gugong bowuyuan
also known as the national palace museum and houses, according to its pamphlet, the finest collection of chinese arts and antiquities in the world. i do not think they're lying. gugong bowuyuan inhereted is made up of the collection of the Qing Dynasty, who ruled up until the civil war that pitted the nationalists (the KMT) against the Communists (the CCP). When the KMT left, they brought the Qing collection with them. It had been gathered over centuries by the imperial households, starting with the Song dynasty, who reigned from 960-1279, the Yuan (the Mongols) who reigned from 1271-1368, the Ming, from 1368-1644, and finally the Qing themselves from 1644-1911, giving them almost a millenia worth of art and material. (Keep in mind that the Song coincides fairly well with the Holy Roman Empire in Europe, while the Yuen dynasty started about the same time as the Ottoman Empire, which means that the collection would be like... if the HRE had started a collection that had maintained throughout the subsequent government changes.)
Whatever you want to say about the KMT or the CCP, what Chiang and his people did before they left the mainland and retreated to Taiwan, i think it's important to note that we should be very very thankful they took this collection with them. Because the odds that it would have survived the Cultural Revolution intact? The gradual (and sudden) attempts to eradicate the old culture and ways, the Red Guard who really did often do whatever the hell they wanted... it wouldn't have survived. And the collection is amazing, really, truly, awe-inspiring in its breadth and depth, the sheer variety of items included.
One of the first things they have you look at, before you get to the good stuff, is a line-up of the dynasties with other major periods in history, just to prove that the Chinese were doing what they were doing long long before the upstarts in the west were doing more than beating each other with clubs. When the Chinese claim 6000 years of unbroken history... they're serious. They have recognizable writing (i mean, i can tell how these characters became the ones i'm learning today) dating back to the Shang dynasty, in the bronze age from 1700-1027 BC. This is before the Greeks were, well, much of anything. It's mind boggling.
But yes, the artifacts were amazing, ranging from Shang and Zhou bronzes and jade carvings, to what teh Chinese are perhaps most famous for: their porcelain pottery. They have an amazing timeline of items, demonstrating the development of the use and artistry of it, from simple figures to more complicated Tang tri-colored objects, to pure whites, celadons, black pottery, green, to the development of the Ming's most famous blue and white (or blue underglaze) pottery, and then to multicolored layered glazes.
So basically, it was really really really cool, and again, no pictures. But it was an awesome museum, and now my feet hurt, and I'm going to relax, and revel in the afterglow of having seen the finest and most complete collection of Chinese art objects and historical items in the entire world.
Whatever you want to say about the KMT or the CCP, what Chiang and his people did before they left the mainland and retreated to Taiwan, i think it's important to note that we should be very very thankful they took this collection with them. Because the odds that it would have survived the Cultural Revolution intact? The gradual (and sudden) attempts to eradicate the old culture and ways, the Red Guard who really did often do whatever the hell they wanted... it wouldn't have survived. And the collection is amazing, really, truly, awe-inspiring in its breadth and depth, the sheer variety of items included.
One of the first things they have you look at, before you get to the good stuff, is a line-up of the dynasties with other major periods in history, just to prove that the Chinese were doing what they were doing long long before the upstarts in the west were doing more than beating each other with clubs. When the Chinese claim 6000 years of unbroken history... they're serious. They have recognizable writing (i mean, i can tell how these characters became the ones i'm learning today) dating back to the Shang dynasty, in the bronze age from 1700-1027 BC. This is before the Greeks were, well, much of anything. It's mind boggling.
But yes, the artifacts were amazing, ranging from Shang and Zhou bronzes and jade carvings, to what teh Chinese are perhaps most famous for: their porcelain pottery. They have an amazing timeline of items, demonstrating the development of the use and artistry of it, from simple figures to more complicated Tang tri-colored objects, to pure whites, celadons, black pottery, green, to the development of the Ming's most famous blue and white (or blue underglaze) pottery, and then to multicolored layered glazes.
So basically, it was really really really cool, and again, no pictures. But it was an awesome museum, and now my feet hurt, and I'm going to relax, and revel in the afterglow of having seen the finest and most complete collection of Chinese art objects and historical items in the entire world.