If you’ve been in China for a while, Taipei is an intriguing place, both Chinese and… not. I have been told that mainlanders often criticize the Taiwanese for not being “properly Chinese,” and more specifically for being – whisper it – too Japanese. Certainly, Taipei reminded me more, if not of Osaka, then perhaps of Busan, or at least Hong Kong. This is partly a matter of fashion; boutiques boast of having the latest designs from Japan and Korea. It is also, to be blunt, a question of manners. People are noticeably more thoughtful and aware of others, with less of the me-first-out-of-the-way jostling which is sadly so common in mainland cities.

There were mainlanders aplenty, and more than a little jostling, at the National Palace Museum, Taipei’s must-see visitor attraction. At the end of the Civil War, the fleeing Nationalists took with them nearly 4,000 crates of historical and cultural relics, so with no disrespect to Beijing’s National Museum, if you want to see the greatest of China’s treasures, you need to go to Taipei.

The hoard is so vast that only a fraction of it can be seen at any one time, with the Museum’s exhibitions regularly rotating. Even so, the breadth and richness of what’s on display is staggering.

What every well-dressed Manchu needed: gold, gem-studded covers for your fingernails

Among the ceramics, there are not only exquisite porcelains from Jingdezhen and Longquan but 5,000-year-old stone age vessels, which incredibly are in better condition than much of the crockery we bought when we arrived in Beijing in 2015. Among the paintings, even the “fakes” are old and beautiful; when we visited, one room was dedicated to 18th-century copies of Ming and Tang old masters. Elsewhere, there are fabulous gold jewelry, intricately carved ivory miniatures, Tibetan bowls made as gifts for emperors… it’s enough to make your head spin.

Breathtaking gold jewelry at the Palace Museum

The only display which jarred was a room dedicated to “new media” reinterpretations of the work of Giuseppe Castiglione, an Italian Jesuit painter at the court of three Qing Emperors. These were garish and tacky videos and projections, including a nun who looked more like a stripper than a saint. However, my kids loved a sub-Pixar animation in which the museum’s exhibits came to life to learn a lesson about the importance of friendship, or something (I wandered off in the middle.)

Because the best way to get kids to appreciate art is to let them scrawl all over it (digitally, of course)

I was more fascinated by bronzes from the age of Confucius, on which we can still read who had them made, when, and why. One treasure on permanent display is the Mao Gong Ding, a vessel from the Zhou era with a 491-character inscription, the longest of any known ancient bronze. Another is the famous Jade Cabbage, but it was so surrounded by sharp-elbowed selfie-snappers that we gave up trying to see it. In fact, after lunch, the tour parties arrived with a vengeance, and since we were tired and hungry and in no mood to be shoved around, we left without even seeing the jade galleries.

The Mao Gong Ding is on permanent display

The nearest Metro stop to the National Palace Museum is Shilin, but it’s still a fair distance from there, too far for kids to walk. We eventually tracked down the stop for the shuttle bus but got fed up of waiting and took a taxi. The Shilin Night Market, on the other hand, was directly below our accommodation, so that when we stepped through the door we were immediately assailed by crowds, the cries of vendors, and the smell of hot oil. It’s all good, gimcrack fun: carnival games, sizzling street food, and stalls full of brightly-colored objects with no discernible function which manage to be at the same time both cheap and overpriced.

Grilling conches at the Shilin Night Market

There’s a calmer, more contemplative atmosphere to be found at Chiang Kai-Shek’s presidential palace. We arrived too late to visit the house itself, but it was built at the heart of an existing botanical garden established by the Japanese during the occupation, and we wandered through the grounds, watching the butterflies and listening to the birds. At the top of a hill is the Pavilion of Maternal Love – a good place for kids to sit quietly, and think about what really matters…

At the Pavilion of Maternal Love

Taipei has much to offer the visitor, but after a couple of days, we were off again, to the south of the island, and the city of Taitung.

Madame Chiang’s limousine. They wouldn’t give us a ride to Taitung, so we took the train

Photos: Carrie Kellenberger via Flickr (featured), Andrew Killeen (others)

The cost of flights from the mainland to Taiwan is kept deliberately high, so for many families, the affordable way of getting there is to make the short ferry crossing from Xiamen to Kinmen Island, then fly from there to your next destination. We however like to be different, so instead, we took the overnight ferry direct from Xiamen to Keelung. It was an odd, though not unenjoyable, experience.

We had tried to book tickets online, but the ferry company’s website was distinctly unhelpful. I emailed an address I found on the usually reliable seat61.com, but got no response. So then we asked a Xiamen-based Chinese friend to help us. In the end, though the only way he could get tickets was to book through an agent. Even collecting our tickets was a challenge, as the office is only open on the one day of the week on which the ferry sails. And it is perhaps due to this old-school approach to sales that the ship was so eerily empty.

Our kids had been expecting a boat like the one on which we’d traveled the couple of miles to Gulangyu, so when they saw the huge ship we were boarding, they were wide-eyed. However, I think there were more passengers on the crowded Gulangyu crossing than on the “Star of Hong Kong.”

Despite the ship being half-empty, the stewards still managed to put us in the wrong cabin. We’d decided to go with the cheapest standard class cabin, and we were shown to a big 6-berth with a TV. This is all right, I thought, until we found a bag in the storage area, and took it to the stewards. They realized we’d been given the wrong cabin, and escorted us to the Deluxe area.

Great, I thought, free upgrade. Wrong again. We went back to the cabin opposite our original one and they kicked out the people who were already in there. However, they’d be in there long enough to make the tiny space stink. Please don’t think this is a case of snooty westerners objecting to the smell of foreign food – the old man’s feet really reeked. So I went and complained, in ungrammatical but noisy Chinese, and we were moved again.

As a family, we’re budget travelers, because we’d rather travel far and often than luxuriously. However, if we were to take this ferry again I would invest in a deluxe room. Not only was the standard cabin tiny, it didn’t even have a proper door, but was open at top and bottom like a toilet cubicle.

Nonetheless, when we went up on deck to wave goodbye to Xiamen, we had two very excited boys. The ferry crossing to visit family in Ireland was a regular part of my childhood, and I’d forgotten that for all their wanderings, my kids had never been on a proper ship before, let alone slept on one. And the sun going down behind Fujian was a more dramatic sight than the concrete of Holyhead.

We had stocked up with a bag full of snacks, but since there was no room to eat in the cabin we took it all up to the coffee lounge. We’d been feasting for a while when someone told us that we weren’t allowed to bring our own food there. However, they kindly let us continue as long as cleaned up after ourselves – probably because we were the only people in there. There was a huge restaurant, with long lines of tables, and hopeful staff standing outside, but I never saw a single person dine there throughout the whole voyage.

It all made for a slightly spooky experience, as though we were in a 1950s horror film about a ship of lost souls. On a more serious note, if that was a typical trip, it’s hard to see how the line can keep running.

Slightly bleary-eyed but ready for action as we arrive at Keelung

That’s a shame, because we had fun, slept well, and arrived in Keelung refreshed and eager. From there it was a 30-minute ride on a local train to Taipei, which was to be the next stage of our adventure.

Despite the Hollywood-style sign, there’s not much glamor in Keelung. Get on the train and away to Taipei!