David on Formosa

I have written about Beitou's museums before and now there is a new one to add to the list. The Taiwan Folk Arts Museum (北投文物館) recently reopened after being closed for five years for renovations. The wooden building that houses the museum was originally a club for Japanese officers. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs converted [...]

Last night our Culture and Ethnic Structure of Taiwan class at NCCU went on a field trip to the Institute of Ethnology (民族學研究所) at Academia Sinica (中央研究院). The museum is small but well organised and contains many interesting artifacts and models. Most of the displays are about Taiwan's indigenous people.

The display pictured above is [...]

Taiwan Human Rights Memorial (台灣人權景美園區) was officially opened by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) on Monday, which was Human Rights Day. The park, located in Xindian, Taipei County,  was formerly known as the Jingmei Military Detention Centre (景美軍事看守所). The centre was used to try and hold political prisoners during the martial law era and was converted [...]

While visiting Taizhong on Friday I had some spare time in the afternoon to visit the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (國立臺灣美術館). It was a brilliant sunny day in Taizhong and the museum looked fantastic surrounded by a nice park. The space of the museum is very open and well designed.

The sculpture in [...]

This afternoon I attended the opening of a new special exhibition at the Museum of World Religions (世界宗教博物館) in Yonghe. The exhibition is titled "A painting, A Story: Adoration of Shepherds" (聖誕圖 ～一幅畫的故事). 
The centrepiece of the exhibition is the original painting Adoration of the Shepherds by Luca Giordano. It also features prints of many paintings [...]

On the morning of 5 September the INEB tour set off on the bus to return to Taipei. As the bus left Fo Guang Shan, Ajarn Sulak gave a talk about the importance of Buddhism adapting to the local culture. This promoted quite a lot of discussion. When the bus reached Taizhong we stopped at [...]

The National Taiwan Museum (國立臺灣博物館) is located in the 228 Peace Park in Taipei. The last time I visited it was in 1999 so I thought today I must pay another visit and see what's changed.

There is one thing you can say about this museum. It really looks like a museum. It even has [...]

On a hot sunny Taipei morning our class from Shi-Da met at Taipei Station. From there we caught the train to Yingge (鶯歌). We joined a number of other classes so there were about forty students and five teachers. 
It was a great chance to meet some other students at Shi-Da. Most of the students [...]