Taipei 台北遊 (Dec-2010)

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These styles are more common in my experience of viewing 盆景 in Hong Kong, Macau or China. One plays to symmetry, while the other one extreme asymmetry. 

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This is another style that requires lots of patience and work. It essentially fused the small tree and the rock together.

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A nice wood horse in the 盆景 garden.

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The Expo site is really near a small domestic only airport. I felt that we can almost touch the airplane.

These are 3 of my many attempts to capture both the airplane and the garden around me.

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OK one more airplane picture. I hit the shutter release just when the plan passed under the sun.

My daughter said it was lucky. I told her that it was lucky plus readiness!

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OK that's all for the Floral Expo photos. The followings are some misc photos taken in Taipei.

In one morning, the kids went to the Baby Boss, a kiddie career role play kind of entertainment center. I went to the National Palace Museum instead.

The museum has the best collection of Chinese arts and antiques. When Kuomintang loss the country, they brought all the treasures with them to Taiwan. I was told that it will take years to cycle through all the collections. It was really a nice place to spend a day or even two. We went there at around 11:00, and by 16:00 was only able to see 1.5 of the 3 floors.

By then I was too tired and went to the bookstore admiring the fine books published by the museum. Just to help visualize how large a collection this museum has, they publish a monthly magazine, each contain research and articles on maybe 10 fine pieces in their collections. This monthly magazine has published more than 300 issues, and still going strong. I actually would like to buy almost all the books published by the museum.

When I was enjoying browsing the books, we heard lots of commotions and noise outside. I saw many men in dark suit rushed up to the second floor, then in about 30 seconds, I saw a middle aged woman ran up yelling and struggling. And later I learned that 陳雲林, the senior officer of the Taiwan Affair Office in from the mainland Chinese government, is visiting Taiwan and at the moment in the museum. 

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As we came out of the museum exhibition halls, we saw rows of TV cameras on one side, and pro-independent protesters on the other side.

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The protesters were mainly older people, but their leader was a young man. They simply do not like their government to have any contact with the mainland government. One or two of the protesters were speaking to on-lookers in Japanese and English, asking and thanking the museum visitors for support.

And this is not the only protest we saw in the vicinity of the museum. About 200 meters outside the museum entrance is a full wall sign sponsored by 發輪功 Falun Gong. (A "spiritual" movement found by the guy who claim himself to be the reincarnation of Buddha, Guanyin, plus Jesus. Yes, all 3 in himself, the hold trinity. If he wasn't being prosecuted by the Chinese government, I don't think he will get any support from the western governments.)

One thing we noticed about Falun Gong (Falun Dafa in some English name) in Hong Kong is that they only show up making their "spiritual practice" in shopping area where there are mainly mainland tourists. They never really bother to promote or explain their "philosophy" to the local Hong Kong people. They probably realized that they would never found any market in regular Hong Kong residents.

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In the taxi back to our hotel, the driver saw the protest and was making small talks about it. He was initially very cautious in revealing his view of the protest, and Taiwan's relationship with the mainland. But at the end, he was more relax and spoke more. I don't think he consider himself any less Chinese than the mainlanders, and at the same time proud of the civil progress in the Taiwanese society - that protest is allowed and tolerated.

He commented that previously visit by the like of Chen Yun Lin would mean the closure of the meseum. But now they have enough confidence in having controls of the situation that they no longer require the museum be closed to the general public on the day of Chen's visit. The relaxation is a sign of confidence and maturity.

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His comment sort of answer Kai's comment about power transition. I personally don't think it has much to do with democracy per se. When the general populace is wealthy and prosperous, when they have a collective identity, there can be peaceful power transition.

If you read 孫中山's framework on the development of the Republic of China 建國大綱 (or some name like that, I am not entire sure), it's very clear that Sun advocated first the physical survival of the people, then secure their political rights, then onto other stages. Whenever the US government criticize the mainland China on human rights, the mainland government always point out that they lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, that the first human right is the right to survive. With this framework, Taiwan is at least one stage ahead of the mainland. I don't think the mainland can skip the different stages.
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This evening we had dinner in the 信義新天地 and on our way walking back to our hotel, we heard some nice drum play at the street corner.

As we approach the street corner, we saw this young girl playing drums. She played very well that we stayed and watched until she finished the session.