My Cabbages!

Good Evening readers, or rather morning, because of the time change. Today, I traveled all over Taipei. First, I went to Taipei County with my aunt and uncle to see my aunt teach elementary school students music. Then, me and my uncle went to the Bali district to visit a flute shop. Finally, I went with my cousin and uncle to the National Palace Museum in the Shilin district. The more I see of Taipei, the more I love it. There is so much variety in landscape, and everyone is so friendly. It is a widely held belief in small towns that people from large cities are rude and cold, but let me tell you friends, that is not the case in Taipei. Nearly every place that we have gone we end up talking to some stranger, whether we are asking for directions or buying food, and nearly every time we end up having long amicable conversations with the stranger. For instance, when me and my cousin went to a small food shop yesterday for lu rou fan,(see Hello from Beitou), the waiter brought us an order of tofu as well, on the house. We ended up talking to him for several minutes. A similar scenario has happened many times since. I have never experienced anything like it, even in my small hometown where we brag about our "southern hospitality."
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. The elementary school where my aunt teaches is massive. Apparently, it is also a training ground for elementary teachers all over the city. Here are some of the buildings:

  The students that she taught today are all in kindergarten and first grade, and they are adorable. They are learning the recorder, because it is like the "gateway" instrument; if you can play it well, you can easily transition to any woodwind or brass instrument later on. So, their parents are starting them early. Today was the student's last day of music class for the semester, so my aunt had something special planned for them. All semester long, they have been getting tickets as a reward for practicing, so today, they got to redeem those tickets for prizes. The kids were ecstatic, they loved it. I remember doing something similar at my school when I was younger, and the feeling of importance that you get from having the opportunity to spend your own "money" simply cannot be beat. Its even more special, because at that age your parents are so often telling you "no" and "not until you are older," so getting to feel like a grownup is fantastic.

Then, we traveled to another district in Taipei called Bali, (not to be confused with the island in Indonesia), where we went to the aforementioned flute store. My uncle needed to get a part of a bass recorder fixed. Now, I don't know about you guys, but I had no idea that such a thing existed until today. However, it exists, and it is huge. The people in the flute shop had one out, and, by the way, flute shop is a bit of a misnomer, I should be saying flute factory. The two men in the store build flutes. By hand. They sell hand crafted flutes. Oh, and on a side note, (pun intended), there is also such a thing as a bass flute as well, and the two guys make them too. Here are some pictures of the store:

Mouth piece for a flute

Several flute bodies

brand-spanking new flute components

So, then we had lunch which was pretty straight forward. It consisted of chicken and a stir fried spinach or cabbage over rice, and a potato salad type dish. True to form, it was all very delicious.

Then we went to the National Palace Museum. The story behind the museum is very interesting. The story goes like this: when Chiang Kai-Shek left China, apparently he took several hundred thousand artifacts with him from the palace. He even ended up taking a lot of the staff, because they knew stories about the individual pieces and could help preserve them. Now the Taiwanese government has built a large museum that is designed to look like the palace from the outside, and filled with the palaces artifacts on the inside. It is a major tourist attraction, and surprisingly has a lot of Chinese visitors. We were there for a couple of hours, and we still didn't even see all of the floors in the first building. I believe that there are two more buildings just as large as the first.

The museum at night

One of the many examples of the sumptuous architecture 

Me out in front of the museum

One of the museum's most famous exhibits is a large jade cabbage. That's right, you heard me, a cabbage.

                                      
 Maybe I need to take an art appreciation class in college, but I simply do not understand why an artist would carve a vegetable, of all things. Or, for that matter, why such a sculpture would garner such a reaction. My uncle and cousin seemed to have similar thoughts. However, it is pretty amazing to think that it is carved out of jade. I guess the museum's patrons appreciate the irony of a jade cabbage because it is sold in every possible form in the gift shop, (i.e. magnets, umbrellas, key chains, post cards, etc.).  I plan to make a few more trips to the museum so that I can see the rest of it, and maybe I will get a cabbage of my very own. Talk to you later, world travelers!