Xihu

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