Our first stop of the day was really interesting. It was the National Palace Museum, which houses over 60,000 Chinese antiquities that Chiangmai Kai-Shek “rescued” from the fighting that was around the Forbidden City as he fled China.
If you peer beside the magnifying glass, you can get an idea of how small the stone is, that the carvings are on. Cindy, our guide, said, “ The ancients seemed to spend a lot of time carving onto impossibly small things. They must have had a lot of time on their hands.”
The two things in the front were given to dying people to hold, in the belief that all of their money and their luck will pass to the next generation.
The same tradition is still done today, except that it is now red envelopes stuffed with money.
You pour the wine in the top, then tip it and pour it out through the droopy neck. It honestly doesn’t seem like a very efficient process to me.
These are ancient seals. I was surprised when Cindy told us that seals (she called them stamps) are still in use in Taiwan to this day. When people make big purchases, like a house or a car, they bring their personal seals to stamp onto the documents.
Another wine pouring vessel.
Loved this one. Her chubby cheeks!
This one was INSANE. The ball has 16 layers of ivory and it took 3 generations over a hundred years to complete.
Of course there were many more things that we saw. We spent an hour and a half and we barely scratched the surface. You could easily spend a whole day here.
Taipei 101, which was the tallest building in the world from 2004 to 2010. We stopped here for lunch. Some of us decided to go to the observation deck on the 86th floor.
Remember recently, when I went to the Eureka sky deck in Melbourne with Scott for a Little Adventure? This one was far more interesting.
Taipei is ringed by mountains, so there was a lot of variety. It wasn’t just a city scape.
Plus, it’s the only building in the world that has its Tuned Mass Damper on display to the public.
This is the thing that stops skyscrapers from breaking apart during earthquakes and typhoons. It sways as a counterbalance to keep the building intact.
It is 5 stories tall and weighs 680 metric tonnes. I’m not usually drawn to hydraulics, but I found this interesting.
Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall. It’s huge.
He died in 1975, and that’s when the government decided to build it.
Finished in 1980. Both his and his son’s bodies are not here, as they wanted to be buried in China. They are mummified, like Chairman Mao and the Kim family of North Korean. The hope is that one day China will allow them to be taken back, but I think there’s fat chance of that happening any time soon.
On the 4th level, there’s an enormous statue of him.
He looks benevolent, don’t you think?
It’s part of a large area, with the state theatre and library housed in the orange-roofed buildings. Blogless Sandy and I went for a walk outside, and I was passed by 3 school groups. They must’ve been learning English, because lots of them called out, “Hello!” “Hi!” as they went past.
Then it was back in the bus, on our way to a weird little temple.
The street view was as you’d expect. But the first courtyard?
It was as if Disney workers on crack designed their version of a Taiwanese temple. The place was crammed with statues like these, all made from wire and cloth. It was bizarre.
Longshan temple looked more normal once I moved in from the outer courtyard.
As you know, I’ve been to quite a few temples in the last few years. I couldn’t help noticing something I’ve never seen before.
Many people were tossing two red wooden chips on the ground, then picking them up and throwing them down again. Some people would only do it once or twice, but others would do it for a while. Then, they’d suddenly put the chips in a container, grab a long stick from a bin, stare at it, put it back and then race away.
I asked Cindy what was going on.
“Oh, we believe that
HOLY SHIT… I’m on the 6th floor and we just had a mini earthquake!!! My room was swaying and I could see the water level in Wanda moving.
WOW.
Anyway, what was I saying?
Cindy said, “ We believe that when we ask the god a question, we then toss the chips. If they both land the same way, then the answer is yes. But if you really want to be sure that the answer is correct, you throw them again. If they land the same again, then you can be sure it is certain. If they land differently than the first time, you have to ask the question again, but in a slightly different way.”
She laughed. “Sometimes I have been there for an hour!”
Our last stop before heading back to the hotel was a culinary one. Apparently, pineapple cakes are one of Taiwan’s way famous foods. We were going to make some for ourselves.
It wasn’t all that challenging. Basically, you wrap a biscuit dough around a pineapple and melon purée. Then they set us loose in the gift shop while our cakes were baked.
The packaging they chose to present them in was a little unfortunate, but the cakes were nice.
Blogless Sandy and I went back to the night market for dinner. This time, we had steamed pork dumplings and they were fabulous. We were served 10 for less than $5.
On the way home, we stopped at a shop across the road from the hotel and Blogless Sandy tried Bubble Tea. She liked it. ( I won’t try it because I can’t stand milk in my tea or coffee. )
Tomorrow, we leave the city and head out on our trek to circumnavigate the island.
Dad joke of the day:
