Taipei Jade Market and the Museum of Drinking Water!

Hey everyone! It's been a while, I know, but I've recently been on two interesting trips. The first was to the Taipei Holiday Jade Market and the second was Part Two in my two-part series on weird museums in Taiwan.

The Taipei Holiday Jade Market was really great. It's a massive jade market located under a highway overpass.

Inside it's like a big flea market where, I assume, if you new enough Chinese you could barter your way to a good price.







I, luckily, was with my friend Joy Lin and she was able to at least tell me how much things were.

I saw lots of bracelets, and necklaces and even some tea pots, but what I was looking for was a jade cat for my mom.



Joy told me that they would probably be hard to find because most of the popular animals that are made from jade are from the Chinese zodiac and there is no cat in their system. There is however, a tiger which would work for me.

We looked around a little more, and I did find a pair of jade cats, but they cost NT$8,000, or over US$200!

We also came across a table that had older and dustier looking jade pieces. The guy had vases and some animals, one of which I thought was a cat, but turned out to be some kind of Chinese mythical creature.



While I also couldn't afford this jade animal (NT$80,000 or US$2,500!!) the table-owner told us a little about jade. He explained, in Chinese, that good jade will look dingy and flat, but that you can shine a light through it. Also, if you run a brush over it can be polished and will shine a little bit.

So, in teh end I did not find cat, but I would definitely like to go back some time and look again.

Part two coming soon. . . .