#498 Taiwan's National Palace Museum

Taiwan's National Palace Museum holds many ancient Chinese artifacts.  Collections from the 10th century forward were sent for safekeeping from the Palace Museum in Beijing to Taipei in 1948 with Communist control of the mainland imminent.

With so many amazing artifacts in the collection, we are surprised to learn that the 2 most prized possessions include the Jadeite Cabbage, a piece of Jadeite carved to look like cabbage, and the meat-shaped stone, cut to look like a piece of pork cooked in soy sauce.  Sure enough, the exhibit room for these two celebrity pieces is packed with museum visitors.

We admire this food art for a suitable length of time, then head down to a much more fascinating exhibit: The Tibetan Dragon Sutra: the Great Treasury of Buddhist Scriptures in the National Palace Museum.  Handwritten in gold ink on cobalt-blue stationery, these manuscripts from the 17th century are stunning.

These impressive manuscripts put us in a library frame of mind.  So we end our visit at the National Palace Museum library building.

Yours in saving the best for last,

Mary