The National Palace Museum, Taiwan.

Folks, instantly write on your "Things to Do" list: Visit Taiwan's National Palace Museum.

It is extraordinary!

The day after Rama and Li's wedding, our entire wedding party - the Kiwi contingent - even Rama and Li - did it as a big, friendly, messy, happy, noisy bunch, which was a lot of fun, but I left convinced I'd missed so much, so I went back several days later to see it all again alone and quietly. And loved it so much the second time, I did it twice.

This Museum isn't to be mistaken for Taiwan's National Museum, which we found the next day downtown in Peace Park, only it was shut. (N.B. In Taiwan, everything is shut on Mondays) The National Museum is a piece of Georgian-Greco-Roman architectural splendour ...

Front and back views of
The National Museum.

... whereas The National Palace Museum is totally Chinese:

It consists of three enormous faux-ancient buildings on the side of a hill on the edge of the city, all looming and grand Forbidden Palace style, but with a very hip and modern museum cleverly hidden behind the facade of the third building.



You all know the story of this museum, don't you? How Chiang Kai-Shek, the Nationalist Leader of China during WWII, escaped the impending Maoist army invasion by rushing off to Taiwan, taking with him the entire contents of the Forbidden Palace Museum? The already pre-assembled collection of the greatest treasures of China! And today they are all here, in Taiwan's National Palace Museum, where, for the tiny sum of T$160.00, you get to walk around the museum's three floors, wearing your earphones to listen to the stories of the objects, all the while looking at the most amazingly and achingly beautiful stuff you will ever see in your entire life.

These treasures aren't at all what you expect. Hardly any gold or precious gems or anything like that. It's all simply extraordinary workmanship. Every single piece is either ancient or sublime, and lots are both. It's almost more than your mind can absorb: row after row of absolutely mind-blowing masterpieces, some from the dawn of time, "when our ancestors were running around wearing nothing but wode." as one part-Maori fellow so blithely put it. Truly, truly, truly, I ended up just loving the minds of three Ch'ing Emperors who gathered these pieces together from all across China, because everything in here is simple and beautiful, but also interesting, fascinating, amazing, extraordinary, and every other effusive and fulsome adjective you can think of.

My favourite piece would have to be from the last Emperor's personal collection of favourite pieces - the ones he kept in his private space because he thought they were mighty special. It was a simple clay bowl on which was written, in the oldest form of Chinese calligraphy ...

... something like this!

... "Pang made this and hopes it is used and loved for 10,000 years." I totally understood why the Emperor wanted to use it and love it. Only 50 more years and Pang's dream is realised. Go Pang!!!!

The three Ch'ing Emperors did something extraordinary here, getting this collection together. Seems that, during the Ch'ing Dynasty, the last Dynasty, China fell in love with the material culture of its past, and it was all poets extolling "the heavenly skill and lofty passions" of ancient artisans, so Ch'ing Emperor I - forgotten his name - began to assemble the mightiest collection imaginable of "the best of the past".

Hate to sound all pretentious and ennui, but I have actually seen a small portion of this Ch'ing collection before. In 2000, one of the Australian museums had a visiting tour called something like "The History of Chinese Art", so I jaunted over to Sydney to see it for myself. And I must tell you, it was well worth the trip because it was so awe-inspiring I went six times. The objects - ceramics, paintings, silks, bronzes etc - were absolutely stunning. But that's not what made it so amazing. What they did was organise everything chronologically, from the Neolithic era's best (that's from 14,ooo years ago, by the way) up until the best of the Ch'ing Dynasty; a long series of representational pieces, then transition pieces, then the next era's representational pieces up until that era's apogee masterpieces, then another set of transitional pieces and so on, on and on, miles of objects, that traced a developmental line through China's material past which altogether told the purest and straightest story about the evolution of all the arts in China.

I was awe-struck!

However, as it turned out, it did me no favours seeing it because the story of the arts in China isn't straight and pure at all and every "truth" I learned from studying these pieces individually and in their context turned out to be not-so-true after all, mainly because China is such an enormous county and the developments didn't happen simultaneously everyplace, so the real history of China's material culture is actually very messy with all sorts of overlaps and throwbacks and more-skilled and less-skilled artisans and all of those sorts of things ...

... but please note how Taiwan was able to put together this straight and pure historical story just out of objects they had in this very museum; from the pieces gathered by the three Ch'ing Emperors. Boy, those guys were great at this collecting business! Just a pity they were all housed in a private museum meant only for the Emperor and his honoured guests and the rest of the country never got to see any of it.

But this is meant to be about us and this visit, so let's go back there:

I was privileged, on my first visit, to go around the ceramics with a skilled and passionate potter, Lois, who fell in love with so many objects and studied them in detail, eventually explaining to me how they'd done whatever, and I watched her fall in love with "tings", so New Zealand, watch out!!! I can see her making those for many years to come.

Me? I couldn't tell my tings from my yuens, but decided to fall in love with Is just to be contrary. Odd-looking things. Gravy boats on legs. I have no idea what they were used for, but, boy oh boy, could those artisans do a thing or two with their Is! I especially loved the ones that had dragons curled around them, although the unadorned ones had the most beautiful lines and shapes. Yes, I would love to collect Is, only I've never seen them before and doubt I'll ever see one again.

What else? Oh, must tell you: there's all sorts of cutie-pie things in there, like display cases full of carved bone miniatures that are these amazingly winsy wee things. There's even a junk carved out of bone that is perfect in every detail yet only the size of my smallest fingernail. You have to look through a magnifying glass to see it.

And there's a room full of strange and mysterious curio boxes that Molly - who collects them - would die for. No, since we're talking about Molly, she'd KILL for!

And there's an entire gallery devoted to neolithic jade carvings; all goddess statues Margaret would die for, and jewelry and axe heads and spear heads ... oh, oh, these bizarre enormous bracelets covered with previously inexplicable scratch marks, which turn out to be for the forearms of the hunters who hunted with tamed eagles; protectors for the eagles to land on ...

... and all this jade turns out to be from various spots in Southern China ...

... AND this collection is why it's so important this stuff doesn't go back to Mainland China, because it would be destroyed in a heartbeat, because it's ALL products from the Southern Chinese - the Cantonese - who the Northern Chinese have always considered to be "little better than monkeys", and it's all proof positive that "the Yellow Emperor" of legend who is credited with inventing Chinese civilisation, and who had all "weapons and artifacts made of jade" was actually CANTONESE!!! Yee ha!!!

And there's a gallery that holds all these gifts from foreign countries that were given to all the various Dynastic Emperors. Oh, and there's a display case in there that holds the pocket watch given by the French and with it are all the others: yup, the other pocket watches. Seems that the Emperor found this French gift so intriguing he gave it to his tame artisans with the lofty command "Figure out how this works and make me some more." and they did, and these Chinese pocket watches all work and are just beautiful to look at.

Oh, and there's another gallery that is full of display cases that show tame Imperial artisans' responses to Emperors' commands. Like, there's one case that is all "Take that, you stupid Emperor Person!" Seems a Ming Emperor showed the Imperial artisans a blue ceramic pot from a thousand years earlier - which is also in this particular display case - and said "Not one of you is capable of making anything as beautiful." and they were obviously fighting words because all these guys went out and made their own exact copies. And there was one smarty-pants fellow who made one identical in every regard only in yellow, which the artisans of the past didn't know how to do ... "Yellow slides off during firing." Lois told me ... and the Ming Emperor, when he laid eyes on it, knew the time had come that, on the subject of the greatness of the past, he just had to shut up, already!

And there's another display case that shows the very same blue-and-white tea set that had a different emperor go "I'm sick of ceramics. Make me this in jade." and with this tea set is the other set; all details there exactly only carved in this most beautiful translucent greenish-white jade. Oooh, I sooo wish I was a Chinese Dynastic Emperor! It would be so cool to do things like this!

But you have to acknowledge they were amazing fellows, these tame Imperial artisans. Wouldn't you just LOVE to have your own.

And, must tell you, there's even a gallery called something like "Surprisingly Modern" with so many pieces from thousands of years ago that are exceptionally modern-looking; post-modern-looking even. All pure lines and simple and so achingly beautiful. With due regard to how much I sound like a Ming Emperor, I have to say that our greatest potters today would have a hard time matching the skill and talent these pots display.

And there was one special exhibition on that was so exceptional and so controversial, I think I'll do a separate post on it.

Oh, oh, oh, and I was very naughty. Every visit, there was no way to get into the "Dazzling Gems of the Qing Dynasty" gallery because the entire population of China was lined up outside ... so, my third trip round, I went to the Exit and lurked until the guard's back was turned and voila! Naturally, the room was crowded to overflowing, which was why they were holding everyone else outside, but luckily there were lots of very short old ladies so I went around with them, peering over their heads. Beautiful stuff, all carved out of precious and semi-precious stones, but the true gems of the collection were the life-sized bok choi carved out of white-to-deep-green jade and the bite-sized piece of pork carved out of a piece of jasper. Truly, these are astonishing pieces because they indeed look like you could eat them.

There is more. In fact, there is so much more, it will take me weeks to record. It's far better you just go see if for yourself.

To get there? There's free parking, but if you don't have a car, take the MRT (their underground train) to Shilin Station - on the red line, BTW - then take the 255 or 304 bus until you see the Can't-Miss-It-Buildings, or wait for their private transfer bus called Red 30, or their mini-vans 18 or 19. And if it seems too complicated to you too, do what we did and catch taxis!