As a Finance professor you would expect my Investment Banking lecturer to have some super share trading strategy. However he claims to be making his money through Chinese fine arts such a porcelain, pottery and jade. Due to his unique knowledge of this subject he offered to take a few of us foreign students to Taiwan's National Palace Museum. The last time I was there I was about 5 so I probably found running around more entertaining than appreciating the pieces.
As the story goes, when the Kuomintang lost the Chinese civil war to Mao, they took the majority of the valuables from the Emperor's palace in Beijing with them on their retreat to Taiwan. So the collection in this museum is the largest and most complete collection of Chinese history. Some of the stuff we saw was really quite amazing with so much detail that you wouldn't believe it was possible with the tools of that time.
For example, there was a wooden model boat about 1cm big. But on the bottom of it was 150 Chinese characters!?
How much is the stuff worth? The professor said a small tea cup we saw was valued at US$30 million, ten years ago.
The Chaz Chop 