In 1931, shortly after the Mukden Incident, the Nationalist Government ordered the museum to make preparations to evacuate its most valuable pieces out of the city to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army.

The Chinese Civil War resumed following the surrender of the Japanese, ultimately resulting in Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's decision to evacuate the arts to Taiwan, which had been handed over to the ROC in 1945.

When the fighting worsened in 1948 between the Communist and Nationalist armies, the National Beijing Palace Museum and other five institutions made the decision to send some of the most prized items to Taiwan.

[13] Hang Li-wu, later director of the museum, supervised the transport of some of the collection in three groups from Nanjing to the harbor in Keelung, Taiwan between December 1948 and February 1949.

[9] For security reasons, the Joint Managerial Office chose the mountain village of Beigou, located in Wufeng, Taichung, as the new storage site for the collection.

[15] The Republic of China (ROC) government also contributed more than NT$30 million to establish a special fund for the construction of a museum in the Taipei suburb of Waishuanxi.

The National Palace Museum's main building in Taipei was designed by Huang Baoyu and constructed from March 1964 to August 1965.

In 2014, the museum organized the top three best-attended exhibitions worldwide, including paintings and calligraphic works by Tang Yin, as well as depictions of the Qing dynasty's Qianlong Emperor reinterpreted by contemporary artists.

[24] Housed within the compound of the National Palace Museum, this classical Chinese Song and Ming style garden covers 1.88 hectares (18,800 m2).

The Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum is located in Taibao, Chiayi County, Taiwan, and set on 70 hectares (700,000 m2) of land.

[29] Museum director Chou Kung-shin stated in August 2010 that new architects Kris Yao for the project would commence, with construction completed in 2015.

[33] According to official report, the museum houses Chinese calligraphy, porcelain, bronzes, paintings, jades and many other artifacts, with 22% (2,972 out of 13,491 crates) of the boxes originally transported south from the Forbidden City.

The dyed and textured surface makes the layers of skin, lean meat, and fat materialized incredibly lifelike.

The interior has chairs, dishes on a table and eight figures representing the characters of Su Shih's Latter Ode on the Red Cliff.

[49] Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (Wu-yung version) by Huang Gongwang of the Yuan dynasty is one of the rarest and most dramatic works.

The museum has a vast collection of calligraphy works from the hands of major calligraphers, scholars and important courtiers in history.

Now that the Chinese communist party has redefined its mission to protect China's cultural past, Beijing has requested the return of the artefacts displayed in Taipei.

"[66] A number of Chinese artifacts dating from the Tang and Song dynasties, some of which had been owned by Emperor Zhenzong, were excavated and then came into the hands of the Kuomintang General Ma Hongkui, who refused to publicize the findings.

It was not until after Ma died that his wife went to Taiwan in 1971 from the United States to bring the artifacts to Chiang Kai-shek, who turned them over to the National Palace Museum.

In response to inquiries, the museum admitted that two teacups were found broken in February and April that year, and a plate was dropped in May.

Director Wu Mi-cha suspected that the teacups might have been damaged due to unsatisfactory storage practices, which the museum is working to improve.

After they were originally shipped into Taiwan, the artifacts were first stored inside tunnels in Taichung during the 1950s before being moved to Taipei, where the museum was eventually built.