CHINA TRIP Day 2: Precious & Beautiful

Current time: Wednesday, 5/19; 9:08PM in Taipei = 9:08AM ET = 3:08PM HST

After just six hours or so of sleep, we headed out for the first time since we’ve been here. We headed toward Yang Zhe University and listened to a lecture on Chinese paintings before we got to look around at the National Palace Museum. Afterward, we checked out Chiang Kai-shek’s Residence Park. We didn’t get to see his house, but we saw lots of flowers and the temple where he and his wife got married. After that, we went to the Shihlin Night Market, which was absolutely ridiculous.

The lecture on Chinese paintings and the complementary trip to the National Palace Museum were both pretty cool. We went through the ceramics/porcelain, ivory, bronze, calligraphy, and painting galleries. I’m sure there were more we went to, but I can’t recall them right now. Our tour guide was excellent, but I found it interesting that he kept describing everything as “precious & beautiful” when he was explaining the significance of various exhibits. It was pretty cool to see the evolution of Chinese art in terms of what was deemed important. For example, landscape paintings were hugely common from the early 2nd century and later on we saw more people in the paintings. The evolution of ceramics as well went from things made from bronze to porcelain to stoneware covered in glaze influenced by India.

Oh, and while we were waiting to for our tour guide, a group of elderly women came up to Colleen and started saying stuff to her in Chinese. They then grabbed her hair and one of our student ambassadors translated and I guess those women loved her hair. It was hilarious because she wasn't quite sure what was going on. But her hair is blonde, thick, and wavy which is not found natural at all in Asia so I guess they were enthralled. Haha.

There was one funny story that went with an exhibit that was considered one of the most important (again, also “precious and beautiful”). Apparently, people flock to this exhibit, wait in a long line, and a security guard lets a certain number of people in at a time. The exhibit revolved around a cabbage carved from ivory. The leafy part was green, and blending into the green was a cricket (I think?) and another bug. The funny part was that this exhibit came with a story and this ivory cabbage was, at some point in time, a highly revered dowry. It was ideal because of its symbolism (the white part signified purity) and it’s supposed to be good luck. The potential concubine of the king at the time gave the ivory cabbage as part of her dowry but she was never able to conceive because the king was in love with her sister. How ironic.

So of course I had to get souvenirs related to the cabbage. Haha. It’s a story we’re all going to remember and it’ll be a funny inside joke.

Now we had a tour bus and tour guide Jimmy take us to all these places and in order to get our attention he’d ask us random trivia about Taiwan’s history [apparently he studied linguistics at UH Manoa and worked in Hawai’i but he thought Hawai’i was the 49th state. I had to correct him =P]. If we answered one of his trivia questions he said he’d buy us a beer. Then Prof. Noble made him change it to ‘beverage’ and Jimmy just said ‘drink’ instead haha. But at the Night Market he took us to a booth for food [it was delicious!] and ordered a couple other random dishes for us to try. The one that kept coming up in conversation was “stinky tofu” (which is the literal translation, believe it or not). It wasn’t stinky, in my opinion, but it didn’t taste that great either.

My group took a walk down to the original Night Market, which was basically full of shops. It reminded me much of the Ehwa area in Korea where we went shopping often last summer. There were definitely some Korean beauty/makeup stores I recognized. There were lots of clothes, shoes, and accessories I wanted to. I’m really going to have to control myself since we have three more cities to go and I only have one suitcase. Although I may buy a second one in Shanghai or Hong Kong if I need to and a big backpack while I’m here to help with carry-on stuff.

We also noticed that there are sooo many motor scooters! In some places there’s a scooter lane, and it’s like a giant herd of scooters travelling everywhere. I’m sure mainland China will have more bikes than motor scooters but walking around on the roads do get a little intimidating since pedestrians don’t have the right of way.

Anyway, it’s 9:35PM and since it’s been a ridiculously muggy day, I’m so ready for a shower.

Peace,
Jen.