A ceremony was held Monday to unveil  an exhibition of treasures from Taiwan’s National Palace Museum at the Kyushu National Museum in Fukuoka, the second half of an  unprecedented display of the museum’s collection in Japan.

Premier Jiang Yihua’s wife Li Shuchen attended the ceremony  along with Japanese-Taiwanese baseball legend Sadaharu Oh, Fukuoka  Prefecture Governor Hiroshi Ogawa and Taiwan’s Representative to Japan  Shen Ssutsun.

At the ceremony, NPM Director Fung Mingchu touted a work called  “Orchid Pavilion Preface” by Chinese calligrapher Wang Hsichih dating  back to 353 A.D. as one of the must-see pieces in the exhibition,  which will open to the public today.

Another of the pieces featured among the 110 works in the  “Treasured Masterpieces from the National Palace Museum, Taipei”  exhibition in Fukuoka will be the “Meat-shaped Stone,” which is being  displayed outside Taiwan for the very first time.

The 5.73-centimeter tall Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) piece, made of  banded jasper and shaped like a braised pork belly, will be shown  for only two weeks at the Kyushu National Museum, starting today.

Another popular NPM piece, the “Jadeite Cabbage with Insects,” was  displayed outside Taiwan for the first time at the Tokyo National  Museum for two weeks in June and July, in the first half of the  two-part NPM exhibition in Japan.

The Tokyo show attracted more than 400,000 visitors during its  three-month run.

The Kyushu and Tokyo exhibitions are part of a historic exchange  program between the two Japanese museums and the NPM, to exhibit each other’s cultural treasures.

 

image via National Palace Museum