Dec. 17: National Palace Museum

The National Palace Museum is my favorite tourist destination in Taipei. It has the best collection of Chinese art and antiquities. The museum also has a pretty interesting history in itself. As the Communists fought to take over China, Chiang Kai-Shek and the Nationalists packed up the best pieces and rarest items from the National Museum in China and removed the artifacts to Taiwan. 

Unfortunately, you aren't allowed to take pictures inside the museum so I don't have any from the exhibits. The permanent exhibits include a large number of Chinese paintings and calligraphy as well as priceless jade pieces among others. One of the most famous pieces in the museum is a piece of jade carved like a cabbage. Besides being a fairly large piece of jade, the artist also used the natural color of the jade to mimic the different colors in a cabbage. So the top is a dark green and fades to white on the bottom. 

Recently, China reconnected direct flights from mainland China to Taiwan so now there are a ton of Chinese tourists all over the city. The National Palace Museum most be a stopping point for every tour group because the place was infested with Chinese tourists. We did have a nice lunch at the restaurant near the museum that served dim sum. The museum also had a visiting exhibits of ancient Greek sculpture and pottery on loan from the British Museum. 

Dim Sum

That evening, we walked around the city with Dandrich's parents and ate some traditional Taiwanese dishes. One of the more famous dishes is called blood and cake and it is almost exactly what it sounds like: rice mixed with blood formed into a bar. Apparently it is banned in the United States. One of the strangest differences between American culture and Taiwanese culture is that unlike during meals at home, people here don't always have drinks with their dinners. The restaurants seem to be about split on whether they serve hot tea or not and it is unusual to see people with other drinks unless they are eating at American restaurants or expensive restaurants. 

Taiwanese blood cake 

Street vendors in Taipei