Archive for January, 2010

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‘Proper’ winter

January 26th, 2010

I think a lot of people I spend time with in Daegu are under the impression that I truly and deeply hate winter. They’d be wrong, as it happens. I am quite fond of winter, actually. I find it exhilarating and invigorating and quite often beautiful. The difference, of course, is that I like the winters I have grown up with and grown to love over many years, rather than the torturous cold I’ve experience for the first time in the last few months. This is not to say that it’s been all bad. Seeing snow was great and the ski trip has been one of the highlights of my time here in Korea. Going to work and especially coming home late at night in the freezing, freezing cold, however, has been horrible.

In the last few weeks, though, the weather has begun to change. It’s not the beginning of spring, which apparently is still a month away. The first stirrings of spring, the swelling buds on trees and the first beginnings of green on the hills are nowhere to be seen. Instead, it feels a little like Daegu has passed out of whatever horrible aberration was the iciness of recent months and into ‘proper’ winter weather (like that I’m used to). Suddenly, day-time temperatures are above freezing and the sun shines strongly enough to make you warm if you can find a sheltered spot. And the air is dry, dry, dry and static-y. And the best of all is the light. One of the reasons I have always loved winter is the clear, crisp air and the winter light that make you feel like you can see for a million miles.

I popped out to the shops at lunchtime today and bravely left a good deal of the winter clothing that I normally drag around with me behind. I was determined to take advantage of the slightly warmer weather and wear normal clothes. I stepped out into crisp but not freezing air. Occasional little gusts of colder air swirled past but for the most part it was perfectly still. I turned a corner and found myself walking in bright sunshine. The glorious rays of light and warmth rained down on me and made me feel like myself again – the same person who used to find a sunshiny spot to sit during school breaks in Queenstown, who used to sit in the library quad soaking up the sunshine in Grahamstown, who could spend hours and hours curled up with a book on the sunny enclosed verandah in Rondebosch.

In the clear air, the park I walked past looked pristine and perfect and each leaf of the trees outlined against the buildings and the sky. The sky. The sky in winter fills my heart with joy. The blue is empty and empty and feels like it goes on forever and ever. On the bus, on the way to work, we came over a hill and the view opened up to a picture of mountains and hills stretching to the sky with a white day-time moon hanging above the horizon. Even the crowded skyscrapers that clutter every corner of this city look sharp and sketched and beautiful in this weather.

I don’t know if it will last. Last year’s February temps suggest that it’ll still be chilly but I might get lucky with weather mostly above zero. I hope it does last for a while, partly because I dread the thought of returning to the bone-chilling weather that marked the first part of this month. But also because I want time to enjoy the kind of winter I love and to spend as much time as possible curled up, cat-like, in the warmth of the winter sun.

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Murphy’s Law and a Museum

January 23rd, 2010

Every day for the past six months my bus trip to work has taken me past the Daegu National Museum and at least once a week I’ve thought that I should visit the museum. Until this week, however, I have been distracted by other new places and adventures and haven’t gotten there. January, it turns out, is a rather quiet month in Korea, or at least in Daegu, so this week I decided it was time for a museum-day.

I caught my usual bus (the one I normally take to school) and enjoyed the fact that I was taking the bus to somewhere other than work. I hopped off at the ‘Daegu National Museum’ stop and headed for my destination across the street. One of the things I have learnt about travelling in a foreign country where English is very definitely not the national language, is that it is often a good idea to do some research before heading out. I know some people prefer to travel spontaneously but on expeditions like this, along with things like Opera, where there is no guarantee of English information, I like to know what I’m going to see beforehand.

Like many museums, this one has a few artefacts in the garden area. One of these is 5-story stone pagoda from the early Goryeo period (918-1392), originally from the Jeongdosa Temple site. The pagoda is built in the style of pagodas from the earlier Unified Silla period (676-935). An inscription on the upper basement layer apparently says that it was made in the 22nd year of the reign of King Hyeong (1031). Before I came to Korea, I didn’t have a very clear idea of what a pagoda is but these days I can spot them a mile away. This one is like most of the others but is particularly pretty in it’s garden home outside the museum.

At this point, I tried to go inside and discovered the main doors all closed up. A vague memory of reading something about the Daegu Museum being closed for a while surfaced. Murphy’s law that when I finally decide to visit the museum it would be closed. No signs in English to indicate why it was closed or what was going on but there was a large banner advertising an exhibition of ‘National Treasures’. I was disappointed but not completely daunted, partly because the museum’s website – which never mentioned the closure, by the way – did mention an area where old tomb-structures are displayed, so I decided I could go and see that anyway. I headed in the direction I assumed, based on the map on the site, was most likely to take me to what I was looking for.

On the way I reached a square where children and adults were playing games. I remembered seeing something on the map about an area where people could try traditional Korean games. I stopped to watch for a bit. One of the games looked exactly like a hacky-sack-type traditional game I have watched many times in South Africa, except that they were kicking sparkly objects that looked like they may have come from a ‘my little pony’ set. Another game a Korean family was playing seemed to involve throwing sticks with the intention of successfully throwing them through one of three cylindrical goals.

As I watched I noticed, next to the game area, another banner and what looked like a second  entrance to the museum. Relieved that at least I would be able to see something, I headed towards the doors. Just inside the entrance was an information desk where a very friendly and non-English-speaking museum employee laboriously explained to me that I didn’t need to pay money. We exchanged big smiles and I went in. The building is very modern and spacious. I followed people down a passage. Banners at the top of the passage said ‘Reminiscing Daegu 1954′. Along the passage, on both sides, were pictures of Daegu in that year. The pictures were of ordinary things – families harvesting crops, women doing laundry, children playing – and terrible things, like buildings destroyed and many, many people standing in queues for food or water or assistance of some kind. 1954 was the year after the end of the Korean war, a war that devastated a lot of this country and particularly badly affected Daegu, where several battles were fought. The pictures were beautiful and moving just as art but they also represented a particular time in the history of this place and of the families of people I probably know. It was fascinating to be able to look into the life of Daegu just over 50 years ago. The place in the photographs is familiar – with the same mountains and scenery – but there were no skyscrapers or fast cars. Everyone in the photographs was ordinary and, to be honest, rural. Strange to think that this big city of millions of people didn’t exist in the not-very distant past and that ‘here’ consisted instead of farmland and a group of war-ravaged families just trying to survive.

At the end of the passage, I reached the ‘National Treasures’ exhibit. I am sad not to see a whole museum – the Daegu museum normally has 3 permanent exhibition halls ranging from archaeological displays to folk history – but these few treasures were still fascinating. ‘National Treasures‘ has a specific meaning here. These are artefacts and historical sites designated by the Korean government as important in the history of the country. A little like national monuments in South Africa, except that they can be anything, from a bit of china to a 4m high stone Buddha-statue. The Daegu National Museum is responsible for several treasures from this area.

A board at the entrance to the small exhibit room explained that the main exhibition hall of the museum is being renovated, which is why it is closed. There was a group of kids and parents with a tour-guide next to one display. I looked around the rest of the room. Some of the artefacts didn’t have English explanations, like a parchment-like document in one of the glass display cases. I stared at it for a while, willing it to reveal it’s secrets, but to no avail. There was also a musical instrument, which I assumed was the six-stringed Sitar to which the info board at the entrance had referred. I was struck by how long it was and wondered if it was played sitting with it across the lap or rested on the ground. There was also writing (in – I think – Chinese) carved along the side of the instrument. Next to this were two stone lions from a Buddhist temple, the date of which, from what I could gather, was around 300AD.

In the middle of the room, in another glass case, was a huge gold-ish dragon’s head. My minimal research had informed me that this was a ‘Dragon’s Head Flagstaff Finial’ from the 8th or 9th century. The flagpole outside the museum is modelled after the type of pole this one would have topped. Again, I was struck by the size. These ‘flagstaffs’ stood outside Buddhist temples and the ‘heads’ were set on wood and rested on stone foundations. The head was at least a metre high and looked solid. The replica model outside the museum is also extremely tall – almost as tall as the building . The wood must have been extremely strong and thick.

On the other side of the room were three small Buddhist statues. Buddhism has been an important factor in Korea for a long time, although Confucianism became the ruling national ideology during the Joseon Period (1382 – 1910). The middle one seemed fairly plain but the smaller two on either side (National treasures 183 and 184) were extremely detailed and delicate. The statues were roughly 30cm high. According to the information cards, they are both Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva in gilt-bronze from Bonghan-dong in Gumi, dated to the 7th century (late three kingdoms period). They were apparently made separately around the same time.

Against the back wall was another display. Once all the crowds and the guide moved on, I stopped to look at it. For me, it was the highlight. All the objects in this display were found in a tortoise-shaped box during a repair of a pagoda at Songlimsa Temple in 1959. The box contained a variety of artefacts, including various pieces of jade jewellery and a lidded, decorated box. It also contained a gilt-bronze and glass, palace-shaped Sarira Case. Sarira is not a term with which I am familiar but wikipedia suggests it has something to do with cremation. The tortoise-shaped box also contained what are assumed to be the decorative parts of a crown, also in gilt-bronze. It sparkled in the lights of the display, an invitation to imagination, especially in conjunction with all the other artefacts found with it, found just at a point in time when small kingdoms across the Korean peninsula were falling as the three great kingdoms were slowly brought together into one nation.

I did try and find the ‘relic park’ after visiting the National Treasures exhibit but managed, inevitably, to take the wrong path. I’m sad that I wasn’t able to see the whole museum, and am determined to visit another museum soon satisfy the urge escape for a little longer into the past, but I am glad I got to see these amazing artefacts and I’ll be back just as soon as I can figure out when the whole museum opens to the public again.

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Remembering ‘95

January 10th, 2010

I don’t do movie reviews. Apart from anything else, I am horribly under-qualified never having seen 90% of the movies that are considered classics. But I feel the need to write something about a particular movie I have just seen, not from the perspective of critically assessing the quality or performances but just because it’s a movie that tells a story that means a lot to me.

Growing up in South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s was complicated. To begin with, everything kept changing and there was a lot of uncertainty. I was lucky to be in a fairly safe, secure situation, rather than, say, a township, so that most things didn’t reach my fairly protected childhood world. I remember some things. I remember that we couldn’t travel to play sports matches against schools in other towns because school-buses were being targeted so they weren’t supposed to go anywhere without a police escort. I remember doing bomb-drills alongside fire drills in primary school. I remember how, in the weeks leading up to the 1994 elections, several shops, in the town where I lived, that had always had huge glass windows suddenly put up burglar bars across their windows. I remember how the families of friends were stockpiling water and canned goods in anticipation of a civil war. On the day of the elections, I was at school (all of 14). It was a public holiday and we had an extra practice for a musical I was involved in. But my parents went off and voted in the first free and democratic election my country had ever seen.

I remember much more clearly 1995. I didn’t grow up in a rugby family and had never had all that much to do with the game, but you couldn’t live in the Eastern Cape without learning something about it. And in 1995, we were all learning everything we could. On the day of the final, I was the only one in my family who sat glued to the TV screen. I remember that my Mom had gone out for a walk and she said the streets were deserted and all they heard was shouts of joy and agony from the houses they passed as the game was watched by millions of South Africans. After the match, my parents went out to the shops and drove through crowds of people shouting and dancing in the streets and banging on the cars. Just a year earlier, crowds of people dancing and shouting in the streets would have been enough to terrify any South African. But on this day it was okay. On this day, the country celebrated as one because we had done it – we had defied all expectations and won the Rugby World Cup.

I was a little sceptical when I heard they were making a movie about it. I was chatting to a friend a few weeks ago – one of the few foreigners I know here who actually understands rugby – and I mentioned that I was worried about what they would do with it. As much as it was a movie-type moment for all of us, there is so much scope for error and horribly butchering the reality when people try to use that moment to make a Hollywood movie, there is a good chance that they’ll get it wrong.

Tonight I finally got around to watching Invictus. Just hearing Shosholoza at the very beginning and seeing the scenery that is so real and so much home to me, I was already in tears. And knowing what was coming. Since 1995, I’ve become a fairly avid rugby fan and watch my teams as often as I can – which isn’t nearly often enough being in a country that doesn’t play rugby. Since then, of course, I have also become actively interested in politics and finally understood the real horror of apartheid, so in some ways, watching the movie now, and reliving the moments, was even more moving than the first time around. I really enjoyed Freeman’s portrayal of Madiba. I have no idea how true to life some of the events were but he captured the humanity and humility which so endear South Africa’s great hero to so many. I loved Matt Damon’s portrayal of Francois Pienaar, too. I’m always a little uneasy when I hear that a foreigner is going to try and play a South African, but he managed it very well, even getting the accent mostly right, and I felt like he actually understood some of what it’s like and started to understand the rugby. I don’t mean understand the game – which many other countries do – but understand the role it plays in the identity and culture of so many in my country.

Ultimately, the greatest challenge in this movie was always going to be to find a way to capture the emotions – from the very real and still present racial tensions to the moments of reconciliation and overcoming history. I loved the way the movie portrayed the ongoing tension using the body-guards. And I loved how Eastwood didn’t shy away from depicting the tensions and the difficulties, and also the shared joy and growing friendship, using the bodyguards. Not being a huge movie fan, I don’t know directors or most actors very well but I was impressed with Gran Torino and enjoyed how Eastwood used the same kind of realism here. There was an authenticity which is often hard to create in Hollywood-style movies. It felt normal – or at least, normal for South Africa. I could see in the portrayal all the moments of tension, all the (often unfounded) fears and the joys all South Africans know so well. Because no-one is immune to history and the reality of a country trying to come to terms with a miraculous transition to democracy and all the fears and issues that go with it.

I find it difficult to explain to foreigners exactly what I feel about my country. There are many countries were patriotism is an important value. I always struggle to explain why I feel like what I’m feeling is different. It’s not just that I love my country. I do love my country. But not in the sense that I want to go out and fight for it. I love what my country stands for – the fight not for land or for control but for freedom. I love that South Africa is still going strong, that whatever my problems with the current leadership of the ANC, we have made democracy work. And I love how we got there. I don’t understand South Africans who dismiss our past and want nothing to do with making the country better.

My reaction to this movie wasn’t all about that history. Watching it so far from home, the scenery alone was enough to make me long to return. The images of home. The ordinariness of the dry grass and the dusty townships and the beauty of table mountain. Even the Elwierda bus made me miss it. And the people. Ordinary South Africans doing what ordinary South African do every day. Ordinary people celebrating an extraordinary country.

And then the final. After the build-up of the movie and the energy and the action, the moment was electric. I felt again the thrill and the anxiety. My heart was in my throat. I knew how it would end – I remember the moment – but I still felt the same heart-thumping anticipation. I watched the play, my nails dug into the palms of my hands, on tenter-hooks all over again. And then the final whistle and that moment, the moment that means so much to so many of, when Pienaar raised the Webb Ellis Trophy, the moment of joy and glory when we showed the world (again) that we could overcome expectations. That moment that is a symbol of so much to so many.

It’s strange to have a movie capture something so personal and so real. Not everything was 100% accurate but it was close enough to evoke all the emotions of 1995. Each song, each moment, each image of the South African landscape and the springbok jersey was a reminder of how amazing my country is and how much I love it and look forward to being home and sharing my days with people who share the history and the culture and the love of a game that brought us all together.

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A sense of place

January 8th, 2010

William Kittredge quoted in Dana Snyman: “A sense of place is bound up to some degree with the way people are in that place and with the history of the people, and it’s bound up even more with physical and natural details, with trees and grass and soil; weather, water, sky, the way some weeds smell when you walk on them. These are the details of place, and an awareness of them is what I call a sense of place” Dana Snyman, On the Back Roads

On the way back from the Ski Trip, we were chatting in the bus about the things we are looking forward to when we go home. Simple things, most of them. Like carpets. And cheese. And tumble dryers. But there are things from here that I will miss, too. Again, not necessarily huge, monumental things. But every place has a sense, a feeling, an identity. And when you’ve lived in a place for a while, it starts to get under your skin.

I have a strong sense of every place I’ve ever lived in. Some of them I didn’t even like that much. But there are moments and things about each place that stay with me. Climbing Bowkers Kop in Queenstown. Sunsets in Grahamstown and sitting on the couch outside 46D. The forest in Stutt. Walking to work on a crisp, frosty morning along Katherine Street in Sandton. Emmerentia Dam and ice-creams on random Sunday afternoons. Fat Cactus in Little Mowbray. Baby Egyptian geese falling out of the huge monkey puzzle tree outside my window in Rondebosch.

Even a short visit to a place can be enough to form a sense of the place in your mind. The sense is never objective and out there. It is always your own, unique experience, a subjective impression of where you’ve been. Flamingos from a hotel room in Kimberly. Cuppacino under winter grapevines while looking out at the mountains in Colesburg. Often, for me at least, the sense of a place is stronger if you leave and return to it often. Stepping out of Cape Town airport and breathing the Cape Town air and seeing the table-cloth on the mountain always feels like coming home. But once you start to be aware of ’sense of place’ you start to form those opinions and impressions even without the regular contrast of other places.

My sense of Daegu is of a place that is temporary for me. It doesn’t feel like home the way Grahamstown always will. But there are definitely things that will always remind me of this place. Of course, this impression of place will continue to develop and become richer and deeper over the next few months, but sometimes it’s good to try capture it as it is now.

The strangest and most foreign part of this place for me is the smells. The food is different and the plants are different and the way of living is different. I can’t describe all the scents that make up the way that Daegu smells. I just know that it is a unique and completely alien smell that will always remind me of here.

Daegu is also the neon signs. A jungle of huge signs and billboards on every building, mostly in Korean and completely unintelligible, until you learn to read Hangeul just a little and discover that at least some of them are dotted with Korean-izations of English words like ’school’. The sounds of Korea are different. The blaring of the loudspeakers on a roaming vegetable trucks, driving up and down suburban streets selling fresh fruit and vegetables at all hours of the day and night. The squeaky birds. The strange, whining, complaining noise that Korean girls make. The incessant thump, thump, thump of basketballs on the court across the road from my flat. The military planes flying over. The noise of the traffic. The Korean radio on the bus and in the taxis. K-pop blaring in every shop and restaurant. Horrible Korean versions of already annoying English songs, like the Titanic Theme, spilling from speakers in every park.

Daegu has an opera house. It is the place I first got to start watching operas regularly. And foreign-style restaurants with beautiful food and atmosphere. Korean food, each dish a side-dish to something else. And the sticky, white rice which is eaten all by itself or soaked in one or other of the many, many spicy soups. The scent of sweet-bean-and-dough treats that follows you down the winter streets. Galbi sizzling on a little grill, strangely nothing like the smell of meat on the braai but pleasant nonetheless. Fish on ice looking dead and a little gruesome right there on the pavement outside shops and at street stalls. Fruit and vegetable sellers crouching behind their wares on every busy streetcorner. Steam billowing from the outside cookers at the mandoo shop down the road from work.

Downtown on a Saturday night, standing in the street with cocktails over ice in plastic bags. Or Communes full of foreigners, rock music blaring and sport playing on the big screen. Bubbles floating down as you walk along the street and sometimes people handing out sparklers. The taste of Hite and Cass and Soju and strange bar-snacks.

Groups of ajummas sitting on a blanket in a park or at the lake. Groups of old men gathered under whisteria-roofed platforms playing boardgames on a Saturday afternoon. Little children calling to their parents – ‘ouma’, ‘oupa’ – and me turning around, taken a little by surprise every time. Shop workers who follow you around everywhere. Pre-cooked rice and instant (just add milk) pancake mix. Making sure you buy bottled water because the tap-water isn’t good for drinking. Fruit juices entirely unrelated to the flavour of the fruit. Syrupy-sweet tomato juice.

Children still walking the streets or playing or on the buses at 10 o’clock at night. On a school-night. Every school-night. The city moves and rushes and crowds all day, from about 8 in the morning until 11pm. Except downtown, which seems to be crowded and busy 24 hours a day. There is no peace and quiet. There is no space. No-one seems to notice. People walking down the road past my flat from the hills above in full mountain climbing gear (all correct and branded and expensive) at all hours of the day.

And so many other things. The three clearest, most typical moments of Daegu life? Watching the day-light fade, over the heads of small children bent to their books, from the window of my classroom; walking in parks in summer, autumn, winter, filled with other people walking and children playing and couples or groups of friends sitting together and nights at the hut with dongdongju, fellow foreigners and salty, fried eggs.

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Ski trip For The Win: Sunday of stiffness

January 6th, 2010

There is something particularly peaceful about waking up late on a Sunday morning with the sounds of skiing outside the window and the sun filtering through the not-quite-meeting curtains over the sleeping forms of friends huddled under excessive amounts of yellow bedding on the heated floor. Everything was quiet and warm in the room. I sat for a while jotting down thoughts and memories of the evening before, from Zanzibar the ladybird to cotton-producing sheep. At about noon, the first of the other room to emerge, Erin, came and joined me in my peaceful little spot and eventually, as we chatted quietly, other people emerged from their yellow cocoons. The process of 12 people waking up and getting organised tends to be a slow, noisy and sometimes humorous one. This one was notably highlighted by the series of groans as people moved sore arms, legs and asses in their attempts to stand up. It took a little longer to get moving than usual. I wasn’t horribly stiff from the waist down but my arms were ridiculous. It hurt to lift them at all. Even writing caused twinges of stiffness. Reaching for food from the cupboards at home that night was not fun. In fact, by the end of Sunday sitting still hurt.

This did not deter us from heading out, however. Largely because we were in need of food. We had all also reached the outer limits of our capacity to eat KFC or the same five Korean meals even once more. So we took the plunge and headed off the resort in search of lunch. Down the hill and past the cheaper ski rental place we went, all the while enjoying the incredible and for me (although less for those who have seen it before) somewhat breathtaking views of a snowy-wonderland world under the bright lunchtime sun.

A little way along the road, we spotted a galbi place. Just the thing for lunch. We headed inside, took off our shoes and sat at our table. A disadvantage of eating Korean food when incredibly stiff is that it may require sitting on the floor. Actually, sitting on the floor isn’t the worst part. The worst part is standing up afterwards. The galbi was good, with the usual array of side-dishes and some particularly good onion-y-type-salad. The galbi cooked over hot coals in a little braai set into the table. The coals were a little hot so some of the meat caught a little, which was actually particularly yummy.

After lunch, we rose with moans and groans and headed back up the hill through the snow to our warm and cosy youth hostel room. Everyone flopped down on a sleeping mat and/or burrowed under blankets in front of the TV. Some people napped. We flipped through channels, searching for more of the figure-skating which had dominated the occasional TV viewing of the weekend. There was a documentary on rodeo clowns and barrel men, in which inexplicably became enthralled. Then we happened upon the movie Stardust and settled there for a while. Desultory conversation and  laughter drifted back and forth.

At  4:30 we packed up for the last time, gathered our luggage and set off on the trek up the hill to where the bus-driver had dropped us off and would pick us up. After rearranging the seating and luggage set-up, much to the driver’s not-entirely-happy surprise, we squeezed everyone in without anyone sitting on the floor and set off for home. The drive back was long and chilly – except for the feet next to the heater-outlet. Almost 4 hours later, we arrived back in Daegu in the middle of a conversation about super-powers. We were all tired and sore as we tumbled out and gathered our belongings. I was so exhausted I could barely organise myself enough for the last little bit of the trip. Luckily, I shared a cab with someone could give the driver directions – I’m not sure I would have made it home alone.

Finally home in my freezing cold apartment, I had some dinner, checked mail and spent some time just sitting around – blobbing as one of my friends put it. Monday would be back to work in the cold, windy, snow-less wilds of Daegu but for a while it was nice to potter around, downloading photos and generally decompressing in the last glow of what had turned out to an exhausting and stiffness-inducing but truly enjoyable weekend filled with snow, fun people, trying new things and plenty of crazy memories.

Postscript: As is turned out the wilds of Daegu were not, in fact, snow-less on Monday but that is a whole different story.

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