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Mao Gong ding ( a kind of ancient vessel)

Address: Taiwan, Taipei City, Shilin Wai Shuangxi Zhishan Lu Er Duan, #221

The Taipei Palace Museum is located in the northwestern part of Taipei City, facing Shuangxi Park and surrounded by verdant trees and rolling hills. The palace was constructed as a replica of the Beijing Palace Museum. It has an area of more than 10,000 square meters and is grand and imposing in haracter.

Approximately some 620,000 historical items and works of art are stored here, in a magnificent four-storied building. The construction of the Taipei Palace Museum was begun in 1962 and completed in the summer of 1965. Some 240,000 of the items that are kept here originally belonged to the Beijing Palace Museum.In 1949, 3,824 crates of objects were moved to Taiwan. Among these were the great treasures of ‘hua-xia,’ a term that also means China, but in a more comprehensive cultural sense, including Shang and Zhou bronzes, jades, works of calligraphy from Jin and Tang dynasties onward, paintings from Tang and Song dynasties onward, ceramics from famous kilns from Song and Yuan dynasties onward, bamboo items, rare books, documents from the Qing dynasty, as well as sculptures, jades, lacquer works, enamels, and so on.

Most of the items on display are shown in the main building of the museum. This building is divided into four levels, with

The jade Chinese cabbage displayed in the Taipei Palace Museum

the main entrance being on the second floor. The great hall of the second floor has a bronze bust of Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yatsen), made as a replica of the one in Nanjing at Sun Yatsen’s tomb. All around this sculpture hang very famous paintings and works of calligraphy; in the corridor leading to Sun Yatsen are two of the most famous long scrolls in the history of Chinese art.

Several national treasures are on the must-see list for visitors. Among these is the Mao Gong ding dating from Western Zhou, unearthed during the latter years of the Qing dynasty in the Daoguang reign (1850) in the province of Shaanxi. The height of this ding is 53.8 centimeters and its diameter is 47.9 centimeters. It has three legs or feet and two upright handles or ears. Its ornamentation is very simple as is the exterior. On the inside of the Ding is an inscription of 491 characters – the longest inscription of any known Chinese bronze.

A large number of calligraphies and paintings by famous painters are exhibited in the Taipei Palace Museum. These include Li Gonglin (1049-1106, notable Song-dynasty painter), Chen Juzhong (years of birth and death unclear, a Southern-Song painter), Qiu Ying (around 1509-1551, a Ming-dynasty painter), Wang Hui (1632-1717, an early Qing-dynasty painter), Fan Kuan (around 950-1027, Song-dynasty painter), Guo Xi (1023-around 1085, Song-dynasty painter), Wang Xizhi (303-361) and so on.
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China has an ancient civilization with a very long history. CUnderstanding it solely through the study of documents is clearly inadequate. A wealth of objects and remains has been preserved on China’s vast territory and underground; much of which has been collected and is exhibited in various kinds of museums. This raw material of history can, in a certain sense, be considered more valuable for our understanding of the past than documents and historical records.
One can see many of China’s cultural treasures in Western museums. Some of these are exquisite works of art, but at the same time they are fragments that have been removed from the original matrix of their being. To enjoy a complete and systematic experience of Chinese cultural history, one must visit the museums of their native land.
Although there are Dunhuang sutras in the British Museum, stolen by Aurel Stein, Dunhuang itself and the center of Dunhuang Studies remain in China. Although quite a few treasures from the Summer Palace were looted by British and French troops and are now exhibited in France at Fontainebleu, the majority of choice pieces remains in the Palace Museum in Beijing.
In the past, China’s antiquities and most artworks were kept in the recesses of the reshidences of aristocratic families and the imperial clan. The public at large was not able to see them. China’s modern museums started from the Westernization Movement of the early twentieth century and the overthrow of the feudal imperial court during the Xinhai Revolution (1911). Only after this was the public allowed to enter the halls and pavilions and enjoy the fruits of the civilization of their own ancestors. In the past twenty to thirty years, due to China’s opening and reform policy as well as to the development of a market economy, travel, tourism, and cultural exchange have greatly increased.
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The exterior of the Tibet Museum

Address: Tibet, Lhasa City, Southeast of Norbulingka

The Tibet Museum was officially inaugurated in October of 1999, with a permanent collection that celebrates the History of Tibetan Culture. The design of the exhibit uses traditional Tibetan architecture such as Tibetan doors, beam-decoration,patterns and so on, in order to create the atmosphere of authentic Tibetan art.
The History of Tibetan Culture Exhibition incorporates superb examples of several thousand years of Tibetan history, politics, religion, cultural arts, and customs. It ‘takes Tibetan history as the main thread and Tibetan culture as the center’in exhibiting the long history of the Tibetan people and their vast and deep culture. At the same time most of the historical objects also express the fact that Tibet is an inalienable part of Chinese territory.
This exhibit displays around 1,000 precious objects, in a space totaling around 3,000 square meters and with an exhibition line of around 600 meters. The contents are divided into pre-history culture, indivisible history, culture and arts, and people’s customs.

Prehistory
This covers a period that stretches back fifty thousand years to three thousand years before the present. The Karuo

An embroidered thanka displayed in the Tibet Museum

and Qugong sites are representative of the Neolithic in Tibet. With a large number of characteristic stone tools, pottery, bone objects and metal objects, this exhibition expresses the life of the ancient people of the Tibetan plateau. It also shows the cultural origins of the precursors of the Tibetan people, and their connections with the central plains civilization and Indus River civilization.

Indivisable History
This section includes material on different dynastic periods of Tibetan history, including Tibetan regional powers. Its main section revolves around the relationship between the Chinese central government and the Tibetan regional powers and discusses friendly relations between Han and Zang or Tibetan people. A large number of historically valuable objects are displayed as well as cultural relics that have political significance. These include seals, books, official documents, and so on, that clearly indicate the cordial relations that Han and Tibetan people have long enjoyed and the bonds of friendship due to the effective governance of Tibet by successive dynasties in China. It proves that Tibet has been an inalienable part of China since the Yuan dynasty.
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