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This morning, the hotel breakfast includes Chiayi's famous Turkey Rice.  There's even a little placard that describes how to put it together.  Of course, I had to try it.  The verdict? Turkey is definitely better when pulverized, spiced up and served over rice. Backstory: turkey was introduced by the Dutch and requested by the American military stationed in Taiwan in the 1950s.  Turns out the local chefs were happy to serve turkey since it was cheaper than chicken as the local Taiwanese were not fond of the bird.  Who knew this dish would become a Chiayi staple and be featured in Netflix's Street Food: Asia.

NPMS (National Palace Museum South)

We have a full day of sightseeing ahead of us.  But Kent agrees to stop by the Southern branch of the National Palace Museum on our way to Tainan (I have wanted to see the building since learning about it in 2019). We will not have time to see the exhibits, but certainly enough time to see what a $248-million-dollar (2016) complex looks like.  The museum was created to provide more cultural parity between the North and South. And there is a definite North-South divide.  Even as a child I got the sense that the North was more Chinese and the South, Taiwanese (not just because mandarin was more commonly spoken in the north).

After the Japanese were ousted in 1945, the bulk of the mainlanders settled in Taipei, especially when the KMT relocated the government to Taiwan while retreating from the communists in 1948. Growing up in the north, and with a parent working for the government, I pretty much believed the propaganda of the KMT government, and believed the Chinese in Taiwan were the legitimate heirs to China's history and culture. Did I know of the February 28 (228) incident of 1947? Of the jailing of dissidents, of people disappearing overnight?  That I lived under martial law in a period call the "White Terror" and that it would not be lifted until 1989?  No.  I was eight years old. It would be years before the brain-washing was reversed.

Back to art...and architecture. In 1911, when the last emperor abdicated, the imperial collection became the people's collection, and a museum was created within the Forbidden City in Beijing in the 1920s.  As Japanese aggression moved from Manchuria into China, the government consolidated the best of the collection and started to move it south.  When the war ended in 1945, the collection was moved back north, but as the KMT kept losing ground to the communists, the treasures were moved once again, and eventually, 21% of the best pieces found their way to Taiwan. The KMT had planned to move more, it just so happened that the communists managed to gain control of Beijing before the rest of it was moved (there is the original Palace Museum in Beijing, of course).  Eventually, another Palace Museum was built north of Taipei in the style of Chinese Imperial Architecture.  And then in 2000, the more democratic Taiwanese government thought to "share" the national treasures across the island and held a world-wide contest for a new Southern Branch of the museum.  Antoine Predock was the original winner, his winning design showed a walkway across water to enter the museum, which seemed to have a central glass lobby that opened like a mountain peak to the sky. The judges awarded him the building because his design was a "visual symbol for both the museum and the local culture."  Alas, his vision was never built, there was the usual squabble over budget and schedule.  In the end, Kris Yao, a Taiwanese architect who earned his MArch at Berkeley, was hired instead. While Predock's design would have set up the complex to reflect its surroundings, Yao's sits in the center of the park, the biggest thing around.  I think it was an opportunity lost.

The museum complex is located west of Chiayi.  It comprises of the museum and large outdoor spaces: a Waterscape garden, a Tropical Garden, and a Festival Garden.  There is also a bird-viewing platform I didn't get visit.  From afar, one sees a suspended bridge leading to a low and long structure, half solid, half glass. We broke into two groups, half going to explore the garden, and the other half, the building. From the bridge, we walk into a courtyard that is enveloped by a dark band with aluminum disks. Apparently this is the "Moving Dragon Facade" and the disks reflect the sunlight and appears to move. Kris Yao's vision for the museum was to use the Three Strokes of calligraphic techniques in Chinese painting to inform his three building forms.  (Just bear with me, I had to look this up).  The three types of strokes you see in Chinese calligraphy are the Nongmo (thick ink), the Feibai (Half-dry/flying white), and the Xuanran (Smearing/Ink Wash).  I was actually familiar with the strokes from the few classes I was able to take when visiting mom in Houston. The thick ink is the solid, dark, exhibition spaces which we did not see.  The half-dry/flying white portion was the entry lobby and the public spaces.  And the smearing/ink washes is the central hallway or circulation.

I have struggled with this concept as an architect and the conceit of modern architecture to think that glass and stone can be translated without explanation. After reading about Yao's process, I can nod and say, okay, maybe I see it.  But without this information, does the visitor get it?  And more importantly, does the visitor need to get it at all.  In Yao's case, the building function is clear, and it is a good building.  But Ando's building in Taichung is clearer.  I was the last one on the bus.  It is a solid building, but not a great building. I would have loved to see Predock's vision come to life.  His visuals were strong clean and really did not require additional explanation.  It is like the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth by Louis Kahn:  one enters a loose pebbled courtyard of densely packed grid of trees to get to the front door.  After the mundane acts of parking, and street noise, one crunches one's way to the entrance, and then, into the silence of the museum.  The pebbled courtyard served as the transition zone. And it is so simple, so direct, so CLEAR.

Tainan

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