Taiwan revisited

Last January's visit to Taiwan was not our most successful Asian adventure.  We missed out on three major tourist attractions:  the National Palace Museum, the Juming Museum, and Taiwan's famous cuisine.  However, Taipei is very close to Hong Kong, and a reasonable Cathay Pacific weekend special made it an affordable getaway in mid September.  Taipei is a sprawling city, not especially lovely, and not as prosperous-looking as Shanghai, Singapore, or Hong Kong.  There is only one very tall skyscraper, Taipei 101, which you can see from far away as long as the air is clear.
Our flight arrived late Friday night.  Jeff had done his homework - he had verified which airport bus would get us close to our hotel, Les Suites Taipei Ching-Cheng.  A very nice English-speaking woman checked her "tablet" (iPad), and wrote the name and address of our hotel in Chinese on a piece of paper so that we might show it to a taxi driver.  Good thing - taxi drivers do not speak much English!
Our boutique hotel was a treat.  Quiet and comfortable with impeccable service!  When our taxi pulled up to the hotel at 11 p.m., the concierge greeted us with "Welcome Mr. and Mrs. Biteen".  Put us at ease right away.

We fortified ourselves with an excellent breakfast.  Love the passion fruit display!

Hoping to avoid some of the crowds, we arrived at the National Palace Museum at 9 a.m.  Jeff and I are always surprised at the low admission prices (especially for seniors!) at attractions in Asia.  This museum was no exception: the equivalent of $5.30CDN to see all the treasures of China!  Compare that to the exorbitant prices at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto (oops, I just checked the ROM's website and they've actually lowered their general admission from $24 to $15, but that's still three times the price of the NPM!).  The NPM is laid out very well, and visitors are directed to follow a certain path, which keeps the crowds flowing.  By 9:30, the exhibits were packed, but as we moved on to different floors, the crowds thinned, and we leisurely took our time checking out the most beautiful relics that Chiang Kai-Shek brought with him to Taiwan in 1949.  Speaking of CK-S, mainland China claims that he stole the collection, while CK-S claimed he was taking the collection to a safe place.  I truly wonder what would have become of all of this had it remained in China during the Cultural Revolution.  When we were in Beijing, we saw the empty Ming tombs - angry mobs destroyed all the treasures and the remains of the emperor during the Cultural Revolution.  Who's to say they would have preserved what lay within the rooms of the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, and mansions of the lesser princes?

But I digress ...  Not sure if I've ever had the stamina to roam through a museum for more than an hour before, but we spent almost three hours admiring porcelain, jade, calligraphy, furniture, snuff bottles, etc. from ancient times through the end of the Qing dynasty.  No photos allowed, but I took these on my iPhone, and would have snuck more if a guard hadn't yelled at me (yes, he was right).  We were pleasantly surprised that the English translation on all of the displays was perfect!
Tucked away on the 4th floor is a charming teahouse, where we had a delicious lunch.  Unlike the museum itself, the restaurant was not crowded, perhaps because most of the visitors were on group tours, with lunch served elsewhere.

We spent the afternoon touring various monuments in the city, easily getting around by subway.  Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall reminded me of the Lincoln and Jefferson monuments in Washington, but the steps are roped off, and no one is allowed a close look at the statue within!  The National Theatre and Concert Hall are situated on opposite sides of the same vast plaza as the CK-S memorial.  Then it was off to Longshan Temple, the most important Buddhist temple in Taiwan.  We ate our smoothies and were content to sit in the shade and people-watch.

You're probably wondering why I have not included more photos (some of the above were copied from internet websites, the others are from my iPhone).  Well, I have to admit that later that evening, as I was waiting for Jeff to fetch us a couple of cold drinks in the night market, I accidentally deleted all of my photos!  Yes, I know it happens to many of us, but from now on, I will be much more careful!

Speaking of the night market, Jeff and I got there around 9 p.m. - way past our normal dinner hour.  We wandered through the narrow lanes, which were becoming more and more crowded as the night wore on.  By 10 p.m. we could hardly push our way along, and the line-ups for the disappointing street food were 20-30 deep.  We finally found an open area with tables, and sat down to try the famous beef noodle soup (camera back in action).  It was awful!  In the photo Jeff is eating an over-fried piece of breaded chicken (well, we think it was chicken ...).  As we were leaving the market close to 11 p.m., young people began to unroll their wares right in the middle of the traffic-free streets.  Lots of cheap shoes and clothing.  We were not enticed.

The next morning, we set out for the Juming Museum.  Ju Ming is a world-famous sculptor, whose works are installed all over the world.  His museum is located about 40 km north of Taipei.  We had a typical Dale-and-Jeff adventure getting to the museum.  Blind faith gets us through most of our travels! First, our concierge directed a taxi driver to take us to a bus station.  At the station, we finally found the Keelung bus and made ourselves comfortable.  There are very few super highways in Taiwan, so after half an hour, the bus left the expressway and wound its way through unattractive towns and dusty roads.  The trip took about 1 1/2 hours.  By the time we reached Jinshan, we had already decided to splurge on a taxi back to Taipei after the museum visit.  We alighted from the bus, crossed the street, and luckily found the free shuttle bus to the museum (kindness of strangers ...).    The journey was very much worth it - this museum was a delight!

The museum includes a number of pavilions, but most of the sculptures are in a huge, sprawling outdoor park.  Several themes run through the collection.  Here are some of our favourites:

The tai chi sculptures.  In fact, we were already familiar with this series because one graces the Exchange Square building in downtown Hong Kong.  There are also Ju Ming tai chi sculptures in Montreal - I thought they were hockey players, and I guess I was not alone, since some fans decorated one with a giant Carey Price hockey jersey!

          The life-size army.

       


            The tin men.

    The navy and the parachutists.

My favourite - people on their phones.  Jeff's favourite - the impatient husband.

Our taxi ride ($35CDN) back to Taipei took less than an hour.  Lynn, a colleague of Jeff's who works in the Taipei office of Manulife, picked us up and off we went to lunch and then the Story House Museum.

The Tudor-style Story House is an oddity in Taipei.  It was built in 1913 by a Chinese tea merchant to entertain his guests.   At that time, it was in quiet section of the city, right on the river.  Today, it sits under a busy expressway, close to the domestic airport!  The exhibits rotate every few months.  When we visited, there was a display of shopping bags.  Great way to decorate a college dorm!

Lynn drove us around some of the nicer parts of the city, and pointed out the extensive bike trail along both sides of the river (flat terrain - my kind of bicycling).  There are numerous baseball diamonds, too (another homesick moment).  Later that afternoon, Lynn very kindly took us to the airport.

Although we struck out when it came to food, the other two reasons we went to Taipei were definitely hits.