We're in Taipei, Taiwan, in the halls of the National Palace Museum.

There's people all around us holding their audio tour headsets up to their faces. But the crowd all seems to be moving in one direction

towards this one gallery. In fact we're going to have to wait in this line before we can go inside.

The line's all bunched up around one particular case. People are standing shoulder to shoulder,

holding their phones above each other's heads, all just trying to get a good picture.

Finally, we get to the front and in the middle of this glass case is a cabbage cabbage

but this cabbage is incredible.

It's carved from a piece of jadite,

a white and green stone. It has this long white stalk and these

frilly green leaves and it is so shiny and so translucent. The cabbage looks like it's glowing from the inside. I am going to go out on a limb here and say

this is the most beautiful cabbage in the world.

I'm Doolinthearis and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

In this tiny stone cabbage has a huge backstory.

Today, we follow it from the treasure-laden halls of Beijing's forbidden city

through a harrowing wartime escape to its prize place at the National

Palace Museum in Taiwan.

We take that journey after this. This piece definitely one of the most popular pieces in our museum and for us is quite unusual

not only because it's the most popular piece but also because the material is so unusual in Chinese culture.

This is Dr. Shoyyouin U. She's an Antiquities expert at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan.

When we talk to Shaoyen, she had this PowerPoint,

ready with slides of the cabbage from all different angles.

She points out how the artist has taken advantage of the

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