Taichung: An intellectual journey

Located in central of Taiwan, Taichung is a perfect weekend escape place for you who are bored with the expensiveness of Taipei. Being the third largest city in Taiwan after New Taipei and Kaohsiung, Taichung offers a lot of wonderful places to be visited. Yes, one of our favorites is Feng Chia Night Market, which offers abundant affordable stylish clothings and delicrazious food. Unfortunately, in this article, we will not talk about that place (if you are in Taichung, you really should go to Feng Chia Night Market, though :)).

This time, we went  to Taichung on a long holiday and suddenly, we got to a time when we didn’t really know what else we can do in the city. Rather than taking a lot of nap, we decided to take a walk around the city. We checked out city map and there’s a museum just a couple blocks away from our hotel. Several minutes later, we were excited walking our journey to this place called National Museum of Natural Science (國立自然科學博物館). It came up that our destination actually was not as close as we imagined! Just a moment after we started asking if we were lost, we saw this unnatural building in front of a boulevard.

Taichung Botanical Garden

YEAH, it definitely should be a science museum, right? Look at that very “scientific” architecture! Ooops, it turns out it is not. Our destination  is located in front of that building. What is Museum of Natural Science, anyway? Hmm, in my perspective, it is basically a combination of history and animal museum. In the first floor, after we are welcomed by a huge mammoth’ fossil, we can start to look into ancient Chinese (or should I say Taiwanese?) culture, starting from farming technologies to Chinese medicine making process. They surely have a very fascinating miniatures and models!

Be careful, though, since their human models look very “alive”!

Walking in the first floor, we suddenly entered a room full of huge bacteria and viruses.

Slowly but sure, we entered insects world and hey, it’s a big spider!

Big Spider

Okay, the placement a little bit confusing here. The next section is dinosaurs area. Have you seen moving T-Rex? What is this with oviraptor? Is it a thief or what? If you are dinosaurs fans, this place surely can make you awe.

This dino area leads you to the next floor where I am not sure if this really happened: was there any rhino beetle larger than an elephant? The scale in this museum is mixed up what?

Elephant and Beetle

Fortunately, after this weird phenomenon, we came into a wonderful animal lands. What’s your favorite? Snail?

Snail

Maggot on a dead crow?

Maggot on Crow

Polar bear?

Polar Bear

Angry arctic fox?

Angry Artic Fox

Sleepyhead platypus, perhaps?

Sleepyhead Platypus

Our journey was continued to Pithecanthropus era. If you don’t know what it is, I managed to ask him for a picture to be put here :).

Pithecanthropus

Some wise men said, human evolves. We were once living in the cave, hunting in a group, moving from cave, building houses, and keeping livestock.

Somehow, human invented a truck, found a rock, and slavery comes. So bad :(.

However, all of them are told nicely by diorama in this museum. If you wonder how the story continues, you can go there and see it by yourself (we just don’t want to spoil you :)). Anyway, have I mentioned that all animals mentioned previously are not real? Of course, you know T-rex is a dummy, so do sleepyhead platypus and the others. Despite that, this museum also manages a small zoo. Personally, I will not say it is a zoo; it’s a collection of several aquariums. Still, it is interesting if you never see fireflies or butterflies :).

So, if this is the museum, what is the “scientific” building just across the road? Ah, it is Taichung Botanical Garden, which is also part of the museum.

Butterfly in front of Botanical Garden

Butterfly in front of Botanical Garden

It contains a lot of plants, some fishes, and several flowers. How to put this… It is very “green”. We are not “plant” people, so we decided not to spend a lot of time there. However, if you feel you want to enjoy a very fresh air inside Taichung city, you surely can spend a lot of time there ;).

Botanical Garden's Mini Waterfall

Botanical Garden’s Mini Waterfall

What’s next? Some people said science is related to our left brain, why not to continue to something that more related to our right brain. Therefore, our next destination is: National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. The biggest problem with long holiday in a city without MRT: public buses are so rare (duh!). Once again, we went to this museum on foot :(.

Ukulele Shop

Left, right, left, right, we saw a pretty cool ukulele store on the left (they offer a wide variety of ukulele, very nice to check it out), we saw two dogs on the right.

Still normal

Still normal

What are those dogs doing? Breeding? Ooops, wait!

Are both of them male?

Are both of them male?

Are they both male? Oh, man… ROFL. Okay, let’s forget about it. Welcome (unofficially) to National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts! Ten minutes before arriving its location, we knew we were on the right way because of all the artworks located along our way.

Outside National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

Outside National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

We are giving you the real reason why you should go there: it has Chun Shui Tang. LOL. Rose Tea is also there, anyway :).

Chun Shui Tang

Chun Shui Tang

Supposedly, most artworks displayed their is not permanent. We cannot really tell if what we saw there will still be there next time we visit. Like most other arts museum, photography is prohibited in 95% of its inside area, so we could not bring back a lot of pictures from there.

National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

Fine Arts of House

One of the most wonderful things there was gold carving. Can you imagine how to carve a gold into a butterfly or leaves? There were a tree with gold leaves, gold bees, gold butterflies, gold ants, and many other golds ornaments. There were also the details about how to created them (and it’s hard). The artworks there are similar with this one.

If you enjoy fine art, this museum surely can hold you like… (almost) forever. If you don’t, that’s why they put Chun Shui Tang and Rose House there :D. Moreover, its huge green surrounding area can be a very nice place to walk around during a good day.

At the end of the day, our long holiday was over and it was time to head back to Taipei. This time, Taichung gave us many interesting knowledge. Chinese culture, dinosaurs, human evolution, gold carving. Even, we just know that dog can be attracted to the same gender too, after we were in Taichung :D. Thus, if you don’t know where to go in Taichung, visiting those places can be worth you time.

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