The Meat Shaped-Stone is a celebrity in Taipei’s National Palace Museum. It is a treasured piece of the illustrious Imperial collection. It is the Winged Victory (Nike) next to the Mona Lisa of Taipei’s National Palace Museum’s jadeite cabbage. This well traveled rock has visited San Francisco as recently as 2016. Whereas thousands in Europe flock to see a woman’s portrait or a woman’s winged body, in the Asian countries where this famous rock has traveled, thousands come to see it daily. The beauty of the piece to the Chinese is beyond the food fascination. It is the beauty in the illusion: illusion of something hard, yet pretending to be edible, something everlasting pretending to be perishable, a piece of rock pretending to be a precious stone.
