National Palace Museum

1. Woke early in the morning /
1. Emailed my boss
2. Wrote some logs
3. Ate a terrific breakfast of steamed buns with vegetables, and cool egg pastries, that Mei Ai had gleaned from a breakfast shop. Delicious spicy sauce as well.
4. Finally sleepyhead Winnie roused herself and stumbled into the common area for a morning hug--she'd been up late reading papers ;D
5. We chowed the rest of the breakfast food and decided, in light of incredible heat and not too much interest, to redirect our trip to the zoo towards a big national museum instead.
2. Again we hopped on the metro. This time we got off, grabbed some delicious juice at a convenience store ;) and hopped on a bus. Got off right at the museum, which loomed majestically in front of a jungle of wooded trees. We walked down the long walkway that led to the museum doors, goofing off in the sweltering sun. Winnie was telling me about big studded metal ceremonial cauldrons called ding as we posed by one for a pic. 
3. The first floor of the museum alone held countless types of relics of Chinese history. Apparently, republican revolutionaries, fearful of the destruction of artworks by the wanton bombings and sectarian violence of the Chinese civil war, carefully transported them to the coast and shipped them to Taiwan, which now has some absurd proportion of Chinese historical artifacts. We started off looking at a variety of documents--imperial diaries in beautiful script with silk covers. I tried to decipher some red circles that accompanied the script. Sometimes, Winnie told me, circles in the script act as periods, but these looked more artistically placed, and they were in a different color of ink. We checked out some "memorials" (memorandums?) which were reports sent to the emperor from his governors and officials. It was hilarious--they were written in beautiful, flawless script and accompanied by illustrations of buildings, watermelons and the like. When they arrived at the emperor's desk, they were annotated with comments for the officials, copied to the archives (ancient Chinese took documentation and archival seriously!) then sent back to the officials. One long document on a new method of farming that seemed to be working well got the three character comment (Winnie told me) "Try it out."
4. We browsed through other exhibits full of beautiful porcelain (Winnie liked the classic blue on white designs), magnificent jewelry and hair pins (because it was taboo for Chinese aristocratic men (or women?) to cut their hair), bronze Buddha sculptures (it was common for visitors to stop and spend a few seconds praying to these), and more. We took a break to grab to hua (soy flower), a peanut flavored sweet tofu snack, from the museum cafe.
5. Then, the highlight of the trip--we went to see the museum's prize possession, its Mona Lisa--the jadeite cabbage. This beautiful vegetable, about the size of a supermarket bok choi and carved from solid jade, was truly a marvel. It was meant to represent the prosperity of the Chinese court and Chinese agriculture, and I have to say the artist was spot on. The cabbage glistened with vitality; and nestled among the leaves a little cricket completed the effect.
6. Of course, nearby there was another, sillier artifact--it was a piece of stone of a particular type carved to look exactly like a delicious piece of cooked pork belly. It did look tasty ;)
7. We hit the museum gift shop next. It exceeded all my expectations. I got more stuff than I expected, although probably less than I should have :P I always skimp on gifts for my friends and relatives :/ I got a really awesome jadeite cabbage bottle opener for Laurelhurst, and a set of chopsticks and chopstick holders that looked like swords for Winnie ;)
8. After the museum, we went to Winnie's grandma's apartment, picked up Winnie's grandma, parents, and Indonesian helper, and had some hot pot. Had a good conversation with the family--one of the few times we were all together!
9. Went to a tai chi lesson after that. I tried to participate but had a hard time remembering all the tai chi from my old lessons at WCC! We kept turning around so I couldn't keep following the teacher. And I couldn't understand when he called a break and tried to correct our motions. It was still fun, though. Winnie and I got a big bottle of water afterwards. 
10. Went home, goofed off a bit, and hit the hay.