Annular Eclipse

There was an eclipse on Sunday. I am not entirely sure how often an eclipse is visible, but I know that I am almost never in the right part of the world to see them. When I live over there, all the eclipses are over here. When I live over here, all the eclipses are over there. Not to mention everything going on in Africa and South America, where I will most likely never live. And even if you are in the right place at the right time, a cloudy day can ruin everything. Sunday's eclipse was visible in a thin strip over Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, Pakistan, India, China and Taiwan. As luck would have it, I live in Taiwan. The best places to see the eclipse were Chiayi, a big chunk of Yunlin County, the northern tip of Kaohsiung, and Taitung. The forecast for northern Taiwan was heavy clouds, which gave me low hopes, but southern Taiwan was relatively clear.

As it turns out, I happen to live in Kaohsiung. But the part of Kaohsiung where the eclipse was visible is mostly a national park. That might be a great place to see an eclipse, but it is difficult to get to by public transportation. Taitung is on the east coast; easily reached by bus, but it would take hours. I don't know anything about Yunlin County, but I know that I can get to Chiayi in about 90 minutes from my apartment. The MRT gets to the high speed train in two or three stops, the high speed train gets to Chiayi in 30 minutes, and there was a quick shuttle bus from the train station to one of the viewing areas set up by the county government.

The eclipse was scheduled to start at 14:49:15 and end at 17:26:02. It only made sense to go to Chiayi in the afternoon, look around a little, and leave when everyone else was having dinner.

I can't think of a good reason to go to Chiayi. Fortunately, everything we saw that day was in Taibao, a smaller city in Chiayi County. Taibao is not the most exciting place in the world either, but it has the high speed train station, a large lawn outside the government buildings that is ideal for public gatherings, and a pretty big museum.

The Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum is exactly what it says it is. The National Palace Museum in Taipei has anywhere from 700,000 to one million pieces of Chinese art, depending on whose figures you read. It is, objectively, the largest collection of Imperial Chinese art in the world, with over 300,000 Qing documents, 200,000 books from Song to Qing, 25,000 ceramics, 13,000 jade pieces, 10,000 paintings and calligraphy, and a bunch of other pieces covering 8,000 years of Chinese history in a space about the size of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. There are so many pieces that the museum can only display 1% at any given time, which means you can see a completely different museum every time you visit, if you time it right.

The people who run the National Museum of China in Beijing are quick to point out their larger collection, but that includes prehistoric and ancient artifacts. The National Palace Museum has the largest collection from Qin to Qing, which is easily the most interesting 2,000 years of Chinese history.

The National Palace Museum collection was either stolen or protected by Chiang Kai Shek and his minions in the 1930s and 1940s. When Japan started invading China, Chiang had everything in the Palace Museum in Beijing moved to a few safe locations. During the last Chinese Civil War, Chiang moved most of the collection to Taiwan, though a large chunk was captured by Mao's people. Eventually, a museum was built in Taipei and became a major political issue between China and Taiwan for the next 40 years. Today, Beijing's Palace Museum occasionally lends pieces to Taipei's National Palace Museum, but Taipei never lends anything to Beijing out of fear that it will never be returned.

Five years ago, they opened the Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum in Taibao, which makes it easier for people in southern Taiwan to see a tiny fraction of the enormous collection and also lets the museum display slightly more at a time. When we went on Sunday, we immediately decided to watch the eclipse from the museum instead of the county viewing area. Not only did the grounds around the museum have more open space, but everything around it looked better than old government buildings.

As one of the best places in the country to see the eclipse, the area between the museum, county government and the pedestrian street that connects the two was pretty crowded. Chiayi is the smallest major city in Taiwan, with less than 300,000 people. It felt like all of them were there that day. It probably did not help that this was a Sunday.

The eclipse itself finished very quickly. It must have been a male eclipse.