National Palace Museum

A must visit and you can do it in ONE hour!!!

If you come to Taiwan as a tour group, one of the must visit will be The National Palace Museum. If you come to Taiwan for a business trip, in your spare time when you don't have a meeting, your local clients or colleagues will take you to The National Palace Museum (if you are not too drunk with all the strange liquor they gave you). If you happen to spend a weekend here alone after some computers fair or bicycle exhibitions and it happens to be a rainy Sunday, well, you know your choice now. Go to visit the National Palace Museum.

Why? Well, the National Palace Museum in Taipei actually hold the best collections for all Chinese culture and history. It has ALL the treasures. When I say all, I really mean all the valuable and arty objects and you cannot see them in China. The Palace Museum in Beijin is actually rather empty, because all the objects were moved and tranported to Taiwan during the civil war time 50 years ago.

So even you are not a super museum fan, it will be a great pity to miss this chance. I will suggest you to go for half day there, or even just for 1.5 hour to see those amazing stuff. Since I have taken so many business visitors to the museum, so I have discovered a quick check out route. Different from the museum brochure or the tour guide. So what do you do if you want a quick tour?

1. Never start from the gallery one if you don't plan to spend half day there. Go to the "Jade" section right away. See the famous Jade cabbage and the Pork shape rock.

2. Then go to the ivory section, you will see two amazing ivory works in the display case - Ivory ball (open work, it has balls in balls about 16 layers), and an Ivory pogoda. Behind the case, it also has a extremely beautiful ivory fine carving food carrier, which is my favorite.

3. Then you can go to the "Curio box" area. It is pretty impressive to see the smart ideas from ancient Chinese. If you are an interior designer, it may give you some new ideas for home design.

4. If you are too tired by then, there are beautiful blue and white china section. Or you can try the tea house upstair to have a cup of Chinese tea.

5. The museum shop is a good place to visit. You can buy something for your love ones. The shop has some ties with Chinese calligraphy on, rather nice.

6. Some hidden treasure and the tour group wont take you is the Chinese garden next to the museum. It is located on the left hand side of the museum and if the weather is nice, you can take a walk and see those very fat carps swimming in the pond. It gives you some fresh air and sunshine after your museum stroll.

7. On the right hand side of the museum, there is a new gorgeous restaurant managed by a 5 star hotel - Silk Palace. A nice atmosphere place for lunch if you like some Chinese dim sum for lunch.

The museum is open 7 days a week, but the garden is closed on Monday.

The National Palace Museum

To peel an tangerine

Working in an international publisher for 14 years, I finally decided to leave this 7-11 like 24 hours job and try to really have a "life". As a super organized person, the first time in my life, I did not have a plan of what to do next but I do have a very long list of what I always wish to do if I had time. So one item on my long wish list is to write a blog. A blog to introduce Taiwan from a local and international person's eyes. Taiwan is not just an small island on the east side of China. And NO, we are not Thailand. And we have many nice and famous stuff more than chips (computer chips, not Walkers) and bicycles. There are beautiful mountains with tea houses, hot springs, old towns with beautiful ceramics shops. And yes, we kind of keep it for ourselves and don't promote them much. In Taipei, there are funcky, cool loung bars, night clubs, cigar bars, sport bars. So if you happen travel to Taiwan for business next time, apart from spending half day to visit the National Palace Museum or the 101 building (the tallest building in the world so far), you can try to explore many hidden things. As one of my English friends told me, why do you have all the nice and fun cafes hidden in those small streets and allys and none of us foreigners can find them. My reply is "Hum...We are Chinese, we like to pretend to be mysterious. ".