Our New Daughter: Taipei (with pictures!)

Last weekend Lillia and I took the train into Taipei and went to Taipei 101, the world’s second-tallest building. The architecture is, um, interesting, to put it charitably, but the view from the top is terrific, even on a hazy day.

Here's the giant iron ball that stabilizes the building during typhoons and earthquakes:

I’ve been into Taipei three more times this week to visit sights that would make Lillia’s eyes glaze over in ten minutes. First, the National Palace Museum, to see a tiny fraction of the treasures that the Nationalists carted off when they retreated to Taiwan. There was also an amazing new installation called “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains”.

It's a little hard to explain, although the picture helps. The original Yuan Dynasty scroll is projected on a wall, reflected in a "stream" projected on the horizontal surface below. Every once in a while, the painting gradually darkens and becomes more detailed, so that it looks almost like a black-and -white photograph. The clouds become thicker and darker.and then it begins to rain. You actually hear the rain, and you see it streaking across the painting and dimpling the water in the stream. It was quite mesmerizing.

The rest of the time I spent temple-hopping. Here are some scenes from the Bao An Temple. The atmosphere and the details at this temple were just wonderful.

Right across the street from it is the Confucius Temple.

Since Confucius was the Great Teacher, students often ask his help to pass exams. There was a rack of wooden plaques, similar to Japanese e-ma, with wishes written on them:

I had a long conversation with this friendly temple volunteer in a garbled mix of Chinese, Japanese, and English. You can tell he's been to Japan because he's picked up that goofy make-a-V-sign-when-you're-being-photographed thing.

And finally here is the Guandu Temple, a Disneyesque extravaganza built into the side of a hill on the outskirts of Taipei.