiwan?

Chiang Kai-shek did.  And some say it was his major accomplishment.  Seven hundred thousand pieces of ancient Chinese artifacts from the Neolithic age to the modern are housed in the museum.  They are well-presented, and the museum is easy to navigate.  Only a small portion of the museum's cache is ever on display, and it is rotated every three months.  The rest of the treasure is stored in the mountain sitting behind the museum.

What we saw, and what you will see photos of in the album, are the jade, porcelain, clay,  and bronze items collected by the many emperors of the Chinese historic dynasties.  The highest quality examples of food containers, wine and water vessels, lamps, kitchenware, weapons, jewelry, and items used in ritual ceremonies.

China claims to have the longest continual civilization on earth, and the museum makes a good case for the persistent demonstration of artistic talent.  We joined thousands today in viewing a small glimpse into what it produced.

The story of the indigenous people of Taiwan, on the other hand, is told at another museum.  The Shung Ye Museum of Formosa Aborigines is a privately funded much smaller archive two hundred meters away we visited next.  It contains a collection of nineteen Austronesian language tribes who lived n the eastern and southern part of Taiwan for almost 5,500 years.

After lunch, we visited the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, and saw the changing of the guard at Chiang's statue. Framing Liberty Square, the building houses the archives of the very controversial leader of Taiwan from 1949 until 1975.

Finally, as usual, we had to scale 101 Taipei, the now ninth highest building in the world.  A hazy day, we were impressed only by the speed of the elevator, reputedly the fastest still in the world.

To see all of the many photographs taken today, click on: Thursday, Mar 21st, Taipei, Taiwan.