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    • Round the World in 205 Days
      Day 56

      Modern sculpture techniques

      March 25, 2019 in Taiwan ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

      Perhaps the most memorable room in the National Palace Museum, aside from the block of jade that really does look like a piece of red stewed pork, is the (new? temporary?) 3D optical illusions exhibit. These pieces of potentially 3D-printed plastic are designed to have the property of looking completely different head-on vs. reflected in a mirror. We were particularly impressed by the fish and butterflies sculpture, as well as the right-left arrow one! Pretty impressive what creative minds can do when inspiration strikes.Read more

    • Round the World in 205 Days
      Day 57

      Happy early Qingming festival (清明節)

      March 26, 2019 in Taiwan ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

      Qingmingjie is an important Chinese festival for paying respect to deceased ancestors. It is a time to come together to visit and clean清 the old family tombs. We were very lucky with the sabbatical (and side-trip) timing to have the chance to be in Taipei just a week before the actual festival (which is on the 4th of April) to visit the final resting place of Nai-nai and Yeh-yeh in Yangmingshan.

      Fortunately, Nai-nai and Yeh-yeh's urns are located such that we could knock politely on their little doors to say hi. Neither of them had met Davy or Meg yet - Yeh-yeh had barely even met Mommy! We hope that they were happy to meet the next generation and are satisfied with how we all turned out. After chatting a bit about death and cremation, whether the people buried in the big tombs outside were all there with their skin and bones intact, etc., we spoke briefly of what Mommy and Poppy wanted to do after dying, aside from give them all our money to buy Teslas.

      Meg then became rather fascinated by the fact that she was named after Nai-nai and shares both her family name Su蘇 and middle name Yu玉. She may actually turn out to have a lot in common with her great grandma when she grows up - both are stubborn queens and of course never wrong! Hopefully Nai-nai will be able to look in on Meg from time to time and keep her on the right track. Davy was a bit sad about not being named after a family member. Thankfully, he then found out that he was named after a great Chinese engineering master who designed and built the first railways. He was pensive for a moment after that - perhaps even suitably pleased.      Read more

    • Round the World in 205 Days
      Day 56

      Ancient sculpture techniques

      March 25, 2019 in Taiwan ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

      Fresh off the plane, 80+ year old Great aunt Yumei decided it was about time to hit the National Palace Museum故宮博物院 after getting a quick bite to eat. She sure has a ton of energy! Hadn’t seen her for 20 odd years or so, but that sure didn’t stop her from getting right in there on everything from Davy’s backpack being too heavy (apparently it would stunt his growth) to Meg eating too much meat (hence the mosquitoes being attracted to her blood)!

      The National Palace Museum is very popular with tour groups from China because it houses many of the ancient Chinese treasures brought over in 1949 to protect them from destruction during and after the Chinese Civil War. We only visited about half of the exhibits, mostly the sculpture, jade and calligraphy rooms, which had more interesting pieces in them for the kids. Meg had lots of fun pointing out as many tian天 and yu玉 words as she could find, while Davy and Mommy marveled at the workmanship given the simple tools the craftspeople would have had in ancient times.

      We also discovered that Great aunt is not a big fan of being in pictures! Still managed to capture a few memories on the sly.      Read more

    • TravelerTaiwan
      Day 3

      World Tourism Day

      September 27, 2018 in Taiwan ⋅ 🌧 29 °C

      Today's plan is to take advantage of being a tourist by going on a free Historic City walking tour and then to the National Palace Museum which is normally around £10 but free today!

      After an amazing night sleep we went for our Historic Walking tour. Molly out tour guide spoke fantastic English and really knew her stuff. We saw the Longshan Temple, bought ice cream at the oldest ice cream shop in Taiwan, learnt about the various rulers of Taiwan, saw Taiwan's equivalent of Times Square, learnt why the Chinese design curvy streets (to prevent attackers and the Chinese Zombie), saw and heard about history of the 228 Peace Park and the stories of Chiang kai-shek. During the break me and Will ran to a bakery where we had a voucher for a free tourist gift, a pineapple cake and two nougat bars. Then we saw the Presendital Parliamentary building, the concert hall, theatre Hall and finally the Chiang kai-shek memorial.

      For lunch we headed to Nanmen market hall for beef noodle soup and then to the National Palace Museum. By the time we got to the museum it was about 4pm and we had been wandering round since 9:30am so we were quite tired with pretty sore feet. The museum was free so we decided to make the most of it anyway. Overall it was quite interesting and had a few pieces of interest but I was very much looking forward to a proper sit down. At the museum we saw various paintings with calligraphy, a meat shaped stone that looked like pork belly but was actually a mineral known as banded jasper, a jade bokchoy and much much more. The museum was huge, we only got round one section before having to stop due to throbbing feet.

      We are now both starving for dinner so it's time to head off in hunt of food. We tried Raohe Night Market and having been to 3 night markets in Taiwan, I'm convinced they are the same with different names and size. We had beef bone soup, pan fried dumplings and a Peppered Pork Bun again and then headed home to plane for our next day.

      The original plan was to stay one more day and do a day trip to Jiufen, a neighbouring town. However the hostel tried charging us double as its a Friday and the rain from the passing typhoon is supposed to be worse tomorrow and therefore worse on the north east of the island. So we are going to go to Taichung, famous for its food and on the west of the island. We've also booked in for our very first couchsurfing experience! Bit of an adventure so let's see how it goes 😊      Read more

    • Round the World in 205 Days
      Day 57

      Yangming mountain (陽明山) nature walk

      March 26, 2019 in Taiwan ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C

      First full day in Taipei and we’re off after breakfast to Yangmingshan. Great aunt Yumei came by the hotel with some lantern fruit to share (mirabelles), as well as two other indigenous Taiwanese fruit that Uncle Gu had earmarked for us the night before: pipa枇杷 and xiantao仙桃. Love the diversity of local fruit in these tropical climates - and most of the best ones don’t tend to be exported, certainly not to Europe.

      At Yangmingshan, we did an easy walking trail together - Great aunt is over 80 years old after all. The Erziping Trail itself is supposed to be the only part of the mountain altered by people - the rest has been left natural to the greatest possible extent. Especially after having toured a bit around places like India and Bali, the lack of litter around Taipei is really refreshing. It seems to reflect the community’s respect for each other and for their shared environment - who would want to be the first to spoil such a pristine landscape?

      It was wonderful to get away from the city. We could easily understand why people would come out to Erziping to enjoy an afternoon with friends. And Great aunt Yumei is a super trooper, as we ended up doing over 10,000 steps per day every day that we were touring with her in Taipei. If we can all, at 80, still physically do that 4 days running, we should count ourselves so lucky. (Oh, and even when encouraging the kids to walk 10,000 steps a day, Mommy is still in the wrong as that is apparently too many steps - damages the joints - 6,000 to 7,000 is the optimal target... It really is impossible to please Chinese elders.)      Read more

    You might also know this place by the following names:

    Beitou District, Beitou, 北投區

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