Taipei Day Trip: Walk Like An Egyptian

Last month, I took a day off and took my kid to the AIT (American Institute  Taiwan), the ad hoc embassy to renew her passport. This is the second time we renewed it here in Taiwan. We were caught in morning traffic on the bus from Yilan, stuck in mountain tunnels. We had to make an appointment weeks before and I was nervous we'd miss out spot. I was missing classes (and money) to do this necessary renewal. (We can't travel or renew her ARC card if it has less than 6 months on her passport.)

If I'm taking the day off, might as well make a day event of it- and we did. From Taipei Main Station we took a taxi to AIT which is near Da'an station. Even 30minutes late for our appointment, it was a painless (expensive) procedure. I paid the $105US with my Taiwanese debit card, unlike five years ago running around banks for a bank that knew what a check was. (The AIT in Kaohsiung didn't want cash or credit but a bank check.)

We tried to make a yin-yang with the 2 different types of discarded tea leaves we drank. We used 2 date pits for the points

We had the whole sunny morning and decided to spend it drinking tea. As both of us appreciate traditional tea houses, the Wisteria was long on our bucket list. We took a taxi from the AIT and had one whole room to ourselves were we sampled two teas for a couple of hours.The menu was impressive. It definitely has more options than the equally atmospheric Jiufen Tea House.  Drinking tea in the Wistaria was quite a treat, not just for spending some peaceful time with my content kid, but the whole historical significance of the establishment. The Wistaria named after the vines that surround the building), is a Japanese-style wooden house built in the 1920s.  The house served as a residence for the Governor-General of Taiwan under Japanese rule prior to 1945. The teahouse, with its circa 1930s decor, was reopened to much fanfare after a long needed renovation in 2008.

The building became a teahouse and gained its current name in 1981 and was meeting place for political dissidents in the 1980's such as Lei Chen (雷震) fighting for a democratic Taiwan. Since then, Wisteria House has been and continues to be a favored meeting place for Taipei artists, academics, and literati. The teahouse was also used during the filming of Eat Drink Man Woman. There's an emerald room with tatami floors, a tatami room with large paintings including a nude, as well as chairs and tables if sitting on floors aren't your thing. It's ours so we sat on a tatami floor beside a sunny window in the largest room and had the whole space to ourselves. 

There were two other couples all in a private room. The proprietor at the cashier asked me if I came from Mexico, and I replied no, "I'm American, but my family is Spanish and Native American," and she complimented me on my bone structure" which made me smile as we conversed in Mandarin.  How strange, usually Taiwanese comment on how beautiful my daughter is. She's so exotic with her green eyes and thick wavy light hair. I'm so used to being invisible. 

Then we were off on another taxi, meeting some lovely, teen daughters of a family friend for lunch. We unsuccessfully convinced them to join us for the National Palace exhibit, but lunch took much longer than we all thought and they had places to be. 

It's possible to get mummy overload and when I was carefree in Cairo (2003?) before my daughter was born, that's what happened to me. The Cairo Museum of Antiquities has one of the oldest and largest collections of pharaonic items on the globe, but after so many mummies, my eyes kind of glazed over. I always felt pretty blessed to have seen the pyramids and this museum in person, as well as having a close encounter with mummies in the hollow burial sites in Siwa. (Picture me galloping alone on a ferocious stallion the sun setting behind Giza, a little scared and very alive.) A year later I was in grad school in York, England and had the good fortune to walk the among the collection of the British Museum. So when I saw a friend's post about the British Museum having a small exhibition in Taipei's National Palace Museum, I made it a point to take my kid.

I was pretty impressed how the British Museum set their exhibit up. Instead of overdosing on mummies, they presented six mummies from different genders, classes, times, including a small child, and it really was a digestible way to learn and appreciate life along the Nile between 900 BC to 180 AD. There were no photos allowed, and it was quite dark inside. Unlike my previous Egyptian mummy experiences, this was high-tech. The scientists had scanned the mummies and on the screen, you could see how the mummies were found, all the jewelry, tokens, amulets and their placements on their bodies. Obviously, we could see each item itself encased in glass and the layers of coffins. The paintings of some of the outer coffins were breathtaking. 

Poor attempt at a selfie with Egyptian mural in the background

There was one woman, I'm not sure if she was the married priestess or the temple singer, but they had placed amulets along each chakra. It blew me away that ancient Egyptians also shared this with Kundalini (from another ancient river civilization). How arrogant of me to think ancient people didn't know about glands and the endocrine system when they had the science to take brains out of nostrils.

I also appreciated how we could see the evolution of the mummy's outer coffin in terms of adapting to the times. It was blatantly obvious when Greek civilization was the hegemonic power, the mummy of the young man looked like a Greek, Orthodox saint. 

Our little Taipei day trip was the best Monday we had in a while. I highly recommend catching the Egyptian Mummies from the British Museum: Exploring Ancient Lives, before it ends in February.