NATIONAL PALACE MUSEUM CARD

(Tiny House Pop-up)

I truly enjoy going to museums. Not just the large, monumental ones…but the modern and experimental ones like the Pompidou Centre or the Andy Warhol Museum too. However, growing up in Taipei, there was only one easily accessible museum, albeit one of those world famous monumental ones. The National Palace Museum, which houses Artefacts of the Chinese civilization has pieces dated back 8000 years ago. The museum is internationally renowned for having the most complete collection of Chinese treasures…however, the story is much more complicated because there are actually two National Palace Museums.

The “other” museum is actually properly located at Beijing, occupying the front portion of the Forbidden City, where emperors had ruled for dynasties. The story goes back to the establishment of the Republic of China and the ending of the Qing Dynasty (see: The Last Emperor). Of course it’s a long and complicated history, but we will go fast because our focus is on the museum.

After dethroning Puyi, the last emperor, the new republic took control of all of China’s treasures, mostly housed in the Forbidden City. A commission was established along with the National Palace Museum. However, as they were trying to inventory all the priceless artwork, the Japanese invaded China. To protect the treasures against the Japanese, the Artefacts were loaded on the train and moved south to Nanjing (war time capital). It was moved around many more times during the 8 brutal years of Japanese occupation. Japanese retreated after losing the war, and before the commission can finally sit down to do their inventory, the Chinese civil war broke out with the communists. Losing the war, the Nationalists made plans to retreat to the island of Taiwan (which the Japanese had just returned to China) as a last resort, The treasures never made it back up north before it was loaded on boats on its journey to Taiwan.

So, finally settled in Taiwan with no hope of retaking the Mainland from the communists…the commission (probably with new members by now) inventoried the priceless items and a museum was built to house them. This museum was built in the style of traditional Chinese architecture (though in the tackiest colors I’ve ever seen) and right near the mountain. It’s pretty much always an open secret that there are secret tunnels reserved for these Artefacts in case a war breaks out between the Mainland and Taiwan. But it’s also pretty obvious that the communists will not attack or risk damaging these items left to us by ancestors even during time of war.

The museum has three treasures that everyone is familiar with - although they are not the most rare nor exceptional of the treasures. However, they are easy to remember. The most famous is the jadeite cabbage. Jade carved to look like boy choy with a cricket on top. The second is a rare rock that has been treated and carved to look like a piece of braised pork - with delicious fatty skin and all. The third is a bronze utensil called the ding. I have made miniature versions of two of these (I’m not talented enough to make braised pork rock) for the card. Another famous ceramic vase I included is famous for its ability to spin, and through a small window you see a goldfish swim by.

For this card, I wanted to invite you into the museum and showcase a few of its treasures. I have seen this flip technique (going from vertical fold into horizontal fold) from one of my favorite books - the Lego pop-up book. I studied it for a long time, months…and finally seem to achieve the effect. I will be improving on it as I have plenty of ideas that I can’t wait to create using this technique. (I’ll leave a picture of these three treasures in the comments). My little cabbage was made out of the Witch and Cauldron dies.

Karen Dies used in this card:

1157 - Tiny House Pop

1156 - Tiny Trees Pop

1035 - Knight and Dragon

1249 - Witch and Cauldron

1016 - Winter Animals