On a recent trip to the National Palace Museum in Taipei, I discovered its most famous objet d’art is a head of cabbage made of jade. It’s true. The “Jadeite Cabbage with Insects” belonged to a consort of the Emperor Kuang-hsu during the Ch’ing Dynasty (late 19th century) and was kept at Yung-ho Palace in…
In a recent post, I talked about my visit to Taipei 101, which currently holds the record for the tallest building in the world, not to mention the fastest elevator in the world. Well, I found out there is a faster way to get down from the top. In December 2007, base jumper Felix Baumgartner…
The Taipei Zoo is already the largest zoo in Asia, but Monday it got an attendance boost when 100,000 people came to see the debut of two giant panda bears that China gave to Taiwan as a symbol of friendship. The four-year-old pandas, Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan went on display Jan. 26, the first…
Gong Xi Fa Chai (Happy Lunar New Year)! If you’ve celebrated the new year in Asia, you can’t escape hearing this famous song everywhere. It will have you singing a different tune in no time.
We had the honor of being invited to a Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner at the Wu family home. The “reunion dinner” is a grand feast, usually held in the home of the senior most member of the family, but not in this case. Photo at right, back row: Wu, Ching-wen (the middle brother) ;…
On the eve of the Chinese lunar new year, Chinese folks are busy cleaning their houses and getting rid of all the broken down appliances, ill-fitting clothes and other things that they don’t want. Doing this invites fresh new energy into the home and attracts good luck in the year to come. It’s early in…
I bet you didn’t know Taiwan was such a hot spot. In fact, it is…literally. Taiwan is ranked among the top 15 hot spring sites in the world, according to Asia-Planet.net. The country lies on a fault line where two tectonic plates meet in the Pacific Ocean. As a result, there are tons of places–more…
If you’re ever planning to go to the Dihua Street Market in Taipei, make sure you go hungry. By the time you’ve walked the length of the market, you’ll have a full stomach without ever having emptied your wallet. This week, the street was packed with people–if not the entire population of Taiwan–all sampling what…
There’s a god for everything at Longshan Temple–the largest buddhist temple in Taipei, which dates back to 1738. So, depending on what’s on your mind, you might want to get a blessing from the patron of pregnant women, the god of scholarly pursuits or the god of business people. But the gods getting the most…
In 2004, Tapei 101 became the the tallest building in the world at 1,670.60 feet high, but that’s going to change soon. I just read that the top piece of the Burj Dubai was just put into place on January 17, making it the tallest free-standing structure ever built at a whopping 2,684 feet. However,…
