Monthly Archives: January 2010

‘Proper’ winter

Daegu, ,

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.

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.

Remembering ’95

South Africa, ,

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.