The next day our friends took us to the National Palace Museum. Just like its name, the museum is a national museum of the Republic of China that exhibits almost 700,000 pieces of Chinese antiques and artifacts dating back from the Neolithic age to the Qing Dynasty including ancient bronze castings, calligraphy, scroll paintings, porcelain, jade, and rare books. Due to its huge number of collections, the museum becomes the largest museum that exhibits Chinese ancient antiques in the world. The displays are among China’s best quality pieces collected by ancient Chinese emperors.
The Palace Museum in the Forbidden City in Beijing, Mainland China shares the same origin with the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The National Palace Museum was originally founded in the Forbidden City in Beijing that explains why the word "Palace" is used in its name.The division of the two was caused by the Chinese civil war. The Chinese call the one in Mainland China, Beijing Gugong (北京故宮), while the one in Taipei is called Taipei Gugong (台北故宫). In 1931, when Chiang Kai Shek was the President of the Republic of China in Mainland China, he commanded the museum in Beijing to prepare the most valuable pieces of its collections ready to be evacuated out of the city to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Japanese Army during the Sino-Japanese war. Following that, the Chinese civil war in 1949 imposed Chiang Kai Shek to evacuate about 600,000 of the most prized items to Taiwan. However, before all the pieces could be transported to Taiwan, the communists had conquered the museum so not all collections could be evacuated to Taiwan. Since then, the collections have been a matter of dispute between the government of the People’s Republic of China and the government of Taiwan. The Mainland China accused that the collections were stolen and they actually belonged to the People’s Republic of China. Countering the accusation, Taiwan argued that they were just trying to save the collections from destruction during the Cultural Revolution. However, nowadays the tensions between the two governments have warmed and the Mainland China has agreed to “lend” the collections to the Taipei museum considering that the relics in both the Mainland China and Taiwan are China’s cultural heritage.
Specially designed by Huang Baoyu, the museum was constructed in March 1962 and finished in August 1965. It was inaugurated on 12 November, 1965 on the 100th birthday anniversary of Sun Yat Sen. That is why the museum used to be called Yat Sen Museum. Apart from the relics from the previous emperors, other additional collections come from donations, other institutions and purchases by the museum that make the total collections of the museum reach up to 650,000 pieces. Since the museum was too small to exhibit the whole collection simultaneously, it had to undergo a series of renovations starting from 1967 until 2002. The renovation cost $21 million dollars and the museum was reopened in February 2007. Modeled after the Forbidden City in Beijing, the structure consists of four levels with the first three floors used as the exhibition rooms and the fourth level as the resting place for visitors. However, even after the renovations, the museum still does not provide enough space to exhibit its all collections. Therefore, only 1% of the collections (around 1,700 pieces) is exhibited while the rest is kept in temperature controlled vaults. The collections are rotated once every three months. Painting, calligraphy, statues, ceramic and jade are among the rotated collections. Other carved materials of bamboo, wood, ivory, rhinoceros horn and fruit pits are among the exhibits.
Of all the collections, the most popular one is a jade carving called “Jadeite Cabbage”. It is a piece of Jadeite carved in the shape of a cabbage head with a large and a small grasshoppers camouflaged in the leaves. The jade is half grey and half emerald green in color. It symbolizes the purity of a family while the grasshoppers are the symbol of many children. It was the dowry of Concubine Jin in the Qing Dynasty. Originally, it is said that the jade belonged to Concubine Zhen. Concubine Zhen and Concubine Jin were sisters. When they were chosen as concubines by Emperor Guangxu, their father gave each of them a dowry. To Concubine Jin, the father gave money and valuables, whereas, to Concubine Zhen he gave jade cabbage. However, when Concubine Jin, who were fond of jewelry, found no jade cabbage in her box she was furious and cried. Finally her sister gave her the jade cabbage.
The entrance gate to the National Palace Museum. On the wall is engraved the inscription “Tian Xia Wei Gong” which means heaven and earth belong to the people. 
A lion statue holding a ball guards the museum and welcomes the visitors 
In front of the National Palace Museum
This is exhibition area I that is open daily from 8.30 am to 6.30 pm. The admission to the museum costs around NT 40 per person if I am not mistaken. Free guided tours in English are offered at 10 am and 3 pm. There is also an English handphone guide that costs NT200. Unfortunately, visitors are not allowed to take pictures or bring any camera. So we just observed the exhibits without taking any picture.
This is exhibition area II that is not open for public and reserved only for special exhibits
Again it was raining heavily by the time we had finished our exploration of the museum
The National Palace Museum keeps upgrading itself by applying the latest technology that makes the exhibits become much more animated. The museum is indeed a place where the best artworks of Chinese people are exhibited. People all over the world come here and watch the displays in amusement and wonder. If the Chinese are really proud of their national identity, history and culture, we too must have the same spirit towards our own country.
Sources:
Personal experience and additional information from other online articles
0 komentar:
Post a Comment