American Pop

American Pop Penetrates Worldwide

First of three articles

By Paul Farhi and Megan Rosenfeld

Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, October 25, 1998; Page A1

Western-looking mannequins dominate a store display in Beijing By Michael Williamson – The Washington Post)

America's biggest export is no longer the fruit of its fields or the output of its factories, but the mass-produced products of its popular culture – movies, TV programs, music, books and computer software.

Entertainment around the world is dominated by American-made products. It's "The Young and the Restless" in New Delhi, Garth Brooks blaring from a Dublin apartment, or the eager line of people waiting outside a Nairobi movie theater to see "As Good As It Gets." It's Bart Simpson in Seoul, Madonna in Sao Paulo, "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" on Warsaw TV.

Sociologist Todd Gitlin calls American popular culture "the latest in a long succession of bidders for global unification. It succeeds the Latin imposed by the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church, and Marxist Leninism" imposed by Communist governments.

Tom Freston, president of MTV, the globe-straddling music network, sees it another way. "Today's young people have passports to two different worlds – to their own culture and to ours," he said.

Once, back when "I Love Lucy" was still in its first run, U.S.-made entertainment could be found only in places with the means to buy it, the technology to show it, and the political freedom to allow it across the border. Now, even in tiny Bhutan, a Himalayan nation so isolated that fewer than 5,000 people visit it a year, street peddlers offer illegally copied videos of Hollywood's latest blockbusters.

The United States is on the newsstand as well. Reader's Digest circulates in 19 languages; its 48 international editions, with a combined circulation of 28 million, dwarf its U.S. circulation of 14.7 million. Cosmopolitan magazine, with its salacious advice on sex and beauty for women, now claims to be the world's best-selling women's magazine, with international sales of 4.5 million from 36 foreign editions and domestic circulation of about 2.7 million. Playboy, not to be outdone, has 16 international editions with an estimated readership of 5 million.

Foreigners see U.S. popular culture intertwined with fast food restaurants, T-shirts, pricey sneakers and shopping malls, even though these exports are not classified as intellectual property. The McDonald's restaurants that are opening at a rate of six a day around the world, the baggy jeans and baseball caps that have become a global teenage uniform, the Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels increasingly demanded by children, are all seen as part of the same U.S. invasion.

Global consumerism and expanding channels of distribution may create more demand for entertainment, but neither says much about why people around the world prefer the American variety to that produced in, say, Venezuela or Japan or France.

The answer is partly linguistic, partly economic, and partly a reflection of the unique historical, racial and ideological development of the United States. Consider:

U.S. products enjoy the competitive advantage of being created in English, the first or second language of choice for almost all of the developed world and much of the developing world.

Films produced in English annually account for between 60 and 65 percent of the global box office, according to the Motion Picture Association of America; except for the occasional "The Full Monty," a British movie, most of these ticket sales are generated by American-made films. Producing in English gives a film immediate entree to some of the biggest movie markets in the world. After the United States, which accounts for about half of all ticket sales, the MPAA lists the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia among the 10 largest for film revenues.

This leads to the inevitable chicken-and-egg question: Is American pop riding on the coattails of English or is it causing the spread of English around the world?

Sometimes it's hard to know which is which. Indian youths, raised on years of American music, now pepper their conversations with words like "cool," "chill" and "happening," all used in their slang form. The desire to appear more American has prompted shop owners in Latin America to add an apostrophe to their stores' names – a seemingly trivial change, except that the possessive "s" does not exist in Spanish. The printing on a French Happy Meal box is in English. So is the language of cyberspace and of international meetings.

Surprisingly, one of the most eager markets for all things American is Vietnam, the United States' enemy for three decades. A war that was lost with bullets a generation ago is now being won with movies and compact discs. Since President Clinton normalized relations in 1995, Vietnamese have begun learning English in huge numbers. Young Vietnamese are also listening to American rock songs in American-style bars and restaurants. One new chain, with branches in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, is called Apocalypse Now, a reference to the movie of the same name and the war itself.

Beyond its glitz and gloss, its sex, speed and violence, U.S. popular culture sells abroad, observers say, because it reflects many of the appealing themes and myths of the United States itself: individuality, wealth, progress, tolerance, optimism.

Said Gitlin, the sociologist, "We are good at producing themes and story lines that appeal to a global sensibility: freedom, freedom of movement, freedom from family, from place, from earth, from roles. And speed – the rapidity of movement, of images, the intensity of kinetic experience. ... They want the sense of motion, and the sense of a private utopia."

To its admirers, this makes U.S. entertainment something bright and new and attractively upbeat. "The United States has little history and it is very open to new things," said David Escobar Galindo, El Salvador's foremost writer. "Europe has many wonderful things, but it is very tied to its past. U.S. culture is fresher."

Jack Lang, France's former minister of culture who is renowned for his protectionist views, appreciates American culture as "pure entertainment. It's without restraint, without shame. ... [It] finds the soul of the child in the adult. This is not pejorative."

There has long been another view, of course. To religious conservatives of all denominations, American culture is still the noisy electronic spawn of the Great Satan, undermining traditional values and encouraging wickedness. U.S. movies and television promote mindless consumerism, others complain, and emit a toxic vapor that chokes the wellspring of native creativity.

In its most extreme form, this distaste can serve reactionary political goals. In July, for instance, the Taliban militia, which controls most of Afghanistan, ordered that nation's citizens to get rid of their TVs, video players and satellite receivers. Such goods were deemed morally unacceptable by the Department for Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue.

The Taliban had already ended television broadcasts in the parts of Afghanistan under its control, but people continue to watch videotapes and foreign television channels on satellite dishes.

A fair number of Americans might even agree with Fidel Castro's recent critique of the United States' "canned culture," which he contended "transmits poisonous messages, in the social and moral order, to all families, to all homes, to all children."

MTV, which is available in more households abroad than in the United States, has discovered that simply exporting its U.S. programming doesn't work. So MTV now has 14 different 24-hour feeds, "all different and all similar," said MTV president Freston. The network's latest one began in Russia last month, with Russian veejays.

The most curious transformation of U.S. pop may be what has happened to rap and hip hop music as it has traveled across borders. Rap has become an internationally popular art form, but such American stars as Snoop Dogg with his alienated pose don't strike a chord everywhere. Japanese rappers sing saccharine songs about traditional, romantic love.

Recognizing that they will never fully swamp indigenous commercial culture, America's major producers instead have sought to join local companies through investing in entertainment companies and production deals.

As such productions imply, the popular culture business is slowly, and perhaps inevitably, becoming borderless.

It is, as Disney once suggested, a small world after all.

Ammunition box

l supremacy (n.) a position of authority

l domination (n.) having control/influence over someone or something

l to impose (v.) to force your belief/opinions on someone

l consumerism (n.) the belief that a society or individual needs many goods and services

l culture (n.) art, literature, music and other creative expressions

l mass production (n.) something that is produced in large quantity, amount, or number

l globalization (n.) the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets

l blockbuster (n.) a notably expensive, effective, successful, large, or extravagant movie

l intellectual property (n.) an idea, invention, or process) that derives from the work of the mind or intellect

l U.S. cultural invasion (n.) the incoming or spread of U.S. culture

l ideology (n.) a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture

l box office (n.) income from ticket sales for a film

l pop (n.) abbreviation for popular culture, or popular music

l individuality (n.) character peculiar to and distinguishing an individual from others

l utopia (n.) an imaginary place of ideal perfection

l denomination (n.) a religious organization

Music

Music

Music is an art form in which the medium is sound organized in time. Common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture.

The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. Music ranges from strictly organized compositions (and their recreation in performance), through improvisational music to aleatoric forms. Music can be divided into genres and subgenres, although the dividing lines and relationships between music genres are often subtle, sometimes open to individual interpretation, and occasionally controversial. Within "the arts", music may be classified as a performing art, a fine art, and auditory art.

To people in many cultures, music is inextricably intertwined into their way of life. Greek philosophers and ancient Indians defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as "the harmony of the spheres" and "it is music to my ears" point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, for example, "There is no noise, only sound."^[2] According to musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez, "the border between music and noise is always culturally defined—which implies that, even within a single society, this border does not always pass through the same place; in short, there is rarely a consensus.… By all accounts there is no single and intercultural universal concept defining what music might be, except that it is 'sound

Music History

Allegory of Music, by Filippino Lippi

The era of Baroque music (1600-1750) began when the first operas were written and when contrapuntal music became prevalent. German Baroque composers wrote for small ensembles including strings, brass, and woodwinds, as well as choirs, pipe organ, harpsichord, and clavichord. During the Baroque period, several major music forms were defined that lasted into later periods when they were expanded and evolved further, including the fugue, the invention, the sonata, and the concerto. The music of the Classical period (1750-1800) is characterized by homophonic texture, often featuring a prominent melody with accompaniment. These new melodies tended to be almost voice-like and sing able. The now popular instrumental music was dominated by further evolution of musical forms initially defined in the Baroque period: the sonata, and the concerto, with the addition of the new form, the symphony. Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are among the central figures of the Classical period.

In 1800, the Romantic era (1800-1890s) in music developed, with Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert as transitional composers who introduced a more dramatic, expressive style. During this era, existing genres, forms, and functions of music were developed, and the emotional and expressive qualities of music came to take precedence over technique and tradition. The late 19th century saw a dramatic expansion in the size of the orchestra, and in the role of concerts as part of urban society. Later Romantic composers created complex and often much longer musical works, merging and expanding traditional forms that had previously been used separately. For example, counterpoint, combined with harmonic structures to create more extended chords with increased use of dissonance and to create dramatic tension and resolution. With 20th century music, there was a vast increase in music listening as the radio gained popularity worldwide and new media and technologies were developed to record, capture, reproduce and distribute music. The focus of art music was characterized by exploration. Claude Debussy has become well-known and respected for his orientation towards colours and depictions in his compositional style. Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and John Cage were all influential composers in 20th century art music.

Jazz evolved and became a significant genre of music over the course of the 20th century, and during the second half of that century, rock music did the same. Jazz is an American musical art form which originated in the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions. The style's West African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation, and the swung note. From its early development until the present, jazz has also incorporated music from 19th and 20th century American popular music. Jazz has, from its early 20th century inception, spawned a variety of subgenres, ranging from New Orleans Dixieland (1910s) to 1970s and 1980s-era jazz-rock fusion.

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed in the 1960s from 1950s rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, and country music. The sound of rock often revolves around the electric guitar or acoustic guitar, and it uses a strong back beat laid down by a rhythm section of electric bass guitar, drums, and keyboard instruments such as organ, piano, or, since the 1970s, digital synthesizers. Along with the guitar or keyboards, saxophone and blues-style harmonica are used as soloing instruments. In its "purest form", it "has three chords, a strong, insistent back beat, and a catchy melody." In the late 1960s and early 1970s, rock music branched out into different subgenres, ranging from blues rock and jazz-rock fusion to heavy metal and punk rock.

Sociology

Music is experienced by individuals in a range of social settings ranging from being alone to attending a large concert. Musical performances take different forms in different cultures and socioeconomic milieus. In Europe and North America, there is often a divide between what types of music are viewed as a "high culture" and "low culture." "High culture" types of music typically include Western art music such as Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and modern-era symphonies, concertos, and solo works, and are typically heard in formal concerts in concert halls and churches, with the audience sitting quietly in seats.

Other types of music - including, but not limited to, jazz, blues, soul, and country - are often performed in bars, nightclubs, and theatres, where the audience may be able to drink, dance, and express themselves by cheering. Until the later 20th century, the division between "high" and "low" musical forms was widely accepted as a valid distinction that separated out better quality, more advanced "art music" from the popular styles of music heard in bars and dance halls.

However, in the 1980s and 1990s, musicologists studying this perceived divide between "high" and "low" musical genres argued that this distinction is not based on the musical value or quality of the different types of music. Rather, they argued that this distinction was based largely on the socioeconomic standing or social class of the performers or audience of the different types of music. For example, whereas the audience for Classical symphony concerts typically have above-average incomes, the audience for a rap concert in an inner-city area may have below-average incomes. Even though the performers, audience, or venue where non-"art" music is performed may have a lower socioeconomic status, the music that is performed, such as blues, rap, punk, funk, or ska may be very complex and sophisticated.

When composers introduce styles of music which break with convention, there can be a strong resistance from academic music experts and popular culture. Late-period Beethoven string quartets, Stravinsky ballet scores, serialism, bebop-era jazz, hip hop, punk rock, and electronica have all been considered non-music by some critics when they were first introduced. Such themes are examined in the sociology of music. The sociological study of music, sometimes called sociomusicology, is often pursued in departments of sociology, media studies, or music, and is closely related to the field of ethnomusicology

Music therapy

Music therapy is an interpersonal process in which the therapist uses music and all of its facets—physical, emotional, mental, social, aesthetic, and spiritual—to help clients to improve or maintain their health. In some instances, the client's needs are addressed directly through music; in others they are addressed through the relationships that develop between the client and therapist. Music therapy is used with individuals of all ages and with a variety of conditions, including: psychiatric disorders, medical problems, physical handicaps, sensory impairments, developmental disabilities, substance abuse, communication disorders, interpersonal problems, and aging. It is also used to: improve learning, build self-esteem, reduce stress, support physical exercise, and facilitate a host of other health-related activities.

Music has long been used to help people deal with their emotions. In the 17th century, the scholar Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy argued that music and dance were critical in treating mental illness, especially melancholia. He noted that music has an "excellent power ...to expel many other diseases" and he called it "a sovereign remedy against despair and melancholy". He pointed out that in Antiquity, Canus, a Rhodian fiddler, used music to "make a melancholy man merry, ...a lover more enamoured, a religious man more devout." In November 2006, Dr. Michael J. Crawford and his colleagues also found that music therapy helped schizophrenic patients. In the Ottoman Empire, mental illnesses were treated with music.

Vocabularies

1. Genre - a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content, technique, or the like: the genre of symphonic music.
2. articulation - an act or the process of articulating
3. composition - the art of composing music
4. improvisational - Something improvised, especially a musical passage or a dramatic skit.
5. aleatoric - done randomly; characterized by chance, often in reference to art or music
6. inextricably - from which one cannot extricate oneself
7. composer - a person who writes music.
8. pedigree - an ancestral line; line of descent; lineage; ancestry
9. symphony orchestra - a large orchestra composed of wind, string, and percussion instruments and organized to perform symphonic compositions.
10. concert - a public musical performance in which a number of singers or instrumentalists, or both, participate.

Activities

1. Share your music to everyone. Introduce about the music.
2. Movie watch - CAT

Taipei City Tour

Taipei City Tour 2008/Nov/05

Taipei 101

Taipei 101 is a 101-floor landmark skyscraper located in Xinyi District, Taipei, Taiwan. The building, designed by C.Y. Lee & partners and constructed primarily by KTRT Joint Venture and Samsung Engineering & Construction, is the world's tallest completed skyscraper according to the CTBUH - the arbiter of tall building height. Taipei 101 received the Emporis Skyscraper Award in 2004. It has been as one of the Seven New Wonders of the World (Newsweek magazine, 2006) and Seven Wonders of Engineering (Discovery Channel, 2005).

The building contains 101 floors above ground and 5 floors underground. Its postmodern style combines both Asian and international modern and traditional elements. Its safety features enable it to withstand typhoons and earthquakes. A multi-level shopping mall adjoining the tower houses hundreds of fashionable stores, restaurants and clubs. Fireworks launched from Taipei 101 feature prominently in international New Year's Eve broadcasts, and the landmark appears frequently in films, television shows, print publications, anime media, games, and other elements of popular culture.

The name of the tower reflects its location in Taipei's international business district (101 mailing code) as well as its floor count. The number is pronounced in English simply as One Oh One and in Mandarin and other local languages by the equivalent.

Taipei 101 is owned by the Taipei Financial Center Corporation and managed by the International division of Urban Retail Properties Corporation based in Chicago. The name originally planned for the building, Taipei World Financial Center, was derived from the name of the owner. The original name in Chinese was literally, Taipei International Financial Center.

Taipei 101 was overtaken in height on July 21, 2007 by the Burj Dubai in Dubai, UAE, upon the completion of that building's 141st floor. The title of "world's tallest building" still rests with Taipei 101, though, as international architectural standards define a "building" as a structure capable of being fully occupied. The Burj Dubai is on course to claim the title once its construction is finished, expected in September 2009.

Construction

Location of Taipei 101's largest tuned mass damper.

The main tuned mass damper atop Taipei 101

Taipei 101 is designed to withstand the typhoon winds and earthquake tremors common in its area of the Asia-Pacific. Planners aimed for a structure that could withstand gale winds of 60 m (197 ft) per second (216 km/h, 134 mi/h) and the strongest earthquakes likely to occur in a 2,500 year cycle.

Skyscrapers must be flexible in strong winds yet remain rigid enough to prevent large sideways movement (lateral drift). Flexibility prevents structural damage while resistance ensures comfort for the occupants and protection of glass, curtain walls and other features. Most designs achieve the necessary strength by enlarging critical structural elements such as bracing. The extraordinary height of Taipei 101 combined with the demands of its environment called for additional innovations on the part of engineers.

The design achieves both strength and flexibility for the tower through the use of high-performance steel construction. Thirty-six columns support Taipei 101, including eight "mega-columns" packed with 10,000-psi concrete. Every eight floors, outrigger trusses connect the columns in the building’s core to those on the exterior.

These features combine with the solidity of its foundation to make Taipei 101 one of the most stable buildings ever constructed. The foundation is reinforced by 380 piles driven 80 m (262 ft) into the ground, extending as far as 30 m (98 ft) into the bedrock. Each pile is 1.5 m (5 ft) in diameter and can bear a load of 1,000 metric tons (1,100 short tons) - 1,320 metric tons (1,460 short tons). The stability of the design became evident during construction when, on March 31 2002, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Taipei. The tremor was strong enough to topple two construction cranes from the 56th floor, then the highest, and killed five people in the accident. An inspection afterwards showed no structural damage to the building and construction soon resumed.

Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers along with Evergreen Consulting Engineering designed a 660 metric tons (728 short tons) steel pendulum that serves as a tuned mass damper, at a cost of NT$132 million (US$4 million). Suspended from the 92nd to the 88th floor, the pendulum sways to offset movements in the building caused by strong gusts. Its sphere, the largest damper sphere in the world, consists of 41 circular steel plates, each with a height of 125 mm (0.41 ft) being welded together to form a 5.5 m (18 ft) diameter sphere. Another two tuned mass dampers, each weighing 6 metric tons (7 short tons), sit at the tip of the spire. These prevent damage to the structure due to strong wind loads.

Taipei 101's characteristic blue-green glass curtain walls are double glazed, offer heat and UV protection, and can sustain impacts of 7 metric tons (8 short tons).

Symbolism

Ruyi figure over a Taipei 101 entrance

Taipei 101, like all spire structures, participates in the symbolism of the axis mundi: a world center where earth and sky meet and the four compass directions join.

The height of 101 floors commemorates the renewal of time: the new century that arrived as the tower was built (100+1) and all the new years that follow (January 1 = 1-01). It symbolizes high ideals by going one better on 100, a traditional number of perfection. It represents the spot where the tower stands: 101 is the postal code of Taipei's international business district. The number also evokes the binary numeral system used in digital technology.

The main tower features a series of eight segments of eight floors each. In Chinese-speaking cultures the number eight is associated with abundance, prosperity and good fortune. In cultures that observe a seven-day week the number eight symbolizes a renewal of time (7+1). In digital technology the number eight is associated with the byte, the basic unit of information.

The repeated segments simultaneously recall the rhythms of an Asian pagoda (a tower linking earth and sky, also evoked in the Petronas Towers), a stalk of bamboo (an icon of learning and growth), and a stack of ancient Chinese ingots or money boxes (a symbol of abundance). The four discs mounted on each face of the building where the pedestal meets the tower represent coins. The emblem placed over entrances shows three gold coins of ancient design with central holes shaped to imply the Arabic numerals 1-0-1.

Curled ruyi figures appear throughout the structure as a design motif. The ruyi, is an ancient symbol associated with heavenly clouds. It connotes healing, protection and fulfilment. It appears in celebrations of the attainment of new career heights. Each ruyi ornament on the exterior of the Taipei 101 tower stands at least 8 m (26 ft) tall. The sweeping curved roof of the adjoining mall culminates in a colossal ruyi that shades pedestrians. Though the shape of each ruyi at Taipei 101 is traditional, its metallic interpretation is plainly modern.

At night the bright yellow gleam from its pinnacle casts Taipei 101 in the role of a candle or torch upholding the ideals of liberty and welcome. From 6:00 to 10:00 each evening the tower's lights display one of seven colours in the spectrum. The colours coincide with the days of the week:

Day	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Colour

The cycle through the spectrum connects the tower with the rich symbolism of rainbows, traditionally seen as bridges linking earth to sky and earth's peoples to one another.

A further connection with time appears in an adjoining park, where a clock draws its energy entirely from the building's wind shear. The circular shape of the clock is echoed in the shape of the park itself.

Feng shui fountain outside Taipei 101

Taipei 101, like many of its neighbours, shows the influence of feng shui philosophy. An example appears at the intersection of Songlian Road and Hsinyi (Xinyi) Road, where a large fountain stands near the tower's east entrance. A ball at the top spins toward the tower. The fountain may be viewed as a work of public art. Its stone and liquid textures offer a contrast to the glass and metal of the building even as its horizontal ridges repeat the building's rhythms. Yet, in feng shui terms, the fountain serves a practical function, though, . A T intersection near the entrance of a building drains positive energy, or ch'i, from a building and its occupants. Flowing water placed at such a spot can remedy the situation by generating a positive inward flow of ch'i. At Taipei 101 a traditional predicament has been addressed with a traditional solution--yet the result looks modern.

Taipei 101 merges ancient motifs and ideas with modern techniques and materials. As a landmark it renews the symbolism of all tall towers as cosmic centers. Its interplaying symbols convey images of optimism, abundance, and awareness of the cycles of time.

The National Palace Museum

The National Palace Museum is located in Taipei, Taiwan

Not to be confused with the Palace Museum in Beijing on mainland China.

National Palace Museum
Established	1964
Location	Taipei, Taiwan
Director	Kung Shin Chou
Curator	Ming Chu Fung
Website	www.npm.gov.tw

The National Palace Museum is an art museum in Taipei City, Republic of China, in northern Taiwan. It has a permanent collection of over 650,000 pieces of ancient Chinese artifacts and artworks, making it one of the largest in the world. Most of the collection are high quality pieces collected by China's ancient emperors.

The National Palace Museum should not be confused with the Palace Museum (note the absence of the word "National"), located inside the Forbidden City in Beijing, capital of the People's Republic of China. Both institutions share the same original roots, which was split in two as a result of the Chinese Civil War.

History

The National Palace Museum was first established as the Palace Museum in Beijing on October 10, 1925, shortly after the expulsion of Puyi, the last emperor of China, from the Forbidden City by warlord Feng Yü-hsiang. The articles in the museum consisted of the valuables of the former Imperial family and were moved from place to place in the 1930s and 1940s to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army.

During the final years of the Chinese Civil War, the museum essential works collections were selected for removal, under the orders of General Chiang Kai-shek, from Beijing's Forbidden City to Taiwan. With the victory of the Communists, the National Palace Museum was split into two (the part on the mainland, like all other such institutions, lost its "National" designation). The part in mainland China is centered on the Forbidden City.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the National Palace Museum was used by the Kuomintang to support its claim that the Republic of China was the sole legitimate government of all of China, in that it was the sole preserver of traditional Chinese culture amid the social change and Cultural Revolution in mainland China, and tended to emphasize Chinese nationalism. In recent years, the museum has focused more on local and minority cultures and has included some materials on loan from the People's Republic of China.

In English, the institution in Taipei is distinguished from the one in Beijing by the additional "National" designation. In common usage in Chinese, the institution in Taipei is known as the "Taipei Gugong", while that in Beijing is known as the "Beijing Gugong".

The National Palace Museum has also been controversial in Taiwan with many supporters of Taiwan independence regarding it as an unwanted symbol of China-centeredness.

Construction

The National Palace Museum building in Taipei was constructed on March 1964 and was completed in August of 1965. Due to the insufficient space to put on display over 655,707 artifacts, the museum underwent renovations in 1967, 1970, and 1996. The museum reopened on Christmas Day 2006, after a long ten years renovation. It was accelerated in 2002, during this renovation period about two-thirds of the museum section was closed. The displays are rotated once every three months, which means 60,000 pieces can be viewed in a year and it would take nearly 12 years to see them all

Vocabularies

1. Arbiter - a person who has the sole or absolute power of judging or determining.

2. Hail - to cheer, salute, or greet; welcome

3. Wonder - the emotion excited by what is strange and surprising; a feeling of surprised or puzzled interest, sometimes tinged with admiration:

4. Damper - an attachment to keep the indicator of a measuring instrument from oscillating excessively, as a set of vanes in a fluid or a short-circuited winding in a magnetic field.

5. Tremor - an attachment to keep the indicator of a measuring instrument from oscillating excessively, as a set of vanes in a fluid or a short-circuited winding in a magnetic field.

6. Gale - a very strong wind.

7. Skyscraper - a building of exceptional height completely supported by a framework, as of girders, from which the walls are suspended, as opposed to a building supported by load-bearing walls.

8. Spire - a tall, acutely pointed pyramidal roof or rooflike construction upon a tower, roof, etc

9. Gleam - a tall, acutely pointed pyramidal roof or rooflike construction upon a tower, roof, etc

10. Pinnacle - a relatively small, upright structure, commonly terminating in a gable, a pyramid, or a cone, rising above the roof or coping of a building, or capping a tower, buttress, or other projecting architectural member

Activities

1. Tell your partner about one of the two places

2. Tell the class about the place what your partner told you

3. If there are visitors coming to Taipei, where will you take them in Taipei?