The National Museum of History is offering up a frustrating and fascinating exhibit of old maps of Taiwan. Frustrating because, for English-reading visitors, there is scant information provided regarding the various materials on display. Fascinating because Taiwan's history of colonization has seen it redrawn in a different light countless times.
First a warning; if you must rely on the few English-language signs provided in the exhibit, your understanding of the materials will be hobbled by the fact that the signage is insufficient, contains glaring grammatical errors and tells you little of value about what you'll see.
From the moment you read the first sentence upon entering the exhibit -- "A map is a sign language the [sic] makes a record of one's environment" -- it becomes apparent that the museum's decision to provide English-language information was an afterthought at best ... and poorly executed at that.
But the incompetence isn't found only in the exhibition, it also scars an otherwise enjoyable book that the museum staff has compiled to accompany the exhibit. Again the English-language material provided is insufficient, impenetrable given the amount of errors it contains and mind-numbingly uninformative.
"Among myriads of the examples in Taiwan, [coal] is typical example of Taiwanese local product. After viewing these maps, it seems apparent that Taiwan truly is a `BAU-DAU,' this is the Standard Ping Ying that is a treasure island."
This is only one poor passage among myriads of examples.
If you don't need to rely on the English-language signage provided, you'll instead find a fascinating exhibit divided into three parts; history, culture and resources. The history section is interesting insofar as it has few to no maps of Taiwan drawn by native Taiwanese.
Instead, it offers a panorama of perspectives of the island's many colonizers, from the Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese and the KMT.
While all the earlier maps show Taiwan faded various shades of sepia, a more colorful latter map hangs in the corner. It's not a map of Taiwan per se, but the KMT's map of it's territory in 1951.
The top border of the document asks: "How much of our land have Russian pirates stolen?" while the bottom border rallies people to "Oppose
communism, oppose Russia! Take back our country!"
Taiwan, relegated to the bottom corner of the map, has a giant Republic of China flag stuck in it and bears the label "ROC base for opposing communism and Russia."
Of the various perspectives of what Taiwan is, this map piqued people the most. One visitor's comment raised the eyebrows of all those around him and seemed to sum up the exhibition: "All these maps and we still don't know where we are."
Beautiful Island -- An Exhibition of Old Taiwanese Maps and Life is on display at the National Museum of History, located at 49, Nanhai Rd, Taipei (
RSS