The National Palace Museum’s (國立故宮博物院文會堂) extended opening hours, which began yesterday, are 8:30am to 6:30pm (originally 9am to 5pm). Silks Palace Restaurant (故宮晶華), which is located at the museum, is serving a dinner special Mondays to Fridays. Parties of four National Palace Museum ticket holders who dine at the first-floor restaurant will receive a Treasure Chest Dessert Collection for free.
The Grand Formosa Regent Taipei is also getting in on the act. Its National Palace Culture Fest package comprises a two-day, one-night stay at the hotel anytime before the end of December, a complimentary breakfast for two, two tickets to the National Palace Museum, dinner at Silks Palace for two, and shuttle services between the hotel and the museum. The package is priced at NT$6,200 per room.
Silks Palace models its dishes after the museum’s many artworks, including renditions of the famous Jadeite Cabbage With Insects and Meat-Shaped Stone, and artistic interpretations of classic fare, such as Buddha Jumps Over the Wall (佛跳牆) stew, which is served in a white bowl that references the classic three-legged cauldrons of the Warring States period.
The National Palace Culture Fest package is limited to Taiwan National Identification Card or Alien Resident Certificate holders. To make a reservation, call Grand Formosa Regent Taipei at (02) 2523-8000.
Address: National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院), 221, Zhishan Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市至善路二段221號). Silks Palace is located to the left of the museum’s main exhibition hall. Tel: (02) 2882-9393. On the Net: www.silkspalace.com.tw
For those looking to celebrate US Independence Day, Mr Sausage’s kitchen is holding a 4th of July party on Sunday from 12:30pm to 6:30pm, comprising a menu of American favorites as well as lots of Americana on sale.
Address: 5-1, Alley 4, Ln 12, Bade Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市八德路三段12巷4弄5-1號). Tel: (02) 2579-0396
Last week, Viola Zhou published a marvelous deep dive into the culture clash between Taiwanese boss mentality and American labor practices at the Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) plant in Arizona in Rest of World. “The American engineers complained of rigid, counterproductive hierarchies at the company,” while the Taiwanese said American workers aren’t dedicated. The article is a delight, but what it is depicting is the clash between a work culture that offers employee autonomy and at least nods at work-life balance, and one that runs on hierarchical discipline enforced by chickenshit. And it runs on chickenshit because chickenshit is a cultural
My previous column Donovan’s Deep Dives: The powerful political force that vanished from the English press on April 23 began with three paragraphs of what would be to most English-language readers today incomprehensible gibberish, but are very typical descriptions of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) internal politics in the local Chinese-language press. After a quiet period in the early 2010s, the English press stopped writing about the DPP factions, the factions changed and eventually local English-language journalists could not reintroduce the subject without a long explanation on the context that would not fit easily in a typical news article. That previous
April 29 to May 5 One month before the Taipei-Keelung New Road (北基新路) was set to open, the news that US general Douglas MacArthur had died, reached Taiwan. The military leader saw Taiwan as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” that was of huge strategic value to the US. He’d been a proponent of keeping it out of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hands. Coupled with the fact that the US had funded more than 50 percent of the road’s construction costs, the authorities at the last minute renamed it the MacArthur Thruway (麥帥公路) for his “great contributions to the free world and deep
Years ago, I was thrilled when I came across a map online showing a fun weekend excursion: a long motorcycle ride into the mountains of Pingtung County (屏東) going almost up to the border with Taitung County (台東), followed by a short hike up to a mountain lake with the mysterious name of “Small Ghost Lake” (小鬼湖). I shared it with a more experienced hiking friend who then proceeded to laugh. Apparently, this road had been taken out by landslides long before and was never going to be fixed. Reaching the lake this way — or any way that would