The National Palace Museum

Yesterday was National Palace Museum time. Everyone was surprised to hear I'd made it this long without going over to have a look (I knew I would go eventually, so no problem). Took a bus out to it with Jean-Michel. He'd been there twice before, but had no problem with going again.

The first thing about the museum is that it was surprisingly small. Smaller even than the Fine Art Museum. There's a severely diminished display area due to renovations, however the true collection is just massive. Even if in full operation, the museum would only be capable of being displaying a tiny fraction of its collection at any one time. As it was we were able to complete the whole tour that afternoon.

Still, lots of stuff left to see. No photos allowed of course, but some of the paintings were just mad detailed--and big--and old. There was this room set up chronologically, where you went around it seeing all the changes happening over thousands of years.

There were also calligraphy, woodworking and bronze exhibits, but, after painting, I found the jade section most interesting. Some didn't look very impressive--an axe, that didn't even look very sharp, but then you glanced over at the date--"4000 B.C."--some really ancient pieces. Later stuff was in magnifying glass-detail (magnifying glasses attached), in the most intricate and fragile-looking shapes. There were hollowed-out lattices and linked chains carved from the solid jade. Really impressive stuff.