Another hot muggy day- we’ve learned to cut across shopping malls when possible to get from point A to point B.  The island is littered with Japanese Department stores, that I LOVE.  For those of you who know me in my past life I was an 84lb, 4’11” Japanese person.  I like things small, tidy and compact.  It drives Rob crazy-

Found one today that had a studio set up where there were stations for jewelry making:

Very cool!

It’s not all shopping centers and malls for us- got Mae to go to the National Museum with me.  It literally was like pulling teeth.  She was there on Friday for a field trip but for some unknown reason they did not go inside.  We took about a 20 min taxi ride, this is how we navigate:

I’ll take a picture of where we are going and or a screen shot of my computer and show the taxi driver.  It works most of the time!  Don’t remember what we did before these smart phones!  We must have lugged our guide books everywhere!

The museum holds the most extensive Chinese collection in the world.  Only 1% of the collection is on display at any given time.  When the Nationalists lost to the Communists they raided the Forbidden City which had been the home of 2 Dynasties so had TONS of treasures.  Thousands of crates of priceless pieces were brought to the island where the Nationalists set up their government.  Supposedly thousands of crates had to be left in the Forbidden City and they remain packed even today.

Dumb luck got us to the museum for 1 of the 2 daily English guided tours!  Always so much easier navigating a museum with a docent.  She did a fantastic job for our little group of about 10 people.   No photo’s are allowed to be taken inside of the museum, it was PACKED with people.

Saw a group of minority Chinese from mainland.  By the looks of them they were from Southern China.  Tiny people with hand woven clothes and beautifully embroidered pieces of clothing.  There were about a dozen in their group with an average age of 75.  I told Mae that she may never see this again- as with most groups as the younger generation grows and leaves the local villages for the “big cities”, the old ways are left to those left behind and used only for special occasions.

When we first came to China in 1984 we would almost daily see women tottering around with a cane and bound feet.  A barbaric ritual that was a hold out from the last Dynasty.  The big toe would be left as is and the other toes would be bent toward the arch of the foot- eventually breaking the arch to leave a foot/stump 3″-5″ in length.  The feet would need to be rewrapped daily and infection was common.  These small feet were prized by men- again barbaric.

With subsequent trips we would see fewer and fewer women as they all passed on.  Have not seen any for about 20 years.  You can purchase in antique stores the hand embroidered shoes that were worn by these women.  Back in the day, they would be for sale in the markets.

We returned to the Ferris wheel mall:

and saw the movie “San Andreas Fault”, for the record  I will NOT be returning to Cali……………like ever………….or until I cannot stand the summer heat of AZ!Max found this little buddy in one of our elevators- yes, he is missing his tail, it was flopping around on the floor.  Max was all like “the suction’s HURT”, i’m all like “his butt hurts from you scaring the tail off him!”.