Taiwan Day 11

Connor and Charlotte both decided to go on (separate) long bike trips today. So I decided to spend a nice relaxing day inside instead :P Planned to go see the National Palace Museum instead! Before meeting up with Arran, Daniel and I got lunch together, which cost me a whole 23元 which is like 75 cents. Charlotte showed me a place you can get 鲜肉包 for 13元 each, and then Daniel and I went to the Vegetarian Paradise again, where I only spent 10元 because I had already had the 鲜肉包. 

Also, the woman who works at the Vegetarian Paradise is an angel. Whenever she speaks it is just so soooothing! And when she saw that I barely got any food, she was like, "妹妹！太少了, 太少了!" which is just so nice and cute. Daniel and I are planning on eating there frequently in attempts to become her friend. 

Met up with Arran at 台北车站 and traveled to the museum. We didn't plan it, but apparently Saturdays are free admission for students, and extended hours, so it worked out perfectly. The one downside of free admission, and it being the weekend, was the museum was ridiculously crowded. 

I would not be surprised if there were thousands of people in the museum at a time, because it is gigantic. Plus there are different buildings, we only went to the main one.

Since it is a museum, I obviously couldn't take any pictures, but the museum is just as amazing as people say. One of my favorite galleries was the Painting and Calligraphy gallery. It was extremely extensive, and I got very very excited, because the guide map had a picture of Guo Xi's Early Spring, which is one of the most famous pieces of calligraphy EVER and I have mentioned it in at least three of my art history papers. 

I have analyzed the crap out of this painting

So I ran through literally every room in that exhibit looking for this painting, but I could not find it. Eventually we asked a museum worker and they said THEY DIDN'T HAVE IT. Apparently they just have the picture and caption in the map guide "for reference only" and we had to "refer to actual exhibit items." Why would they do that. That is horrible. Remember when I was talking about my dreams almost coming true and being taken away (in reference to the wishing pot on the mountain in Jiufen)? YEAH THIS IS IT. 

After I recovered from this tragedy, I enjoyed the rest of the museum, despite the enormous crowds. The other galleries I liked were "Compassion and Wisdom: Religious Sculptural Arts" because it had lots of Guanyin and Bodhisattva sculptures which I also learned a lot about, and "Rare Books and Documents" because...books. <3

One of my favorite pieces was this one:

The most expensive bok choy you will ever see

This is a piece of jade that was carved into a piece of bok choy. It is so famous because the original piece of jade was very unfit in terms of carving jewelry or whatever else people make out of jade and had all these imperfections and stuff. But then the artist looked at it and was able to hide all the imperfections in the folds and make the weird coloring of the jade make sense, by carving this veggie. So it's really famous cause it's all transforming something ugly into a beautiful work of art. I think I just like it because I really like bok choy and I'm glad it's getting the fame it deserves.

Blogger won't let me rotate these pictures >:( But anyways, I got these posters at the gift shop, but then when taking them out later, I ripped them. Bwaaaaah :(

Afterwards, we went to see the adjacent gardens, which were really pretty. 

 

Checking out the giant goose

The highlight though, was the GIANT KOI POND! There were so many Koi! And they were gigantic. Some were probably like 30 pounds. They were also such fatties. Because people feed them all the time near the bridge, every time someone walked near, even if they didn't have food, they would swarm together and you could see them gulping towards you with their huge greedy fishy mouths.

Look at how big they are in comparison to the people! But then of course I wanted to feed them XD And the fish food was only 10元 :P I was so amused! They literally would splash all on top of each other to get to the food. They were so aggressive. And then they followed me as I walked down the bridge.

Fish whisperer!!

The pond itself was really cool too, even minus the fishies.

 

Afterwards, we met up with Eric, Logan, and some of Eric's Taiwanese friends, and went to the Nanya night market off the Banqiao station. The night market was really nice, I think because it was mostly locals. And the girls knew all of the good food places to go to!

They even got us to try stinky tofu, ahhhh. It really isn't that stinky once it's cooked! And it's actually kinda good... D:

Had a lot of other food, including fresh watermelon juice, beef stew, and this mango shaved ice.

I also got some really yummy dumplings, but because I messed up while ordering, I got super spicy sauce on them, and couldn't eat them. Entirely my fault, but still sad :(((((

Also got a new phone case, and Daniel haggled the price down for me, wahaha! I'm surprised anyone still sells cases for the 3GS :P

And...it's pink.

So I 非常 enjoyed my day of limited physical activity. And it turns out Connor's bike trip was over 6 hours, so I am not even slightly upset that I did not go, because I would have actually not survived. But I also only saw Charlotte and Connor for like 10 seconds the entire day. Womp.