30062011 National Palace Museum and revisiting Taipei 101

Yesterday, my family arrived in Taipei, so after 2 days of being offered lodging by others, moved into the hotel which they had booked for the next few nights in Taipei. They decided to use my internship in Taiwan as an excuse for them to visit this island country. Our hotel was at Ximending, and after a night in Banqiao, moved over to the busy shopping district.

Brought my family to the Shilin Night Market, and also a few shops in Ximending which my Taiwanese friend had previously introduced to me on their day of arrival.

I was very reluctant to get up today after the exhausting visits yesterday, but my family nagged me to. Breakfast was two slices of toast with plain water. Our first stop of the day was Fuzhong station, as I brought them to Banqiao to do some visiting there, namely the Mazhu temple, and also the Lin Family’s Garden.

In contrast to the last time I was here, the sun was terribly bright and sunny. Brother and Father went missing in the garden, only to find them outside the peacock cage trying to figure how did the peacock got in there. Also bought a few popsicles, and the stick could be reused as a bookmark, with the family’s crest on it.

The next stop was the Guanyin temple, then a short break at the Family Mart to escape the summer heat. Lunch was at a shop right opposite the Mazhu temple near the Fuzhong station. We intended to visit the National Palace Museum, but made a mistake in reading the maps, so we ended up at the National Taiwan Museum instead. They had exhibits of the Taiwanese Marine Life, records on the aboriginals and rice. Asked a volunteer at the museum on duty for directions to the National Palace Museum instead. Apparently it was located near to Shilin, so we had to take the MRT there.

From Shilin, we changed to the bus number 304 to head to the foot of the hill, where the Palace Museum was built on. The tickets weren’t very cheap either, at 160 yuan for one, but they sure do have a lot of items on display inside, and also tons of tourists flooding the place, even a digital version of the 清明上的河图. I’ve heard very ironic stories about the artifacts here from Taiwanese. While the mainland Chinese had often claimed that Taiwan stole their precious artifacts during the civil war, and brought it across to Taiwan along with the Guomingdang, the Taiwanese would rebutt them by saying if they didn’t, the Communist Chinese Party would have destroyed it all during the Cultural Revolution.

As I’m just a mere Malaysian Chinese, I often just smiled whenever the Taiwanese relates it to me with much exasperation.

Most of the visitors were here for the Jadeite Cabbage, which drew a huge slew of tourists (though I thought the meat carved out of jade much more appealing). My boss had even bought a telephone strap for us with a plastic version of the cabbage dangling away. When we got tired, we sat down and watched the troops of Chinese/Japanese/Korean tourists marched by.

Last stop for the day was Taipei 101. The last time I was here we didn’t bother to head up, but my family insisted, so we went ahead. Got ourselves tickets to go right up to the 89th floor of the building.

It wasn’t as dark as we hoped for it to be yet, so we took our time strolling around the observatory and having fun with the binoculars available.

Overall, we spent a long long time in there, just sitting idly and watching the sky turn darker. Probably because all of us were tired from a long exhausting day of walking. Even visited the outdoor observatory but the wind was very strong.

Once my father decided that he had enough, and that he was hungry, the whole family took the elevator back down to Hankyuu Department Store’s food court for dinner, before we took the MRT back to Ximending and called it a day.