After visiting the museum, I set off up the road to Anapji pond. On the previous visit to Gyeongju, we made a very brief and very cold stop at this pleasure garden of the past but I wanted very much to go back there and really get a sense of what it must have been like in its heyday, when noblemen and queens, dignitaries and palace guards walked the paths on perfect afternoons and held great feasts in the halls and gardens.

Anapji pond is beautiful. In 674 King Munmu created a pleasure garden with rare and exotic plants and animals at this site and had built a man-made pond in roughly the shape of his kingdom (the recently unified Korean peninsula). The shape of the pond is such that it is impossible to see all of it from any point on the edge, so that around every corner, you see a new and often even more beautiful bit of the gardens. Because the area fell into disuse after the Silla kingdom fell to the Goryeo dynasty and the capital was moved elsewhere, there are no longer exotic plants and animals here, but it is easy to imagine what it must have been like in those days.

I took the chance as soon as I got to Anapji to settle down on a bench for a little while and take a break. It’s a perfect spot to rest. Unfortunately, because winter is still with us, the area is not at it’s green and luscious best and several of the smaller pools are empty – I assume so that they are not damaged by freezing water – but it is still lovely.

After resting awhile, I set off at a gentle stroll to walk around the pond. I also somehow managed to go in the wrong direction. I didn’t see any signs indicating how one is supposed to walk around the pond but perhaps they were in Korean, or there is some Korean custom of only walking around bodies of water in a clockwise direction. Either way, I was definitely going in the opposite direction to everyone I met.

As I walked past bamboo stands and many, many Koreans having their photographs taken, I looked out at the few reconstructed rooms of the palace that once stood on the other side of the pond. The water was not blue and clear as it must have been then but, past the island on my left, I could see the Korean-roofed rooms and could picture the upper classes of the time laughing and chatting and feasting, with torches burning and reflecting in the pond’s water, on a summer evening. Or women sitting together looking out towards my position, at the animals on the small island and the ducks and geese, for which the pond was named, alighting on the water. Or foreign visitors walking with advisors to the king as they discussed great treaties and trade agreements. It is said that part of the design of the gardens included twelve small hills meant to replicate twelve mountains in China so that the Chinese diplomats would feel at home.

I turned a corner and came to a section of the pond that bulges out from the main body. The water looked a little murky with the dried out leaves of water lilies floating on top. On closer inspection I discovered that the murkiness was, in fact, ice. As usual, I was taken aback by the strangle-hold the cold really has here – the weather wasn’t warm but it certainly didn’t seem freezing and the sun was shining right onto the water and yet here was a layer of ice with dead leaves frozen into it just floating defiantly on the surface of the lake.

Having meandered the whole way around the pond in the wrong direction, I stopped to look at the three reconstructed structures on the other side. These three rooms all stand on the edge of the pond, looking out across the water and would have formed part of the larger palace. They have been constructed exactly in the spots where excavation of the area suggests they would have stood originally. The rest of the palace has not been reconstructed, but a pattern of walkways and lawns has been set up to give an indication of just how large the rooms would have been and the general shape and size can be estimated, especially with the added assistance of various models. One of the rooms of this hall would have been the Imhaejeon Hall where a banquet was held for King Taejo, founder of the Goryeo dynasty that took over control of the united Korean peninsula from the Silla monarchy. Some sources suggest that the end to Silla rule (935AD) took place in that very hall, right here at Anapji pond.

Although a detached palace, the Imhaejeon site (including Anapji Pond) would, during the height of the Silla era, have stood next to Banwolseong Fortress – the main palace-fortress in Gyeongju – the name of which means, when literally translated, ‘crescent moon shape on top of hill’. Today, the palace/fortress is gone and all that remains is open land surrounded by forest except for a few ruins – a moat, an ice-house (505AD) and a playground which may or may not date from a later period. Records and excavation suggestion, however, that this was a great and important fortress that stood for hundreds of years from the date of its construction in 101AD. I walked through the old palace area and up towards the Cheomseongdae Observatory – the oldest astronomical observatory in the East – which I had seen on the last visit but which was worth stopping to marvel at one more time before heading on towards the tombs.

Every culture has it’s own approach to burying the dead. Some argue that evidence of funeral rights is one of the things that indicates the start of modern human life and separates humans from animals. In Korea, as in most places, burial traditions changed over time. The Tumuli of the Silla period are considered precious to the history of Korea and are part of the World Heritage-designated Gyeongju Historic Areas. I have seen tumuli before – at Bullo-dong in Daegu. The tombs in Gyeongju are much, much bigger than those I saw in Daegu. One of the tombs, Hwangnamdaechong, a huge double-tomb, thought to be the final resting place of a royal couple and is 23m high, 120m North to South and 80m East to West. As you walk through the park, they tower above you like small mountains. But man-made mountains. A little, I suppose, like small pyramids. The interior constructions made me think about the little I know about pyramids (mostly from movies and TV shows and probably wrong). In the burial chamber a tomb like this is a wooden coffin containing the body – complete with funeral finery in dress and jewellery – and a wooden chest filled with the treasures of the king, queen or noble person being buried. Around these, a wooden chamber is then built. On top of and all around this chamber are piled metres and metres of stones and rock and gravel, until finally a layer of sand and grass cover the mound.

Some of the most famous and some that have been excavated are clustered in the Tumuli park (Daereungwon). These layers of stone, along I imagine with legends, taboos and fears, protected these tombs for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years before the archaeologists came along and started to excavate, very carefully and reverently and found their treasures and construction intact. From what I can gather, most of these tombs still haven’t been excavated. They still stand, therefore, in their original form.

A few of the tombs still live in the legends of Korea today. King Mich’u (13th King of the Silla dynasty) during his 22-year reign built up the power of his kingdom and defended it from the threat of invasion from neighbouring countries. After his death, the country came under fierce attack. It looked as though they might be defeated and overrun. And then, the legend goes, the late king sent an army of soldiers from beyond the grave to drive off the invaders and save his kingdom. The ghost soldiers fought gallantly alongside the living soldiers and succeeded in defeating the enemy.  During the subsequent revelry they all disappeared, leaving behind only bamboo leaves. For this reason, the tomb of King Mich’u is called Chukhyonnung or ‘Bamboo Soldier Tomb’.

One of the tombs has been excavated and is open to the public to enter. It’s a great way to show visitors what the inside of these tombs would have looked like, and coincidentally the type of display I prefer to the more sterile approach of the museum I had seen earlier. The inside is half-empty with displays along the walls of some of the artefacts found in the tomb and an area set up to show how the coffin and wooden treasure-chest would have been laid out. It was fascinating to see and made wandering around the rest of the park more interesting as I imagined what might be inside each one. This particular tomb also has a special name. When it was excavated, some of the items found in this tomb included horse-things like stirrups and bells and, most importantly, saddle or saddle ornaments with the image of a flying horse painted on the side. As a result this tomb is known as ‘Heavenly Horse Tomb‘. I couldn’t help thinking that my younger sister would enjoy the fact that one of the most famous and most popular of the Gyeongju tombs has a horse theme.

By this stage, I was starving, so I decided to brave the language barrier and stop into one of the restaurants near the tomb park. This area of Gyeongju is known for a particular dish: Ssambap. ‘Bap’ is rice in Korean and Ssambap is a meal where you roll a little rice with sauces, vegetables and various other bits and pieces in lettuce or some other green leaf and eat it like a ‘wrap’. I have never eaten it before and I was a little nervous to go into a restaurant by myself and order it, but I wanted to, so I went into the first place I saw. The non-English speaking lady at the restaurant showed me to a table and brought me a cup of tea. ‘Cup’ here being a handle-less mug. ‘Tea’ here referring to something non-ceylon – don’t ask me what. She then started bringing me dishes. And then more dishes. And then more dishes. Ssambap has lots and lots of dishes with little servings of things that can be eaten on Ssambap. I didn’t count the dishes but there must have been at least 20, including spicy tofu soup and (I think) seaweed soup. She also showed me (no words, of course) how to eat it. I felt a little odd sitting by myself at a table with a sea of little dishes in front of me but the food was delicious. I’m not normally that mad about Korean food but there was something – one of the sauces or maybe the meat or perhaps the grass-like green stuff – that was yummy. I tried all of the banchan (side-dishes) except the gray stuff that looked a little like dried fish bones. There was no way I was going to finish everything, but I had a good meal and was feeling full and satisfied by the time I left. The whole sea of plates and different tastes cost just 9000 won – not bad for a meal probably meant for two or three people.

The whole cost of the day was pretty minimal – trains 7300 won each way, museum free, Anapji Pond 1000 won (R7), Tumuli Park 1500 won (R10) – and definitely worth it. It was now heading for the end of the day’s light and time to head back to Daegu, so, after popping into a souvenir shop where I resisted the urge to buy a mini, replica Emile Bell (because it would be too heavy to take home), I set off on foot back to the station.

On the way, I spent lots of time looking at the town around me. Just across the road from the Tumuli park, between some other tall tombs and the thousand-plus year old Observatory, children were flying kites and playing baseball. At one point I wandered past some smaller (and possibly older) tombs just next to the main road, between houses and little shops. It occurred to me that during the whole day I had felt as though the people around me – the children in the museum, the groups of teens walking through the old palace/fortress, the families in the Tumuli Park, had somehow not been paying enough attention to the how old and precious it all was. I hadn’t been consciously aware of it, but I think I was subtly annoyed by their lack of reverence for it and interest in it. I wondered if it was because it’s all so different to the history I know. But I don’t think that was it. I’ve always seen history as something different – something apart from what is now.

Watching those boys playing baseball with the huge tombs in the background, I started to wonder if part of that sense of separation from history comes from the fact that the place I claim as my heritage is not the place where my ancestors walked and lived and were buried. For these Korean children, the world has not changed that much since the times when these Kings and Queens ruled in Gyeongju. There are modern conveniences and high-tech facilities and everyone has education. But the food they eat isn’t that different and people are still buried in earthen mounds and, perhaps importantly, the people buried in those tombs and the people who worked for them, are probably their direct ancestors.

And, more than that, it is a line they can trace without disruptions. In my first few months in Korea, I started to get annoyed with websites and people telling me that Korea has a history a couple of thousand years old. Everyone has a history which is thousands of years old, I thought, so why is this special? The difference is they have an unbroken history of thousands of years. For a white girl from Africa, indeed for anyone from Southern Africa, the amazingness history comes in disjointed bursts. There are layers contributed by different peoples at different times. It is impossible to draw a straight line from the Cradle of Humankind to the people living in Gauteng today – which perhaps contributes to my refusal to see history as a single, linear narrative. Here, the history is one unbroken line. It also might explain why so many Koreans struggle to think of the Korean peninsula as two different countries – the Korean war in the 1950s and the separation since is just a short tangle in the single long story. They even have a Ministry of Unification. In spite of all the invasions and foreign interference, Korea has remained one country with a common history since it became the Unified Silla Kingdom in 668AD. I wonder if Koreans who travel to other parts of the world ever start to sense that difference and if makes them feel as foreign in other places as it made me feel in Gyeongju.

Back at the train station, I caught the (somewhat delayed) Saemaul train home and headed out to an Indian restaurant (and yummy lamb curry) for a friend’s birthday dinner, but the sense of difference and other-ness has remained with me all the week. It’s a little bit uncomfortable and has spurred me to spend some more time thinking seriously about what comes next but I suppose I should see it as a reminder that one of the reasons history is important is that it challenges us to consider who we are in the overwhelming presence of the human past.