Heavy rains accompanying Typhoon Nari last week completely flooded the Metropolitan Antiques Market (中國大都會文物廣場), located in the basement of the Kangning Building on Taipei's Sungkiang Road, damaging or destroying numerous priceless antiques in the market's 50 shops.
The market is commonly known as "the little palace museum" in reference to the value of the antiques that can be found there.
Shop owners learned of flooding in Taipei from television broadcasts and rushed to the market only to find that traffic was prohibited from approaching the area. Those made it through to the Kangning Building found that a water had already poured in through the basement entrance flooding the market.
One shop owner surnamed Hsieh (謝), who is in his eighties, was stunned by the disaster. He was recently offered NT$15 million for a Chang Ta-chien (張大千) landscape painting that he had held for many years, but he turned down the prospective buyer. The painting has now been badly damaged by water.
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