Taiwan’s indigenous people and later ethnic Chinese arrivals have vastly different cultures. But a new exhibit at the National Taiwan Museum shows that cultures on both sides of the ethnic divide are always quite as alien to one another as it may seem. In an unusual number of ways, these unrelated cultures have created objects and customs in parallel with one another. And we’re not just talking about human universals that all cultures have. We’re also talking about such specific habits as smoking tobacco and using coins for purposes other than money. Though the specifics are different on each side of the ethnic divide, it turns out that people on both sides do these things. Alongside objects made for ordinary indigenous people and ordinary ethnic Chinese settlers, the exhibit also showcases glitzy deluxe versions of those same items once used in the Chinese imperial court, so you can get a sense of how even people at the top of society did the same things back in the days when imperial China ruled much of Taiwan. Today, we’re taking a walk through the exhibit, stopping at each of the ten sections to see how, in some ways, Taiwan’s indigenous population and later settlers from China weren’t completely different.