National Palace Museum's 700,000 Chinese Imperial Objects, Taipei 101, Shilin Night Market & Jiufen Gold Village
📍 Taipei, Taiwan📅 3-day itinerary
The capital that hosts more Chinese imperial art than the Forbidden City in Beijing — the National Palace Museum's 700,000 objects including the Jade Cabbage, the Meat-Shaped Stone and the 497-character Western Zhou bronze inscription were brought from the Palace Museum in Beijing in 1948 — sitting below the world's most architecturally significant bamboo-stalk-inspired skyscraper (Taipei 101, world's tallest 2004-2010) and above the world's largest night market, with the geothermal hot springs of Beitou's volcanic hills 30 minutes north by metro.
The Jade Cabbage Carved from a Single Jadeite Stone with a Locust and a Katydid on the Leaves — Formerly in the Forbidden City, Transported to Taiwan in 1948 — Where the Queue of Visitors Can Reach 200 People to See a 18.7cm Stone for 20 Seconds & The 660-Tonne Steel Sphere That Swings Inside Taipei 101 to Counteract Typhoon Wind Sway
The Naturally Boiling 98°C Pool in Beitou Whose Radioactive Radon and Sulphur Colour It Bright Green — One of Only Two Places on Earth Where the Hokutolite Mineral Forms Naturally — and the Volcanic Plateau Above Taipei Where Formosan Water Buffalo Graze on the Caldera Grassland Below Active Sulphur Fumaroles
The Mountain Village Whose Tea House Lanterns and Sea-Facing Staircases Prompted Millions of Tourists to Cite "Spirited Away" Despite Hayao Miyazaki's Denials — and the Park Where the KMT's 1947 Massacre of 10,000-30,000 Taiwanese Intellectuals (Doctors, Lawyers, Teachers) Began and Whose Museum Is the Essential Context for Everything Else in Taiwan