Why is it that every time I go to Taibei I find myself in a giant mall?

As you may have guessed from the title, today I went to Taibei all by myself. It actually wasn't too bad. I had to ask someone where to stand in line, but otherwise it worked out pretty well. I took the MRT (the subway) to Shilin and then took another regular bus to the National Palace Museum where I walked around for a couple hours and enjoyed some fantastic air conditioning as well as looking at art. Unfortunately, like most big famous museums there were hordes of bored children whose parents were clearly forcing them to do something educational for the weekend.

Shilin seems like a nice area, much less busy and also very green, which is a nice change from what I saw of Taibei in the three days I was there and also of Jilong where I currently reside. The art at the National Palace Museum was pretty cool. A couple scrolls of the type of painting where they use heavy greens and blues and gold, I forget what it's called, Ming copies of Journey to the West, Qing dynasty pocket watches, and a lot of jade were some of the highlights. Although I wished I could have seen the jade pendant that I got my tattoo from.

Under the main MRT/train station is a gigantic mall where there were these flocks of teenagers sitting in circles on the floor, playing the guitar, making posters, doing homework?, anyway, there were tons of other people around who didn't seem that phased by it, so whatever they were doing there, they weren't disturbing the peace.