2013 Taiwan Trip Day 4 (National Palace Museum, Toy Shopping)

For Day 4 we visited the National Palace Museum, and went to this building full of arcades and Japanese toys and figurines…

No need to apply makeup as the weather is so cold that my skin didn’t become oily at all… And that I was too lazy to apply makeup and all hahaha.

The museum had two major exhibits at the moment, one was on Da Vinci’s work and the other was on the art and literature collected by Qian Long.

On the way up the entrance I saw these cute grandma’s busy with their tai chi I think (?)

It looks really majestic. And that the backstory for this museum was that during the Japanese occupation, many of the Forbidden City’s (in the north) palace treasures were moved to Southwestern China to avoid being squandered to destroyed by the Japanese. These 700,000 item collection was then moved to Taiwan during the revolution, for reasons I am not too sure of.

They currently have a modernized exhibit of famous Taiwanese personalities donning Qian Long’s iconic hat.

As well as a modernized expression of what would have been a coral sculpture back in the olden days…

They even transformed the ancient painting of Qian Long’s palace into a modern 8-bit world. How cute is that?

What amused me though was that the main pride and joy of this museum was this ancient stone shaped like a slab of tasty pork. I had to wait ten minutes before I was able to take these photos as there are tons of people swarming around this stone. The last time I encountered such a crowd was when I was looking at the Hope Diamond in the Smithsonian Museum…

And contrary to the colorful Chinese porcelain that comes to mind, this is a special section in the museum featuring white ceramics with intricate designs over them. There are no blue paint markings whatsoever, and that the textures of the designs bring the pieces to life…

The museum looks so majestic at night!

Even in the bus on the way back to the hotel, the Christmas spirit is felt as there are a lot of ribbon decorations in it. Our relatives tell us that this is already a far cry from Taiwan 20 years ago because back then no one even recognized Christmas. It is only now that Santa Claus, Christmas items and gift giving have become commonplace in December..

My dinner is a carton of almond milk and a bowl of century egg congee from 7/11.

After dinner, my brother and I headed out to the toy building near our hotel. The building is full of arcades, Japanese figurines and other toys. The fourth floor is concentrated on the Japanese toys though…

Figurines EVERYWHERE

This store happens to specialize in gundam, and sells the toy kits themselves as well as other craft materials related to gundam building..

This mall happens to have a branch of Mag Freak as well, but it’s waaay smaller than the one we visited on our first night in Taiwan. Lots of AKB48 goods to be seen!