It all started innocently enough, as these things usually do. A few days
ago, on a popular forum where people can post Taiwan travel-related
questions, and have those questions answered by fellow netizens, someone
asked about what they should do given a 26-hour layover in T'aipei 台北. One respondent, whom we shall call “G”, replied that the OP
(original poster) should visit the popular sites such as the Chiang
Kai-shek Memorial 中正紀念堂, Lungshan Temple 龍山寺, Taipei 101 台北一零一, the
Shihlin Night Market 士林夜市 and, wait for it, the National Palace Museum
國立故宮博物院 (more on that later). All perfectly reasonable suggestions,
IMHO.
G’s response was soon answered by someone whom we will
refer to as “X”, for I don’t want to be accused of taking “cheap shots”
again. X replied that:
I would skip the National Palace Museum with just one day - it is
worth seeing but not worth wasting your one day in Taipei on...I
personally would rather see the actual city than see some artifacts that
came from China, which isn't even Taiwan!
All bolded words that you will see here are X’s own. G, in turn, answered by writing:
I
think the NPM should be on the list for any one-time visitor to Taiwan.
It is one of the best and most famous museums in the world, so it's
worth the trip for simply having been there. That said, the experience
has been diminished somewhat by the hoards of mainland Chinese tourists
that now crowd the place with their loudness, pushing and shoving, and
body odor that is uncharacteristic of the local Taiwanese population.
(The Taiwanese have an indoor voice and are generally more polite and
deferential in their mannerisms.) If limited to one-day in Taipei, I
would skip the temporary galleries on the first floor and try to limit
the visit to 2 hours, but I wholly disagree that it should be skipped
entirely.
X then answered back by saying:
I'm going
to still respectfully disagree. The NPM is great, I'm not disputing
that, I just personally prefer to spend more time in an actual city if I
have limited time rather than going to a museum, especially one full of
artifacts that aren't even from the country you are visiting.
It was at this point that yours truly decided to add his NT2 worth by opining:
So
if you visit London, you should pass on the British Museum, especially
because it's full of artifacts that aren't from the UK?
If the OP
has an interest in Chinese art, the NPM is worth even a short visit.
Otherwise, the limited time would be better spent taking in the other
well-known spots (e.g. CKS Memorial Hall, Longshan Temple, Shilin Night
Market etc.).
OK, I admit I’m a smart ass, and it doesn’t
take much to get me started. I can understand skipping the National
Palace Museum if one’s time was very limited, or they had little
interest in the subject of traditional Chinese art, but I found the
(il)logic of omitting the NPM from an itinerary because it wasn’t
“Taiwanese” too good to pass up. In any event, I thought I had kind of
neatly summed up the situation for the person who posted the original
query, and figured that was that.
Not quite.
X, it seems, doesn’t appreciate sarcasm:
No...if I visit London once, for one day,
I will bypass the British Museum (and the Victoria and Albert). If I
had one day, I'd choose to see London itself, not a museum full of
stuff.
It so happens that I've been to London three times, and
one of those visits was a week long (the other ones were short stays).
In that week I did go to three museums, because my time there made it
possible.
But no, not with just one day. Cities themselves are
much more interesting than museums in my opinion - they're full of life,
activity, people, good food, and if you want to see something historic
there are always historic sites.
If the OP has 24 hours in Taipei, going to the NPM effectively ensures that he won't see much of Taipei at all.
Fair enough, but I just couldn’t let the chance for another snarky analogy go just yet:
Darn, I guess I'll just have to give the Louvre a miss on that 24-hour layover I'll have in Paris. :-)
See, I even inserted a smiley face, to serve as a reminder that this really isn’t that big of a deal. Looks like I was wrong:
yeah...I would do that, too.
In fact, I had two days in Paris and I did skip the Louvre, and I'd advise anyone else to do the same.
…And the NPM isn't even Taiwanese...
I
guess some people just aren't into museums. I don’t know about you, but
should I ever find myself with a limited amount of time in Paris, I
would do my best to squeeze in a visit to the Louvre, even it is filled
with works of art by Italians and Dutchmen (i.e. non-French people). X,
on the other hand, is almost proud of the fact they didn’t go to the
world’s most famous house of art. Which means, of course, that I
couldn’t resist again:
Let's see, more museums to cross off on
future travels...the Guggenheim and MOMA in New York City, the Prado in
Madrid, the Tokyo National Museum...and, oh yes, the Holocaust Museum
in Washington, D.C. - all that stuff happened in Europe. :-)
At
this point, I should stop and say that I’m somewhat familiar with X.
I’ve been in Taiwan too long, for I can remember when X was a newbie to
this island, and was asking for advice in the very same forum. Only X
wasn’t too pleased with the suggestions that they were being given
(“This isn’t what I want!”), and I was somewhat taken aback at the idea
of people who were just off the boat taking a good, hard look at the
proverbial gift horse’s set of dentures. Time has taught X some courtesy
– they’ve now been in Taiwan long enough, and can speak Mandarin well
enough (a fact that X likes to often bring up), that they are now a
useful source of wisdom for travelers wondering about what there is to
do in Taiwan (X’s suggestions are quite often very good ones).
X
loves living in Taiwan, a result, no doubt, of the fact that they live
in Taipei. As I’ve written before, Taiwan’s capital often serves as a
protective cocoon for its Western residents, shielding them from the
unpleasantness that lies in wait in the rest of the country, hereby
referred to as The Real Taiwan®. X exhibits all the classic symptoms of
the bubble – what is true in Taipei must be true for all of Taiwan –
and draws all the typical conclusions about how wonderful life on
Formosa truly is. When pointed out by others that Taipei isn’t Taiwan, X
will bring up such “Taiwanese” images as old women in her neighborhood
speaking impenetrable dialect and eating the kinds of food that only
Andrew Zimmern could get excited about. It’s almost as if someone in an
urban American city was trying to prove their street cred by pointing
out how close they live to the ‘hood, and does it by describing the
denizens there in stereotypical terms gleaned from watching too many rap
videos.
But I digress (and I’m good at doing that). I live in
The Real Taiwan©, and while I am surrounded by おばさん like the ones X
describes, I also live among doctors, convenience store clerks, sales
reps, factory workers, farmers, civil servants, homemakers, bank clerks,
mail carriers, office workers, teachers and students…the list goes on
and on. Many of them do speak in Taiwanese much of the time, but many
more use Mandarin as a means of daily communication (and quite a few
converse in both). Yes, they do occasionally eat “exotic” foods, but
most of their meals are easily digestible rice or noodle dishes, with
occasional forays to places like McDonald’s and KFC, or to the local
Japanese or Italian restaurant. In short, they are ordinary human
beings, living ordinary lives in ordinary ways, and are no different, in
fact, from the majority of their countrymen residing in the greater
Taipei metropolitan area.
Unlike many Taipei expats, X has
traveled extensively throughout Taiwan, which is why their travel
suggestions are often very helpful to posters in the forum.
Unfortunately for X, they have to rely on public transportation to get
around the island, for it appears that X has never ridden a scooter or
driven a car in Taiwan, and appears terrified of the idea of doing so.
This is a shame, because some of the most interesting places to visit in
Taiwan are difficult, if not impossible, to reach without your own set
of wheels, but this doesn’t stop X from trying to discourage people from
driving. Out here in The Real Taiwan®©, where public transportation
systems are not as extensive in comparison to what there is in Taipei,
we have little choice but to rely on cars, motorcycles and scooters to
get around. Yes, driving conditions can be less-than-optimally-safe
here, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to those who are confident enough in their
driving skills to rent some kind of vehicle while in Taiwan in order to
get more out of their visits (e.g. driving from Hualien 花蓮 to Taroko
Gorge 太魯閣).
X makes no bones about how much they enjoy it in Taipei Taiwan
Taipei, and I have to admit I wish I could muster the same level of
enthusiasm (curse you Japan!). However, X can go to extremes at times in
order to “prove” that Taiwan/Taipei is somehow the “best” place to be
in Asia. Instead of relying on boring trivialities like statistics and
other data, X will draw on very broad generalizations regarding other
Asian societies from their friends and acquaintances in order to
demonstrate that the Taiwanese, and by extension X themselves, have it
good here.
But once again I digress. In all fairness to X, they
have one of the better Taiwan-related blogs, certainly much better than
mine. X is a good writer who has posted many interesting articles
(again, superior to the dreck I usually churn out), and if I had the
chance, I would love to sit down together in a café (probably in
Taipei) and share anecdotes and impressions about Taiwan with them. So,
I would just like to humbly pass along to X these two pieces of
unsolicited advice:
