Taipei National Palace Museum

The National Palace Museum is an antique museum of Chinese History and Chinese culture in Taiwan. Located in Shilin, Taipei, Republic of China. It has a permanent collection of more than 696,000 pieces of ancient Chinese imperial artifacts and artworks, making it one of the largest in the world. The collection encompasses over 10,000 years of Chinese history from the Neolithic age to the late Qing Dynasty. Most of the collections are high quality pieces collected by China's ancient emperors.

The Taipei National Palace Museum and the famous Forbidden City in Beijing are derived from the same institution, which was split into two as a result of the Chinese Civil War. Covering a total area of 1200 mu (about 198 acres), it is located in the outskirts of Taipei City, Taiwan. Construction started in 1962 and it was inaugurated on November 12, 1965, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), the great Chinese revolutionary and founder of the Republic of China. Thus, it is also named as Yat-sen Museum. The splendid architecture of the structure is modeled on the Forbidden City in Beijing and incorporates elements of traditional Chinese royal design in feudal society. The architecture itself has four floors. The first, second and third floors are used for exhibitions, while the fourth floor is a lounge where visitors can rest.

The Taipei National Palace Museum houses the largest collection of priceless Chinese artifacts and artwork in the world, including ancient bronze castings, calligraphy, scroll paintings, porcelain, jade, and rare books, many of which were possessions of the former imperial family. The full collection, which consists of some 650,000 pieces, spans many dynasties. Each exhibit, however, puts on display only about 1,700 pieces at a time. At this rate, assuming duration of three months for each exhibit, it will take 100 years to cycle through the entire collection! Incredible!

To satisfy popular demand, the museum brings out a constant stream of new publications and souvenir items. Each month, both a magazine and an academic journal roll off the presses, and there is also a photographic collection, allowing museum fans to“bring the NPM treasures home.”The souvenirs come in splendid variety, including attractive replicas and miniatures of the famous artworks, and this year, the museum is specially rolling out a series of cute commercial items with the Jadeite Cabbage as the theme. And don't think they're just for kids—take a gander during a visit to the souvenir shop and we promise you won't be leaving empty-handed.

Also extremely popular is the clever series of upscale-dining dishes at the museum's high-end Silk Palace restaurant, which opened in June, 2008. Eight art masterpieces from the museum that cannot be, of course, eaten or even touched – such as the Jadeite Cabbage, Meat-shaped Stone, and“White jade branch of elegant lychee” (or White Jade Bitter Gourd) – are brought to your table as delicious chef-prepared dishes. Well, not the actual artworks, of course, but farm-fresh variants you can actually sink your teeth into.

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