Chung Tai World Museum, Puli

Quite an impressive museum with outstanding customer service. There were so many things to see and learn here. It's very large but it's worth the time spending here. Highly recommend tour guide option once it's available again. This would be one of the top museums I ever came across in Taiwan. Pan on third floor was extremely kind and knowledgeable. We owe her a big "thank you" for going beyond her role to provide us with an awesome tour at last minute. We will definitely come back again soon with kids and family. Thanks again Pan if you read this.

This is one of humanity’s great museums. When paired with the National Palace Museum in Taipei, it offers a more complete view of the history of Chinese art than is available anywhere else in the world. The museum offers a comprehensive survey of 1000 years of Buddhist stone sculpture, from the emergence of representations of the Buddha in the first century A.D. through the great works of the Tang dynasty, ending around 900 A.D. The collection is vast, extremely well curated, and presents only the finest sculptures in pristine condition. Almost none of the sculptures, pagodas, or steles on display are damaged. Iconic sculptures of the Buddha begin in the first century BC in the border region between Pakistan and India known as Gandhara. The museum contains a large and exquisite collection of the best full-size Gandharan sculpture. This room alone is worth the visit. The main hall presents fine examples of seated and standing Buddhas and bodhisattvas and limestone pagodas. Other rooms on the upper floors show smaller Buddhist statues. The collection of Tang-era, three color sculptural ceramics is also probably unique in the world. The collection is housed in a monumental state of the art facility. It is marble throughout. The individual items are given plenty of space. The English language audio guide is a work of art. There are four or five different lecture tours through the collection, including one highly educational tour for children. A full day in the museum is enough to listen to all of the audio tours, but that allows a visit to only about 10 or 15% of the collection. like any great collection, it requires repeated visits. At the moment, the monastery is closed due to Covid, and that means that the collection of Buddhist wooden sculpture is also not accessible. The building has several bathrooms on every floor and many lockers available at the entrance. It’s only weakness in terms of facilities there is no café or restaurant, but instead a-nice area of tables and chairs with vending machines offering hot and cold beverages, sweets, and packaged noodles. The reason there is no restaurant is because this gorgeous museum has in very few visitors. This is the ideal moment to take advantage of it. Just two caveats. First, there is an entire floor devoted to Veryfine, full size rubbings of ancient calligraphy. These are huge black sheets of paper in which the incised stone Chinese characters appear white. Despite the efforts to make this calligraphy interesting to Westerners, most will find little of interest here. Second, some basic understanding of Buddhism is probably necessary to be able to appreciate the collection. That is true of all great museums. Without some understanding of Christianity, the Madonnas in the Uffizi would be incomprehensible, and without some understanding of Greek mythology, the ancient sculptures in the British museum would be somewhat mysterious. (I apologize for the typos. Google makes it difficult to edit a long text.)