With news of a mysterious illness floating around, my first trip in 2020 was purposedly chosen to be a safer place, somewhere that would readily reject visitors from mainland China and not have to worry about the political consequences. That was Taiwan. They had also started to tighten their borders on Hong Kong visitors by the time I arrived but at least I squeezed in a nice short holiday without the deluge of Chinese New Year travelers seen elsewhere around Asia.
As a regular (annual or many times annually) visitor to Taiwan, I've already covered many key attractions in the cities already. However, I chose to return to the National Palace Museum once again hoping to use a better camera to photograph some of the 230,000+ Forbidden City objects that the Nationalist government took with them when they fled to Taiwan. So a visit to Beijing's Forbidden City is not complete until you visit this museum in Taipei. The Taiwanese government also built a southern branch of this museum a few years ago to revitalize the Chiayi economy - refer to my photo thread here.
wow i just cannot imagine all of those kinds of beautiful objects ... and much more ... all in one place in the forbidden city. i would love to check out this museum.
on one trip we almost had a layover in taipei, but changed plans. then later we flew low right over tiawan and i was really looking it all over intently --- this has jumped up quite a curiosity to visit.
Taiwan is quite an underrated tourist destination in Asia and I think the long-haul tourist would be very surprised such a huge treasure trove from Beijing has ended up here (I was when I first visited a very long time ago).