National Palace Museum

This is apparently the finest museum of Chinese art on the planet. I’m amazed the nationalists managed to get this much out when they were fleeing – according to the brochure they gave us, they only got out a small portion of the art collection the government had amassed at the time - this is the collection that the nationalists took over from the Emporer when he left the Forbidden City. The Emporers had been "collecting" (appropriating) art for centuries, and until the revolution, nobody got a chance to see it. They have a collection of 650,000 objects. We messed up and thought the museum was open until 1900, but they tossed us at 1700. We finished the ceramics section, which was often amazing. This is well worth the trip to Taiwan, but save a few days for the whole thing, and maybe don’t go on the weekend. It’s normally $100 to get in, but a friend of Ev’s had two free tickets they gave us. (That’s how cheap the tourist attractions are here. This same museum would be 20 bucks in the states, and you’d be assaulted by requests to become a member, donate extra, etc. - at 1700, they wanted us out, and even chased us from the gift shop. The zoo was $30, roughly one American dollar.) [IMG4424] [IMG4428]

But, there is a garden in front of the museum which is open later. This garden has a giant koi pond in it, and they helpfully will sell you a packet of koi food for $10. This is great fun. If you drop the pellets in one by one, the koi will line up with their mouths wide open, and you can see right down them. If you throw in a handful at once, you get a feeding frenzy which lasts 15 or 20 seconds. They swim on top of each other to get the food. Some of these fish are giants, several feet long and colorful, and some are tiny, dark ones. You can look into a patch of water, and not realize that there are fish there, until you drop food in, and the previously indistinguishable darkness resolves itself into individual fish, and the water seethes. This kid figured it out, though, and brought his own packet, about a thousand times the size of ours. This was hours of entertainment for him, I bet. [IMG4457]

I can’t imagine the oxygen demand in that pond.

Afterwards, we happened to walk past a vegetarian restaurant (get the vegetables and noodle soup – nice, salty noodles and broth. Total bill for both was about $140). After that, we found a store devoted to all things cat. It was called www.meow.com.tw, and it had cats singing the classics (like 40s show tunes), and had horribly cat things in it, and a helpful salesperson who wouldn’t leave us alone. By horribly cat things, I mean backpacks and slippers with cats on them. And so on. No picture of that, but here is a picture of a Body Shop clone called “Skin Food”. [IMG4467]

Then, we could have done the night market, but it was getting close to 2000, and I was starting to fade out again. We barely made it back home, and I feel asleep on the couch. At some point, though, I was awakened for a weekly ritual, garbage day. In Taipei, the garbage truck comes once a week, and waits on one side of a block. He plays a tune that makes Ev’s roommate Patty say “Ice cream, ice cream!” and the whole block brings their trash out to him. Now a block here is many tall (6 – 12 story) apartment buildings, so this can be quite a crowd, and I’m told it can turn into a block party, but it wasn’t much of a party this time. I finally got put to bed, and they all stayed up late packing. I think Ev is ready to head to Thailand, luggage-wise.