Week-end Travel to Taipei: July 17-18

The group travel to the capital of Taipei on July 17 and 18.  Led by Helen Lie and Michael Chiu, the teachers traveled on the high-speed rail train, reaching Taipei in only 90 minutes!  The teachers checked in at the Taipei Teachers Hostel.  Their first stop was the remarkable Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, a tribute to a great leader who led the wars against the Chinese Communist Party. He died in 1975, and this beautiful memorial hall acknowledges him and to his efforts to modernize the Republic of China. They witnessed the changing of the Taiwanese military guard at the memorial, and visited the history museum on the floor below the memorial.  The inscriptions on the side walls describe Chiang Kai-shek's philosophy: "The purpose of life is to improve the general life of humanity", and "The meaning of life is to create and sustain subsequent lives in the universe."

Helen Lie took the teachers to a well-attended religious observance held at the Taipei Normal University.  The group learned about meditation and the philosophy of Buddhism.  Then, the teachers  visited the National Palace Museum. Ranked as one of the four best museums in the world, the Museum was originally founded in 1925 in the Forbidden City in Beijing. In 1949, the government shipped 600,000 treasured works of art to Taiwan to protect them from the impending war. The permanent collect of over 677,000 pieces has been stored in the current museum since 1965, and the pieces document more than 8,000 years of Chinese history. The displays are rotated every three months, and about 60,000 pieces can be viewed at a time.  The exhibits include jades, vessels, weapons, ceramics, calligraphy, documents, rare books, antiquities, and paintings going as far back as the Neolithic Age.  What a wonderful opportunity to learn about Chinese history!

On Sunday, the teachers spent some time at the Taiwan Handicraft Promotion Center.  This provided an opportunity for them to purchase special Taiwanese souvenirs and gifts for family and friends.  After an incredible 11-course Taiwanese-style lunch at the Teachers Hostel, they traveled over to Taipei 101.  The Taipei 101 Observatory is one of the tallest buildings in the world.  They traveled up to the 89th floor in a high-speed elevator and viewed the extensive city of Taipei in all directions. The Observatory holds the world's largest wind damper, and is built to resist the strongest earthquakes and gale winds.  They returned to Kaohsiung on the high-speed rail on Sunday evening!