Dec. 19: Ju Ming Museum

Along with Dandrich's parents we took a short road trip to Taipei to visit an art museum in the mountains. It is always fun to drive around outside of the city to see what life looks like in the country. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of that.

Before we left Taipei we stopped at Costco and picked up food for a picnic at the museum. We got a huge platter of assorted sushi and another of just salmon sushi. Once we arrived at the museum we ate lunch on a little flooding pavilion. The food was delicious and the setting was pretty as well.

The museum was pretty awesome. Ju Ming is a sculptor from Taiwan. His most famous work is a series of sculptures in Taichi poses but he has a lot of other pieces as well. What is really interesting about his work is how, although the pieces are somewhat abstract, he uses the cuts in the wood to really express the emotions that go along with the subject.

Ju Ming also has a lot of sculptures that are first cut out of Styrofoam before a mold is made and filled with bronze. It makes the pieces look really interesting.

In the evening we walked around and took some more pictures of the area near where Dandrich's parents live. The shopping area is all decorated for Christmas even though few people celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. No one even gets the day off work or school. Instead most people celebrate the day more like a Valentine's Day. Regardless, people are really psyched to decorate for Christmas (or X'mas as everyone here calls it) and wear Santa hats and reindeer antlers.