Overwhelmed by Art and Chinese Tourists

Our last full day in Taipei was rainy and cooler - a perfect day to go to the National Palace Museum!  So thought all the tourists in Taipei!  It started out lovely enough.  Fairly quiet.  We had not brought our cameras as their website said they were not allowed.  We decided to start on the 3rd floor where the Jade display was.  When we got there, everyone had out their phones and were snapping away.  It got a little difficult to see things as people would stand directly in front of an exhibit to frame their picture - then keep standing there to look at the picture on their screens to see if they needed to retake it.  Only then would they move on.  So I ended up reading over people's shoulders a lot.  It turns out that taking pictures must be OK - just no flash.  So of course when I took one picture on my phone -  it flashed!  But I had to take it for a friend - there was an entire room devoted to artwork of roosters!
Down to the first floor next to see the special exhibits and see something other than Jade.  I was innocently standing in front of an exhibit reading the description when I was suddenly surrounded by people shoving and pushing to get to the front.  The man next to me whips out his phone and rudely elbows me aside so he can stand center front to take a picture.  It is the dreaded Chinese tourist tour!  I realize there is no way I can win - so I attempt to get out of the crowd, but I keep getting pushed back by the eager crowd.  Finally I push and elbow my way out - otherwise who knows - I might have become of the Chinese tour group - just sucked along.  I try looking at another exhibit - and the same thing happens - another Chinese tourist group comes from the opposite direction.  I catch Mike's eye across the room and mouth, "Let's get out of here"!  We escaped to the second floor where it was relatively quiet.

Just a short explanation of what is in the National Palace Museum and why it is so important.  In the late 1940's, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Government decided to move all of the national treasures to Taiwan before the Communists took over.  So a lot of Chinese nationalists visit Taiwan to see the treasures.  This is from Wikipedia:
" It has a permanent collection of nearly 700,000 pieces of ancient Chinese imperial artifacts and artworks, making it one of the largest of its type in the world. The collection encompasses 8,000 years of history of Chinese art from the Neolithic age to the modern.^[5] Most of the collection are high quality pieces collected by China's emperors."  

The jade collection itself was overwhelming - and they can display only a tiny portion at a time.  So you can imagine how many pieces they have!

Heading for the Heights - Part 2

I am anxious to get back to the States and see if my blog page - the instruction, not the one you see - still shows up only in Japanese and keeps acting very strange.  Hopefully it will show up in English again.

Back to the Heights:

Mike getting blessed by many red wishes.  We were at the Mountain of the Highest Spiritually in the World

This is only a small part of the temple -I didn't want to show all the scaffolding!  You can see the glory of all the scaffolding on Husbands blog.

This is also a big tea tasting area.  The plants in the lower right are tea trees - more the size of bushes.

A bit of humor along the gondola trip.  Maybe it is too high for real cows?

Next onto Taipei 101.  Sometimes you can get some cool pictures from the tallest building in the area. This was a gray hazy day - but that's the way it goes.  but it is the fastest elevator in the world!  My ears  hurt!

Heading for the heights - Maokong Gondola & Taipei 101

Another gray day, but not suppose to rain so we are heading as high as we can go.  First up is the Maokong Gondola ride.  This is pretty neat as you can the cars only hold up to 8 people and everyone has to sit.  Not like the Albuquerque Tram where everyone stands.  This is at the metro station at the Taipei zoo Station.

 -

A short walk away and we are at the Maokong Gondola.  We have been getting pretty good about locating the elevators instead of climbing all those stairs ever since our Gold Mining trip- got to save the knees for better things.

A look back at Taipei on our way to the top.

This gondola is a lot like most tram systems - except of course their are temples!  This one was at the last stop at the top and required a short hike to get to.  This is Tianen, a Daoist Temple.

 I love that there is a sense of humor - most of the statues are actually very serious.

We rode the tram back a stop to make a stop at the major temple in the area.  It was named Zhinan Temple and is a multi-faith temple - for all people.

I will continue this in the next post - as my Japanese blog is acting all funky again.

One of the Lucky Days!

And onto the momentous experience of an annual parade in honor of a temple.  This will just be still shots - I did try many times to cut down the number of pictures!  There was everything - from the serious to the dancers, the clown, floats, religious relics, costumes and really loud noises!

And last but not least - the photographer photographing the crowd and the cars with boom boxes in the rear.