Category Archives: Adventures

Return to Gyeongju: museum without walls (part 1)

Adventures, travelling in Korea, ,

A few months ago, I spent a delightful day in Gyeongju with some friends. Most of the time was spent riding bikes (with accompanying reversion to happy, childhood days) and it was most fun. Towards the end of the day, we shivered our way around a few of the historical sites for which the town is famous before rushing home in an attempt to get warm. After my (mostly) failed trip to the Daegu museum last weekend, what better way to satisfy my still lingering craving for museum time than to go back to Gyeongju and spend a day in a place which markets itself as a ‘museum without walls?

Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla Kingdom for almost a thousand years. This included the ‘three kingdoms period’ and the early part of the era of a unified Korea, the Unified Silla period. After political control passed to the Goryeo dynasty, the capital was moved elsewhere and this area fell out of favour with kings and rulers for many centuries. It was largely restored in the 1970s and 1980s and also protected from the rapid development which was overtaking the rest of the country at the time. As a result, it remains a smaller city but one which more truly resembles and celebrates a Korea of earlier times, rather than just any other rapidly developed Asian city.

Last time we went to Gyeongju, we didn’t leave Daegu until after 11am, which meant that the day was quite short before the sun set and the freezing began. This time I was doubly pressured because I had a function in the evening, so I decided to take the early train (9:43am). The downside of this is that it required me to get up early. Because I only start work late and don’t finish until late in the evening, my days generally do not start before 10am, so getting up at 7am (to have time to get ready and get all the way to the train station in time to buy a ticket, etc.) was a struggle. I almost gave up and went back to sleep. Luckily, ‘museum-fascination’ proved too strong and I dragged myself out of bed and I got to the station in time. In fact, I got there with 25 minutes to spare, so I wandered around and bought a hot dog for breakfast. Several people are probably judging me right now for choosing a Western food over a Korean one for breakfast. Sorry, but, while I may be able to handle kimchi and rice at most times, they’re too much for me first thing in the morning.

It was a chilly and partly cloudy day in Gyeongju when I arrived, an hour or so later. Cloudy not in a solidly overcast way. Instead, there were streaky, high clouds bringing with them the icy winds. There were a collection of overly-friendly taxi drivers at the station exit but, armed with my map, guide-book and a determination that this time I would not get lost, I set off on foot. As I walked along, I was struck again by what an incredible difference it makes not to have sky-scrapers everywhere. Part of the effort to restore and preserve this city in the 70s and 80s involved height restrictions on buildings near historically important places (i.e. most of Gyeongju), so most buildings are one or at most two storeys high. They also almost all have traditional Korean roofs, which are attractive, although the roofs on bus stops and electricity boxes are a little quirky.

I walked all the way past Anapji pond to get to the museum, having decided to start the day’s exploring at a distance from the station and then work my way back. It took me about 10 to 15 minutes of gentle walking to reach my first destination: Gyeongju National Museum.

The museum is one of the main attractions in Gyeongju as is apparently one of the best in Korea. And museums make me happy. The collection of this museum spans almost two millennia but is richest with regard to the Silla period due to two great sources of artefacts: the tombs of royals and noblemen which dot the whole of the area, the most prominent of which are gathered in the Tumili park and Anapji pond. This pond, or man-made lake, was completed in the year 674 and is valuable not only because it is pretty and is an important palace site but, and perhaps more importantly from a knowledge perspective, because when the lake was dredged in the 1970s, thousands of artefacts, ranging from metalwork and statues to a whole boat, were discovered.

Entrance to the museum is free. Having now seen the size and scope of their collection and having some sense of the work that must go into researching and preserving it, I am very impressed that they can manage to run as a free facility. Wherever they get their funding from, it must be somewhere or someone significantly large and significantly committed to history.

The first thing I stopped to look at after picking up my free ticket and heading inside the grounds  was the Divine Bell of King Seongdeok, part of the outdoor exhibition. This 18ton bronze bell was cast in 771AD, stands 3.75m high and is the largest Korean bell ever to be preserved. It was made in honour or memory of King Seongdeok (702 – 737AD). It also carries a stranger tale. It is said that when the bell was first cast, it would not ring. This huge bell, cast in honour of a great king, would not make a sound no matter what anyone tried. Eventually the bell had to be melted down again and  recast. But this time, so the legend says, a young child was sacrificed to give a sound to the bell and the bell rang out for the first time. It is said that the echo of her cries can still be hear when the bell is rung. Because of this it is also known as the ‘Emile’ bell, ’em-ee-leh’ resembling the traditional word for mother. When I heard it rung later in the day, it did have an eerie echo, which, for the more factually minded, may have something to do with the sound-tube at the top of the bell – apparently a unique feature of Korean bells. Pure historians who object to the mingling of myth and fact may want to stop reading now, as this is a crucial part of a social history approach and one of my slight dissatisfactions with this museum in general, but more on that later.

After wandering around the outdoor exhibition a little more, I headed inside. Before entering, however, I stopped to look at a replica wall of rock art outside the main hall of the museum. While my own country does not have as many castles and ancient tombs as some others, rock art is something with which I am fairly familiar. I was fascinated by this particular piece however. I have never before seen whales in rock art. It was bizarre. Most of the figures were fairly standard but there were distinct drawings of actual whales. A reminder, I suppose, of just how dependent the people of this area have been on the sea ever since they settled here.

As I walked inside, still chuckling at the unexpectedness of the whale rock art, one of the most annoying things possible happened: I was approached by a nice-enough-seeming Korean man who spoke English and eagerly offered to help me. When I politely refused his help, he admitted that he was a Jehovah’s Witness and tried to hand me a ‘watchtower’ pamphlet. I very firmly, and somewhat less politely, handed back his pamphlet and walked off. People are welcome to believe whatever they want but I object to being accosted by JWs in a museum of all places.

The main building or ‘archaeology hall’ of the museum is divided into four rooms. The first room contains artefacts dating from prehistoric to proto-three-kingdom times. These include pottery and weapons and basic implements for living. It’s not a vast collection but there are some interesting pieces. Given Korea’s recent (last few centuries) reputation as a ‘hermit kingdom’, for example, it was fascinating to see and read about the extensive interaction they had with neighbouring countries and kingdoms in their early history. Grey earthenware pottery, for instance, was first introduced very early on from China.

The second annoyance of the day began at this point. By some unpleasant twist of fate, I had apparently picked a day to visit the museum that coincided with the visits of at least one – but what felt like many – school trips. By school trips here I am not referring to groups of quiet, studious high-school learners. My meandering around the museum was accompanied by lines of small, loud, uninterested children, accompanied by a few adults who themselves seemed remarkably disinterested in what they were seeing. One of the reasons I love museums is that they tend to be quiet, peaceful places where one can think and contemplate and relax. This one was not. Instead, these lines of kids were rushed past each display case, moving too fast for any of them to really understand what they were seeing, while simultaneously forming an impenetrable wall which made it impossible for anyone else to see the displays at all. Added to this noise and chaos were several other Korean family groups who had also brought their small children to see the museum. I do not understand why people feel the need to drag small children around the main exhibits of a museum. This one, like many museums these days, has a whole children’s area full of interactive displays and high-tech learning opportunities. There is no reason for them to be dragged around the static displays they will not understand for at least another 10 years and which serve only to bore them to the point where they start running around and almost knocking over the glass cases of 1000 year old treasures.

Luckily, I am a determined museum-er, so apart from the slight, throbbing headache – the result of loud children and echo-ey rooms on top of limited sleep – I was able to patiently ignore them and, with some pushing and refusing to be moved by the seemingly inexorably lines of kids, see everything I wanted to see.

Two of the museums main rooms are dedicated to the Silla period and contain a range of artefacts mostly discovered in the excavation of various of the tombs in the area. These include jewellery, pottery, gold and silver and bronze cutlery and crockery and ornaments and particularly fascinating bits and pieces of glass and metal-work. Gold crowns, belts, crown ornaments and ‘chestlaces’ (which is apparently a word now) were clearly the fashion at the time, too. According to wikipedia (yes, I know, not the most reliable source in the world) there are only 10 fully gold crowns in the world, 8 of them from Korea and six from the Silla Kingdom. The most spectacular of these is a large crown and belt of gold with decoration of blue glass beads and comma-shaped jades (another definite favourite of the times – they were everywhere). This crown is large and spectacular and is given a whole alcove with special stand, background and lighting to show it off perfectly. It is of course also one of Korea’s National Treasures, although I still haven’t managed to figure out if it’s 191 or 188. It also appears to be fairly similar to/the same as the crown used in a hugely popular 2009 Korean TV series about the Silla Queen Seon-deok, making the crown itself and this museum more generally even more of a tourist hot-spot.

The crowns and crown ornaments (and gold caps and silver caps and gold chestlaces) were  fascinating but I was also interested in some of the other artefacts. One display included about 20 gold rings from the 5th or 6th century – mostly fairly plain rings that have survived beautifully and could so easily be wedding rings today. I loved the bronze three-legged pot which just made me want to imagine a group of Silla people making a potjie and watching rugby on a Saturday afternoon. Some of the pottery was also fascinating. One long-necked pot with little figures of snakes and frogs and people and animals (National Treasure 195, stoneware) from the 5th or 6th century, was particularly impressive. I was also intrigued to discover that the Silla rulers imported Roman glass.

A second room of Silla relics covers the later Silla period. The pottery and burial items begin to be more sophisticated here. There is also a wide array of slightly more complex weaponry and armour and horses seem to become particularly important. The armour even included armour for horses. This is also the period when burials became more sophisticated. Jar tombs were on display here – large clay jars for children’s or bone-burials – along with small funeral items and, a little heartbreakingly, what must have been children’s toys. I finally got to see some bronze and iron mirrors – I’ve always wondered about them – although I still don’t see how they worked as mirrors. There were also several figurines, including one of a man (civil-figure, male was all the explanation given) that looked exactly like a tiny gnome. There were of course also exquisitely made figures of the Chinese zodiac and a wealth of other bits and pieces.

As I was leaving this room, I passed through a small temporary display to celebrated the year of the Tiger. Lunar new year is in about two weeks and the new lunar year will be, according to the Korean calendar, the apparently auspicious ‘Year of the Tiger’. This was a very small display but included a few masks and a sculptures, as well as a beautiful blue and white porcelain jar from the Joseon period (18th century) with tiger and magpie images. There was also another rock art replica, this time including tigers as well as whales.

The final room of the main hall is dedicated to a collector who built up and later donated to the museum a collection of over 600 artefacts from this region. Some of them were stunning, some a bit random and some funny. There were daggers and hilts from long, long ago – in stone and later metal. Full sets of metal cutlery – chopsticks plus spoon. A very obviously duck-shaped pot/jar in grey earthenware from the proto-three kingdoms period. A particularly well-preserved and unique national treasure: a horse-back-riding-warrior-shaped double-cup. Horses were a prominent theme. There were many bits of horse-riding gear, horse-shaped buttons, a wide variety of horse-bells and even some ‘Lacquered stirrups’ – also a treasure (one level below national treasure). There was also a ‘pillow’. Made of steatite and from the Unified Silla period, this block of stone, with some faint carvings and perfectly straight edges had me giggling as I pictured what a good night’s sleep it must have given the people who owned it. There was also a lovely display of jewellery, that would have looked equally appropriate in any modern jewellery store window, and a display and explanation of roof tiles – I think I finally understand how Korean roofs are put together now.

Many of these artefacts  fall within the periods of the other rooms, but are kept separate because they belong to this specific collection and I imagine also because many of them are not accurately dated and do not have exact information about where they were found. Which brings me to my minor issue with the curators of this museum. I recognise completely the value of archaeology and the scientific assessment of artefacts. I feel, however, that sometimes the focus on science in the study of the past can go too far. I loved the collection at this museum. They have a huge number of really stunning pieces, all of which are well-maintained and documented. What was completely lacking for me, was any attempt to present the historical and particularly the social context of these pieces. With a fairly active imagination and a basic knowledge of the past, I was able to reconstruct some of how things might have happened, but without a more detailed understanding of the social structures and the manner of interaction between people and peoples at the time, it’s really hard for a visitor to turn these individual pieces into anything more than ‘some pretty art that’s kind of old and a few bits of bent armour’. This makes me sad. I think history is fascinating and I fully believe that a large part of the reason so few people are interested in it is that it is often presented badly. The display cases at the Gyeongju museum are all beautifully constructed and everything is elegantly-lit and appropriately labelled but it could just as easily be an art gallery as a museum.

I had the same problem with the Anapji hall, where I went next, although there was at least some effort here to visually show where the artefacts were found. The difference between the main building of the museum and the Anapji hall is that the majority of the artefacts in the former were excavated from burial sites, and so are probably things associated with the afterlife or treasures of royalty and noblemen, while the Anapji finds were gathered from the bottom of a lake, and so are more likely to be everyday items from the period. The lake or pond was part of a pleasure garden attached to the palace of the crown prince, where foreign dignitaries and important people were entertained, so it’s the everyday life of royalty, but it still represents something closer to the ordinary lives of people (and thus social history) than the burial finds. The period also spans several hundred years as the pond was created around 700AD and used until the mid-to late 900s. The artefacts range from toys and horse-wear to small statues and roof tiles and even some iron scissors which are thought to have been used in some superstitious ritual, although – frustratingly – no further information is given about this. I had a lovely time wandering around and imagining in a hall slightly less full of children than the previous one had been. It also made my later visit to Anapji pond all the richer.

After this, via a short walk around some impressive stone water-troughs and well-stones outside, I walked through the Art Hall. I know very little about Buddhism but was still able to appreciate the detail and effort that went into making some of these exquisitely crafted pieces. The displays were also great and a little more appropriate to the art than they had been to the artefacts in the previous two halls.

The guidebooks and the Korean tourism website suggest that you should allow at least an hour to see the museum. I spent just over two hours there and would probably have stayed longer, had it not been for the children. The collection is definitely worth visiting and, in spite of my issues with manner in which things are presented, it made me very happy to be wandering through history again.

Murphy’s Law and a Museum

Adventures, Daegu,

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.

Ski trip For The Win: Sunday of stiffness

Adventures, Food, travelling in Korea, , ,

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.