National Museum of Natural Science, Taichung Taiwan
Between Christmas and New Years last year I found myself with a few days to kill so I hit up the museum to see what the best of Chinese science had to offer me.
The Taiwan National Museum of Natural Science is located in Taichung City and hosts a series of scientific exhibits with education in mind.
Some of it was good, some of it was confusing and some of it was just ‘uh, this is a science museum right?’
The museum itself is divided into two main buildings. First there’s the ‘Space Theatre and Science Center’ and then the ‘Life Science Hall, Human Cultures Hall and Global Environment Hall’ building. Outside you also have botanical garden display for the scientific nature buff in you.
To say that the National Museum of Natural Science is large is an understatement. I’m an adult and despite spending 6 hours there only managed to see most of the Life Science, Human Cultures and Global Environment Hall displays. I didn’t see any of the Space Theatre, Science Center or Botanical Gardens exhibits.
If you’ve got kids the museum is definitely a two day outing, possibly even three.
The Life Science, Human Cultures and Global Environment Halls are all in the same building which is the large main building at the centre of the museum grounds. It is made up of three floors and is packed with things to see.
I started my journey through the museum at the ‘Gateway to the Living World’. This exhibit is basically a trip through the evolution of life. Thankfully there’s no 6000 year old creationist rubbish here so you start off with single cell organisms and work your way up to man.
I’m not a fan of jellyfish so walking into a massive 8-10ft high display of one wasn’t exactly the most pleasant experience. The displays themselves in this area do tend to be a bit limited due to the simplicity of the objects on display but it’s still interesting enough.
As you move through there are plant displays around as well and presumably they are matched up to the time period your looking at. Personally I found them a little boring. The vegetation in Taiwan is pretty bland to look at (everything is just different shades of green), so after a short time here you’re kind of over the vegetation scene.
Moving on from basic life cells you enter the insect world where there’s a whole bunch of displays of insects of the era. Interactivity wise there’s video rooms and some exhibits can be played around with (think Scienceworks in Melbourne if you’re from Australia).
Science is definitely a no-nonsense affair here in Taiwan and nothing is toned down for children. Take for example the frog exhibit on the right.
Now I can’t read Chinese but I assume the text goes into graphic detail about how the daddy frog jumps on the back of the mummy frog and then all these little eggs spurt out. Take that stupid stork theory.
Hehe frog sex.
Moving on from the insects then comes the dinosaurs which was easily the best area in the evolution exhibits. They’ve gone to a lot of trouble to create some really large displays here which, even if you can’t understand the written information presented is still interesting to look at.
My favourite part in this area was the large animatronic display area, specifically the Tyrannasaurus Rex display which I thought was particularly well done:
After the dinosaurs you progress to mammals which is mostly taxidermy stuff. Although all fake some of the exhibits are extremely detailed, take for example this dead bird:
Presumably explaining the decomposition process I really had to look hard to tell if it was real or not. At a glance it’d definitely pass for the real thing. Most of the animal exhibits were of the same realistic quality which was nice.
Finally you jump to man and the human body and I kind of just rushed through this bit. Seen a human body seen them all and if you’ve watched Discovery Channel for a week you kind of get the cliff notes on how most of the body works anyway.
Still if you are interested in the body and man you’ve got a whole bunch of displays going into everything from how the body works, the evolution of man and interactive displays about the body.
Towards the end of the human body area you get a bit of medicine history and I couldn’t walk past without snapping a photo.
If Indian doctors are required to taste patient excretions no wonder they are leaving the country en mass. Would you want to practice medicine in India?
Leaving the evolution area I headed over to the Chinese Medicine display. This area briefly covers Chinese medicine and seemed to be there as an alternative to the modern medicine area towards the end of the evolution exhibits.
Inside you’ve got some famous Chinese doctors, a bunch of jars with all sorts of kooky looking herbs and what not inside and also some rather interesting inventions. Take this one for example;
Presumably it’s some kind of hearing aid device but I’m not 100% sure. The placard was in Chinese and the box simply states ‘Magic Needle’.
Buggered if I know what it was.
Another ‘what the f?’ display was this one on weight. On one side of a set of scales you had about 50 little toy elephants, and on the other side was a toy crocodile type thing.
I have no idea what the point was.
Next to the Chinese Medicine area is the Chinese Science and Technology display. This area covers things like magnets, gunpowder and some built to scale Chinese inventions.
Everything was in Chinese here so I’m not quite sure what half of it was. Due to the scope and size of the displays though it was enough to hold my attention.
Downstairs from here you start to drift off the Science path and enter the world of spiritual Chinese history.
It starts off alright with a history of the Taiwanese natives and how they lived before the Chinese. There’s models of Taiwanese villages and a nice lifesize hut showing what their houses used to be like.
As you can see architectually wise nothing much has changed.
The Taiwanese history is alright but then you start to go pretty deep into Chinese spirituality. I’m not adversely against any of this stuff mind you but it was kind of weird seeing it in a Science museum.
Sort of like seeing stuff about Jesus in a western science museum.
Scientific appropriateness aside from a cultural perspective I think I spent enough time there to learn something. One of the displays that initially confused me were these painting depictions of what was basically a whole bunch of guys massicaring eachother.
Seemingly in contrast to the rest of the exhibit which was all peaceful and zen I tried my best to understand what these drawings were supposed to be but eventually gave up and moved on.
Shortly afterwards I ran into a Taiwanese girl I overheard speaking English. After introducing myself I took her back to the displays and she explained that apparently when you die you have to go through eight (or ten? I can’t remember now) trials.
The paintings were the depiction of these trials and it was only after you’d passed all of them that you got to go to heaven. If you failed then the minions commenced with the stabbing, decapitation and other forms of torture shown.
Sounds wonderful!
The rest of the exhibits in the area were a bit meh and felt somewhat outdated. Stuff like zooming into insects with remote control microscopes or looking at a whole bunch of rocks just didn’t do anything for me.
I did have to go and visit the Oceania Gallery though which was located in the basement. Eager to see something about Australia I was kind of disappointed to see 99% of it was about the pacific islands. The only mention Australia got was something about hunting Aboriginal tools.
My last stop was a visit to the ‘Mini-Zoo’ which is basically a small section with some reptiles and fish for you to look at. By late afternoon stage most of the animals were winding down for the evening but this little guy was still pretty active:
Inside you have a 100 or so seat capacity circular sitting platform surrounded by a full 360 degree viewing area. The visual experience is accompanied by laser lighting, wind and the viewing platform itself rotates to give you a sense of immersion. The movie itself was about global warming and crazy nature, the effects used complimented the video nicely.
The theatre I really wanted to go to however was the 3D Space Theatre but because it was on the other side of the building I managed to miss the show. Definitely something I’ll go back for one day, along with all the other Space exhibits in the Space Theatre and Science Center.
Cost wise you’re looking at $150 NTD (approx $5 AUD) for a day ticket to any of the exhibits. You can buy tickets for individual areas but for $5 I didn’t really care. I assume there’s cheaper options for kids and group discounts for families.
At the entrance to the museum is an info desk with people that can speak some English. They were very helpful in explaining the run down of how admission worked and provided me with some pamplets in English which had maps and explanations of the various areas.
Unfortunately most of the exhibits are solely in Chinese so you do kind of have to make out what you’re looking at yourself most of the time. I believe there is an English audio guide you can hire out from the information desk but I’m not sure how much use it would be.
I did see the audio tape signs up and around but most of the time they appeared in what seemed to be a pretty random order. Either I was looking at things wrong or that’s just the way the audio worked.
I hadn’t been to a Sciency place since my childhood so I found the National Museum of Natural Science a pretty good day out. Had I the time I’d have gone back later that week to check out the Space exhibits and the Botanical Gardens but for now they’re on my ‘to do’ list.
Amongst shopping, shopping and more shopping, if you’re stuck in Taichung wondering what to do the National Museum of Natural Science easily rates as something a little bit different to do.
Located about 2-3km from the Taichung Railway station on Guancian Road, you can either walk like I did for about 20 minutes or catch a taxi down.
February 25th, 2010 at 11:11 pm Jen(Quote)
So do you understand wind, gall, and phlegm better now?
February 25th, 2010 at 11:34 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Wind, gall and phlegm?
I know what these things are but why would I understand them better?
(or was that some Chinese mecidine joke I didn’t get?)
July 22nd, 2011 at
[...] in Taiwan’ is currently on exhibit in the ‘special exhibitions’ area of the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung City, Central [...]