March 11, 2009 Wednesday -- Taipei, Taiwan
Hockey pucks full of red bean paste and mind control practiced on swarms of tourists, all in an attempt to see the dowager empress' jade and gold fingernail coverings—a trip to the National Palace Museum.
Single adult admission is NT$ 160 (about $US 4.65) They take credit cards in the restaurant, museum shop and for tickets. Not many places in Taiwan take credit cards, that's why I mention it. web site www.npm.gov.tw
Since it rained again today and photography is forbidden in the museum, I have decorated this travelogue with photos from Long Shan Temple which I visited Tuesday.
When the last emperor left Beijing's Forbidden City in November 1924, the Nationalist government moved in to catalogue the millenias' worth of treasures stored there and set up a museum from this incomparable store of Chinese art and historical artifacts (many items were both.) With the eruption of war with Japan, the collection was crated up and moved to Nanjing in the south. Later, the collection was hauled around China as the war ebbed and flowed. It was hardly installed again in Nanjing in 1946 when the Chinese Civil War saw it crated and on the move again, this time to Taiwan in late 1949 as the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai Shek retreated to the island. In the 1960s a program of building a home worthy of the treasure was undertaken and a fraction of the tens of thousands of crates of treasure put on display. To this day, it is considered the definitive collection of Chinese art. My writing is not a review of the art--it needs no reviewing--but of the visitor experience, at least, as compared to my previous visits in 2004 and 2005 when there was massive renovation of the museum underway.
A lantern outside one of the minor side shrines at Long Shan Temple
The National Palace Museum has always been one of the world's great museums and now it finally looks like it. The National Palace Museum is a very different than the one I saw in 2004 and early 2005. That museum had been built in the 1960s on exhibit design and theory developed in about 1910.
There was a certain charm to that. The floors creaked so you knew you were in a museum. There were old glass cases in some rooms that let you get really close to the exhibits and take a fantastic photo. A lot of objects had been put on display in small areas and two or three groups of Japanese tourists or local 6th graders on a field trip could close off a gallery to nearly anybody else by sheer force of bodies and noise.
There are downsides, though.
Embroidery in progress on a street near the temple. The embroidered gold dragon at the top of this travelogue was on sale here, too.
Now the National Palace Museum is a world class museum showing few objects VERY dimly lit, while VERY efficiently moving massive tour groups of Japanese, Mainland Chinese, and local 6th graders through.
While I clearly understand cloth and ink will fade under strong light, the light levels are so low it is difficult to even read some of the labels, let along actually see the paintings or objects.
While I clearly understand cloth and ink will fade under strong light, I am at a loss as to why jade, bronze or ceramics need to be as dimly lit as paintings. I defy any museum curator in the world to produce evidence of even one metal or stone sculpture being damaged by normal lighting.
I applaud the National Palace Museum (NPM) for instituting a no photography rule. While I seriously doubt the deleterious effects of photo flashes on the exhibits, there is no doubt the movement of crowds would come to a crawl or a halt as galleries erupted in photo flashes so constant it would look like a 1970s disco.
BUT. If you're going to forbid photography, then the gift store should be well stocked with comprehensive catalogs of the collections AND a high quality series of CDs with digital photos available.
Laughably bad DVDs on the NPM collection are available; copies of catalogs for two dozen or so past special exhibitions; stacks of three year old museum magazines; some fantastic full size copies of hanging scrolls are on sale in one corner of the 3000+ sq ft gift store. Sadly, the NPM's gift shop yields nothing to other great museums of the world in primarily selling overpriced, logo stamped gimcrackery in classy and elegant setting for several times what you'd pay at WalMart. (and about 10 times what you'll pay one subway stop south at Shilin Night Market.)
Leave your ducks and chickens at home if you're taking the metro
As mentioned before, the building's overall design promotes the ebb and flow of great shoals of tour groups.One of the innovations helping the independent visitor (though I am sure that was not on anybody's mind) is the requirement tour groups have to all buy head sets, each tuned to a their guide's unique radio frequency. The guide has only to speak softly into his broadcast microphone to talk about an exhibit and then quietly direct his group to move right or left or forward down a hall, etc. to the next item. There is far less noise of talking or confusion and no hubbub as tour leaders try to speak loudly to be heard (in several different languages) and then direct their group off in one direction without accidentally picking up several confused members from another group.
To an outsider, it is rather eerie to watch large groups of people being choreographed in different directions by a seemingly invisible hand.
I have to comment on the view outside.
There are several museum restaurants; a cloak room check service, wheelchairs, elevators, plenty of benches in the galleries, bathrooms and staff in the museum. If you are not sure about our ability to navigate Taipei's public transport there are swarms of taxis at the museum.
While the National Palace Museum grounds themselves are imposing, beautifully laid out and maintained as befits its status as a world class museum, its surroundings can only be described as a Chinese Rush Limbaugh's wet dream. No regulation and utter lack of zoning or city planning has resulted in scabrous apartment buildings directly across from the museum, dominating the terrace and balcony views, and transmission lines built directly across the back of the museum. Urban planning is still a new concept here.
stone dragon winding around a temple column at Long Shan Temple
I got to the NPM by taking the red line metro north six stops to Shilin Station; a half dozen or more bus routes passing the Shilin station go to the NPM. That fact notwithstanding, your correspondent managed to get turned around (with a compass!) and tried to board a school bus heading the wrong direction. An attractive and well spoken young woman took a few moments off from hurrying to class to walk me to the right bus stand, spoke with the bus driver and got me settled in the right direction. Don't know what she said, but the bus driver refused payment for the trip as well.
Nuns having their heads shaved outside Long Shan Temple
I would have gone into the Chih Shan gardens surrounding the NPM and then on down the road 250 yards to the new Museum of Taiwanese Aboriginals if it hadn't been a) raining again, and b) after hours in the NPM, I was dog tired and wouldn't have had more than 45 minutes in the Aboriginal Museum. Plenty remains for a return trip another day. Not only will I know where the right bus stand is, but I tried out a few of the small shops around the metro station for food.
Riding the #255 bus I saw my favorite Engrish for the day. A woman on a scooter stopped at a light; on her jacket was elegantly emblazoned “Candy Oiler.” Oh well, it doesn't have to make sense to be stylish, just has to be some sort of English.
One of the simple innovations I saw here was on the bus ride. We passed several road crews and each had set out a used, bald mannequin from a clothing store. A yellow rain slicker was draped over him and a red flag taped to his arm. Larger and more startling than a traffic cone and lot cheaper than the cheapest live labor!
Near the Shilin metro station I stumbled across a “German bakery.” Mr Mark, German bakery even has dual language signage Chinese/German in the store. It appears to be a chain, as I would bet in this part of Taipei the number of Germans is only slightly greater than the number of woolly mammoths. Bakeries and baked goods have become quite a craze here. Chinese cooking doesn't use an oven or baking; no wheat; no dairy; no sugar; little or no salt. Over the past five years, bakeries have sprung up all over. There will even be an international baking exposition late this month in the venue normally reserved for electronics shows. I bought a loaf of Mr Mark's bread for NT$ 115 ($US 3). Back in my room, I tried it. Let's just say it would struggle to find its market in the States, and would be laughed at with pity in Germany, but it is a vast improvement over what has been offered here in Taiwan in the past.
One of two lanterns at the Long Shan Temple entrance
The other two shops I tried had tastier and more rewarding food for far less. For NT$ 30 (95 cents US)I had a sort of pancake wrapped around scramble eggs and cilantro, the whole smeared with spicy sauce and served n a paper wrapper.
Red bean paste is commonly sold as a sweet here, though it is barely sweet at all by Western standards. A street vendor filled one inch deep cupcake shaped moulds with a sort of fortune cookie batter (fortune cookies are unknown here—they were invented in California). When the batter has cooked, he stuffs the miniature pie shell with red bean paste until it's about an inch over the top. It's flipped over into a second pie shell and cooked so the customer is presented for about 35 cents US a hockey puck full of red bean paste to munch (or a Skoal's tin of chewing tobacco for those of us who grew up in North Carolina before we imported Yankees and hockey teams.)
As always, I am interested to hear from my readers with comments, suggestions, and corrections.
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