National Palace Museum

The National Palace Museum in the baclground
The National Palace Museum in the background

After a late night last night, I got a late start this morning. I took in only one site, Taipei’s National Palace Museum.

The sky was overcast, and the forecast called for showers this morning, so I wanted an indoor activity. My guidebook highly recommends the National Palace Museum. It says that the museum has the largest collection of Chinese art in the world and, “arguably [the] finest collection.”

The museum is not very convenient to get to by transit, so I took an Uber. Yes, Uber is in Taipei.

On the way to the museum, some drizzle started to freckle the Uber’s windshield. I patted myself on the back for choosing an indoor activity this morning rather than trudging through the drizzle. By the way, patting yourself on the back while seat-buckled in the back of a car is more difficult than it sounds. I hurt my shoulder. Or maybe it’s not difficult for most people, but rather just for me. I can be kind of klutzy.

Crowds at the National Palace Museum

Celadon funerary grain jar with sprigged reliefs, Western Jin dynasty, 265-316 CE at the National Palace Museum
Celadon funerary grain jar with sprigged reliefs, Western Jin dynasty, 265-316 CE at the National Palace Museum

Regardless of what’s inside, the National Palace Museum is gorgeous from the outside. It’s housed in a beautiful palace with a verdant mountain as a backdrop. In front, across a valley, there’s another lush mountain. Two stone lions stand guard over the museum in front of a long promenade and stairs leading up to the building.

Visiting the museum on a Sunday that was considerably less than sunny, such as today, for example, proved to be not the best choice. A lot of other people had the same idea. The museum was crowded. Very crowded.

Just buying a ticket and renting an audioguide consumed a lot of time. Come on, people. Move it along. I’m not getting any younger. Time is short.

Lidded twin conjoined vase with birds and flowers in falangcai polychrome enamels, Qing dynasty, Qianlong reign, 1736-1795
Lidded twin conjoined vase with birds and flowers in falangcai polychrome enamels, Qing dynasty, Qianlong reign, 1736-1795

The exhibits span three floors, each with a warren of galleries in the largish building. Between the dense, ochlophobia- and claustrophobia-inducing crowds and my usual glazing over after spending too long in a museum, after a while, I was hoping to become infected by a brain worm that would eat the mush that my brain was turning into. As a side effect, the brain worm would qualify me to be a member of Donald Trump’s cabinet. So, there’s that.

(With the help of the worldwebwide thingy, today I learned that a fear of crowds outside of social interactions is called oclophobia. Fear of social interactions in crowded situations, such as parties and public speaking, is called demophobia. I have that too. Then again, I’m not sure how reliable the websites I found are. I worry about that too. Is there a name for the fear that you’re being fed bs on the wide webworld thingy?)

Nevertheless, I persisted.

Visiting the National Palace Museum

Revolving vase at the National Palace Museum
Revolving vase at the National Palace Museum

There’s a lot of stuff in the National Palace Museum. It’s possible that there were more people than stuff today, but there was still a lot of stuff. There was calligraphy, paintings, an exhibition on storytelling through paintings, ancient bronze and jade weapons, ceramics, porcelain, lacquerware, statues, and furniture from the Qing and Ming dynasties.

A bronze axe head on display at the museum dated from circa 1300-1046 BCE and had a turquoise-inlaid animal mask design. The audioguide suggested that, considering the design, the piece was probably for show and not for use in battle.

The world would be a far better place if all weapons were only for show, not for battle. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’ve been called worse.

Some of the porcelain and ceramics sported beautifully intricate decorations.

Bronze axe (yue) head with turquoise-inlaid animal mask design, Late Shang period, ca. 1300-1046 BCE
Bronze axe (yue) head with turquoise-inlaid animal mask design, Late Shang period, ca. 1300-1046 BCE

And a few pieces were both beautifully decorated and intricately constructed. There was a display case containing a few “revolving vases.” According to the sign beside it, a revolving vase is, “A set of two vases, an inner and outer one, in the same piece, involves a method by which the neck or body is designed so that one of the vases can spin, hence the term ‘revolving vase.'”

There was also an exquisite double vase in which two vases were conjoined.

Green Jade Flower Holder in the shape of fish-creature, Qianlong Reign, Qing dynasty, 1736 - 1795  CE.
Green Jade Flower Holder in the shape of fish-creature, Qianlong Reign, Qing dynasty, 1736 – 1795 CE.

Another significant display was the Ding cauldron of Duke Mao, which dates from the Late Western Zhou Dynasty, circa 9th century to 771 BCE. According to the sign beside it, “The Ding cauldron of Duke Mao is one of the most renowned treasures of the National Palace Museum. Inscribed on its interior surface are 500 characters, the longest among all known Chinese bronze inscriptions. That the text is reflective of the history of the Western Zhou dynasty is what makes the ding cauldron so precious.”

In addition to gawking for gawking’s sake in the museum, I gained new knowledge at the museum. (New for me. For all I know, I may be the only person in the world who was ignorant about it. I suspect that’s true of a great many things. But how would I know?)

For example, inkstones were a thing. I didn’t know that, but probably because I never thought about it. They were stones, often attractively shaped either naturally or by hand, with an indentation for holding ink. The museum had a large collection of those, including at least one fish-shaped inkstone. I mention this for the benefit of one particular reader. She knows who she is.

Fish-shaped Songhua inkstone Kangxi reign (1662-1722), Qing dynasty (among other items)
Fish-shaped Songhua inkstone
Kangxi reign (1662-1722), Qing dynasty (among other items)

I also learned what a funerary grain jar is. It’s a jar. It is used to hold grain. And the jar was buried with the deceased. I guess it’d be a major social faux pas to let anyone go hungry in the afterlife. I hope they supplied some greens, protein, and maybe a little wine too. A ghost can’t live by grains alone, you know.

Speaking of wine. The museum had a few bronze wine vessels. They were very large. I’m only guessing, but they’d each probably hold the equivalent of a half-dozen or so 750 ml bottles of wine. I guess the ancient Chinese liked to party.

There was also a jade flower holder in the shape of a fish creature. That’s what the label beside it said. According to the audioguide, there were two fish in the process of metamorphosing into dragons. The larger fish was farther along in the process.

Hu wine vessel of Song, Late Western Zhou Dynasty, c. 9th century to 771 B.C.E.
Hu wine vessel of Song, Late Western Zhou Dynasty, c. 9th century to 771 B.C.E.

That piece was particularly educational. I always thought baby dragons were delivered not by storks, that’s just for human babies, but by albatrosses. Now I know that dragons start as fish and transmute into dragons at some stage in their development. It just goes to show that you can learn a lot at museums.

Ding cauldron of Duke Mao, Late Western Zhou Dynasty, c. 9th century to 771 B.C.E.
Ding cauldron of Duke Mao, Late Western Zhou Dynasty, c. 9th century to 771 B.C.E.

The Jade Cabbage

The National Palace Museum might think that its most renowned piece is the Ding cauldron of Duke Mao, but its most popular would appear to be the Jadeite Cabbage. It usually resides in a spot on the third floor of the museum, but there was a special exhibition called “Beauty Speaks for Itself” on the first floor when I was there.

Jadeite Cabbage at the National Palace Museum
Jadeite Cabbage at the National Palace Museum

The exhibit displayed several exquisite pieces of ceramics, sculptures, textiles, jewelry, and more, with the “and more” part including a temporarily relocated Jadeite Cabbage.

The exhibition had a short, snaking line that the museum used to control crowds into it. They didn’t do a good job of limiting the crowds.

The flow through the exhibition wound along a narrow snaking path constructed within the space. They let a lot of people in at the time. The path was crowded and, in spots, impassable for a while. The Jadeite Cabbage was in the last display case in the exhibition.

How can I describe the crowds around the Jadeite Cabbage? If you’ve ever been to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, you have a sense of the feeling. If you’ve ever been to see the Mona Lisa anywhere else, you should try to get your money back. It was a fake.

The crowds around the Jadeite Cabbage were nowhere near as large as the crowds for the Mona Lisa the few times I was there. But the space allocated for the Jadeite Cabbage crowd was probably proportionately much smaller. There was a mob in front of it, and seeing the cabbage from the back of the mob was impossible for a man of my lack of stature.

The way it works in practice is sort of like the way the crowds worked at the Mona Lisa when I was there. You stand at the back of the crowd, and then you ooze forward in a process similar to osmosis toward the glass in front of the Mona Lisa or, in this case, the display case containing the Jadeite Cabbage.

The difference is that here, the crowds were ruder than at the Louvre. Some people pushed aggressively ahead of me. And when anyone managed to get to the front, they spent five minutes trying to take a perfect picture of it. I would never have been able to see it had I not violently knocked over some particularly old people and young toddlers ahead of me. I’m joking. That’s not something I would ever do. I’d think about it, but I’d never do it.

However, and this I am serious about, I’ve never worked so hard to suppress a scream as I did today. It wasn’t a scream of physical pain that I had to suppress, but rather a result of an extreme case of oclophobia. I didn’t know that I suffered that strongly from it. I did successfully suppress the scream, but it was close. I did make some faint, but likely audible squealing noises.

Oh, about the Jadeite Cabbage. It’s amazing. That anyone can coax that detail out of jade to create a good impression of a cabbage is nothing short of astounding. They used the natural colouring of the jade to create appropriate white and green patches.

The artist of the Jadeite Cabbage is unknown, but it is known that it was created in the 19th century.

I saved the Jadeite Cabbage for last, mainly because I didn’t know where it was, and after traipsing through pretty much the whole National Palace Museum, I finally asked someone where I could find it. After spending much of the morning in the museum, and particularly after experiencing that mob in front of the Jadeite Cabbage, I really, really, really had to get out of the museum. So, it was going to be the last thing I saw, no matter how much or how little I’d seen before it.

It was around lunchtime when I headed out. I thought about having lunch at the café near the exit, but the line was so long that I’d probably still be waiting to get into the café at closing time. Then where would I be?

So I took an Uber to my next destination and had some street food (a scallion pancake). My next destination is a story for a later post.


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