National Palace Museum

This guide to the National Palace Museum in Taipei follows nearly three thousand crates of imperial treasures shipped from mainland China during the final months of the civil war in 1948 and 1949. Among them was a jadeite cabbage carved as a wedding gift, its stem fading from white to green, with a locust and katydid hidden in the leaves. It traces the cabbage's earlier flight from Beijing in the 1930s, ahead of the invading Japanese army, long before it ever reached a ship.