Part of the dowry of a consort of Emperor Kuang Hsu of the Qin dynasty, the Jade Cabbage is one of the top attractions at the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

Though made of jade, it looks exactly like a natural Chinese cabbage, on which the lone grasshopper rests.

A Democratic Progressive Party lawmaker asked National Palace Museum curator Lin Man-li yesterday whether the jade insect lost the antenna while the cabbage was on loan for display at a Kaohsiung art museum in 2003.

Quoting the United Evening News as reporting the missing feeler, Lin Shu-shan demanded to know if it was lost while the national treasure was on loan for display in Kaohsiung for three months in the run-up to the presidential election of 2004.

The Jade Cabbage, 18.7 cm by 9.1 cm by 5.07 cm, was one of more than 100 objects d'art on loan from the National Palace Museum for the special display aimed at "striking a cultural balance" between the north and the south in Taiwan.

Lin said the feeler, about one centimeter long, was broken sometime between 1960 and 1970.

"As a matter of fact, it wasn't perfect," the curator pointed out.

"The break has nothing to do with the special exhibition," she stressed.