Sihai Pi

Today I got to check off an item from my bucket list. I was a Chinese student in my early 20’s when my teachers told me about the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. When the Nationalist Chinese left the mainland in 1949, they grabbed all the national treasures they could carry. They housed them in a museum built into the side of a mountain in Taipei. Tunnels bored deep into the rock protect these ancient treasures from any assault, up to and including nuclear attack. These objects are truly part of mankind’s global cultural heritage. Seven hundred thousand artifacts are guarded here, some going back to the 8th century B. C. There are so many that they are rotated. Only two percent of the artifacts are on display at any one time, and they are rotated once every three months.

One of my bucket list items was to see the artifacts in this museum, especially their collection of calligraphy. The items on display stagger the imagination. We saw an elaborately carved ball made of white jade. Twenty two other intricately carved balls rotate freely inside it. The whole piece was carved out of one piece of rock. It took three generations to carve—over 100 years. The Chinese are a patient people.

An equally beautiful carved wooden box holds 121 progressively smaller carved boxes inside. In the movie The Last Emperor we see boy emperor Pu Yi playing with a pet cricket he places into the smallest interior box. What a toy!

And the porcelain, the furniture and the paintings and bronzes!

As if all those treasures were not sufficiently impressive, the calligraphy is beyond description. Some scrolls are fifty feet long, displayed in gleaming, illuminated cases set in dimly lit halls. Written around the time of Jesus, these scrolls are still perfectly readable to anyone who knows Chinese. As I struggled to remember characters I learned during the Nixon administration, fourth graders flanking me read these ancient analects as if they were a grocery list. The Chinese language changes very slowly. The Chinese are a patient people.

Not only did we visit the museum, we also went to a Taoist temple, to the Chinese War Memorial, and then to the Grand Hotel, built for foreign dignitaries by Madame Chiang Kai-shek. It is the most opulent building I have ever seen outside the Vatican. Constructed according to traditional Chinese patterns, it rivals the forbidden city in Beijing. We had a lunch at a sumptuous buffet there, offering over 100 different choices of oriental and occidental delicacies.

Finally our bus took us to to the 350-foot-tall monument to President Chiang Kai-shek. Standing high above a 250,000 square meter park, it is also the site for the National Theater, the National Concert Hall and the National Opera. Though built according to ancient Chinese architectural styles, each of these buildings is thoroughly modern and immaculately maintained.

Returning to the Viking Orion we prepared for a delightful dinner with six new acquaintances. After dinner we listened to our friend Sophia play quiet samba music on the Steinway. We went back to our stateroom and prepared for tomorrow’s sea-journey to Hong Kong 🇭🇰

P. S. I was somewhat delayed in posting the last couple of footprints. The wi-fi on the ship wasn’t working. When I asked about it, a crew member told me that they hoped to have it working later in the day. I found out today that the Chinese cruiser shadowing Viking Orion in the East China Sea was radio-blocking our ship’s Starlink signal.Read more