We decided to celebrate Double 10 Day by going to visit the National Palace Museum in Taipei.
It was the most "Taiwanese" thing we could think of :)
Here's a mini history lesson:
[Thanks Wikipedia]Double 10 Day (Oct 10th) is the National Day of the Republic of China. It commemorates the start of the Wuchang Uprising of October 10, 1911, which led to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in China and establishment of the Republic of China on January 1, 1912.
As a result of the Chinese Civil War, the Government of the Republic of China lost control of mainland China and relocated to Taiwan in 1949.
The National Day is now mainly celebrated in Taiwan.
The National Palace Museum in Taipei houses the world's largest and most valuable
individual collection of Chinese art treasures.
Its art treasures were taken from the palaces of Beijing's Forbidden City.
It has over 700,000 pieces of artifacts
encompassing over 8,000 years of Chinese history!
During the 1960s and 1970s, the National Palace Museum was used by the Kuomintang to support its claim that the Republic of China was the sole legitimate government of all China, in that it was the sole preserver of traditional Chinese culture amid social change and the Cultural Revolution in mainland China, and tended to emphasize Chinese nationalism.
The People's Republic of China (PRC) government has long said that the collection was stolen and that it legitimately belongs in China, but Taiwan has defended its collection as a necessary act
to protect the pieces from destruction, especially during the Cultural Revolution.
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Our day trip to Taipei for the museum visit took less than 12 hours (proof that in fact we are living on a small island...even though we have yet to see the ocean). We voyaged by taxi-high speed train-mass transit system-bus and back again with 5 people for under US$130. Amazing! It's not something we could do every week, but it opened our eyes up to future possibilities :)
Left home at 9 a.m. by taxi to go to High Speed Railway (HSR) station.
Left home at 9 a.m. by taxi to go to High Speed Railway (HSR) station.
Kids excited to see the first drinking fountain in Taiwan!
Even the train station doesn't leave the people 7-Eleven'less
(it would create separation anxiety for sure)
The HSR was incredibly clean and organized.
People actually did line up in their designated waiting lines...we followed suit.
3x the leg room of airlines!
Hopefully this video came through. Theo was hilarious as we went through tunnels :)
The bullet trains are on super high tracks that offer incredible views.
Once in Taipei's train station we managed to look lost and confused enough to warrant the help of a couple strangers to point us in the right direction of the subway. Once we got on, it was pretty easy...
...the stops were all written out in Pinyin and the announcement board would flash between the two.
I was a little nervous about what to do when we got off the mass transit system, not knowing exactly where to catch the right bus. But look at what greeted us as we walked out the station door!
Problem solved!
Again, on the bus some friendly people let us know where to get off.
Once outside the National Palace Museum, we realized we left all the food selections behind at the initial bus station. We braved the only option we found. Braver now than before, at despite our limited Chinese abilities, we pointed to some chicken (pork is off my list for awhile...need to retro-post about that soon), and then dove in with chopsticks.
Hunger helped, but it really was quite good.
Theo and I had to eat in the gutter though...no room on the sidewalk.
And there she is: The National Palace Museum.
Feelin' the Taiwanese cultural pride.
And appreciated the unexpected free admission :)
The exhibits were interesting, especially the intricate fruit pit carvings. We stood in line for quite some time to see the famous "jade cabbage" as well. Theo took his 2-hour nap in the middle of it all. The boys did pretty good with their kid-version English audio guides and we visited and revisited their favorite exhibit below, where they could get their photos taken and
inserted into a cartoon rendition of the Qing Dynasty.
It's almost as hard as "Where's Waldo," but given some serious study, I bet you can find the boys.
Once the kids had reached their museum saturation level,
we visited the "Benevolence Garden" adjacent to the museum.
(Julien's vending machine fish food lasted 5 minutes...Ryley's was still being given granule by granule an hour later with a threat of use it or lose it!)
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