Delegation to Taiwan 3

 by Kazu

Where do you think the delegation members were when this photo was taken  ?

The tour to "The National Palace Museum" was arranged for us by Taiwanese Government.

 -from Wikipedia-

The National Palace Museum (traditional Chinese: 國立故宮博物院; simplified Chinese: 国立故宫博物院; pinyin: Guólì Gùgōng Bówùyuàn) is an antique museum in Shilin, Taipei, Taiwan. It is one of the national museums of the Republic of China, and has a permanent collection of more than 696,000 pieces of ancient Chinese artifacts and artworks, making it one of the largest in the world. The collection encompasses over 8,000 years of Chinese history from the Neolithic age to the late Qing Dynasty.^[4] Most of the collection are high quality pieces collected by China's ancient emperors.

Back from the quotation, it is prohibited to take photos in the museum, please visit Taiwan or the special exhibition of the collection in Tokyo to be held this year.

The neighbors of the National Palace Museum is the high end residential area of Taipei and these condominiums are in front of the gate of the museum.

 The perspectives of the premises is like this.
The National Palace Museum was swamped by Chinese People from the continent on the day. According to the  curator of the museum, since about five years ago, the numbers of visitors from the continent increased so much.

We went through the gate that can be seen over there and arrived at the venue of the lunch.

 "圓山大飯店"　The Grand Hotel was used for receiving national guests to Taiwan and actually a variety of celebrities and top brasses of the world stayed and were entertained in this hotel.  

TOU-san on the right of center in this photo gave us superior support for the logistics of the delegation and guided us kindly during our stay in Taipei.
We really appreciate his cooperation and hospitality.
  

Kudos to TOU-san !
It was 28 degrees in Celsius outside and everybody was so thirsty that the coldTaiwanese beer gave us comfy refresh and revitalized us.

We wanted to enjoy Taiwanese Dim Sam but the Dim Sam cart was not going around the floor and we have to order the dishes from the a la carte menu.

 The delegation members were so satisfied with the official events arranged by Taiwanese Government but they would be surprised at the special arrangement in public later.

One of the two huge restaurant of the hotel has huge red pillars inside.

Sauteed sliced pork and Taiwanese veggies were the starter in this lunch. The pork was very rare part of the meat from the shoulder and the taste was superb !

Each dishes was so nice and of high quality that we were afraid of the situation in which the dishes in the normal Chinese restaurant in Japan including Hokkaido would give us no satisfaction.

I remembered the Chinese restaurant "Mandarin Chinese" in Ottawa Canada where we enjoyed the Dim Sam almost every weekend but the taste did not reached this quality.  

 Every time I have Chinese and Taiwanese cuisine, I was moved by the way how to eat the veggies so nicely.

I am so sorry the quality the photos but can you find the thin brown chips on the meat ?
They are the skin of the pork.  First off the hair on the skin was shaved and grilled so nicely to the extent it turns to be crisp like "Beijing Duck". Actually the meat of duck is under the crisp pork skin on the dish.

 This is like a spring roll but the cover is made of soy beans milk called "Yuba".

Seafood flavored fried rice was divided into small portions and wrapped in the pieces of lettuce.
I love this !

This plate is on the wall and the dignity can be felt from the sign.

The entrance of the restaurant is like this.
Have a great weekend and please be looking forward to the next post !