Additional Seoul Narrative
There is a post a few down that has been languishing as a draft for ages. So, maybe scroll down for that.
And then
We pick up the day after the day I went to the tower with my advisor. I believe this would have been December 11. This is the day on which there is the least to say and the most pictures to look at, because this day I mostly want to palaces from the Cheosun dynasty. As I write this I do
not have the Seoul map with me or access to the internet. Perhaps I will come back and update later with names.
Anyway, the first thing I did that morning was go to a big palace. There are three large palaces in Seoul. I had been looking around a Korea tourism website and decided to go first to the one it billed as the most unmissable.
Looking at my notes, I see I didn't have too much to mention about that one. It was a huge complex with separate subcomplexes for the residencies of the king, queen, crown prince, crown princess, and queen dowager (king's mom). The buildings were all traditional style but many of them were quite young. Most of them had something about having been burned to the ground and then restored. Some of them as recently as 2000. And, it looked like there was more under construction.
Next door on one side was the Korean Folk Museum which had a very impressive tower-y structure I'm tempted to call a pagoda on top. But I don't really know what a pagoda is. There were steps all the way to the top but one isn't allowed to climb any of them. (Well, actually, the
chain is about 10 steps up, so in principle one could climb 9, but....) Next door on the other side is the Blue House, which is Korea's equivalent of the White House. I don't know whether the similarity of the names is coincidence. Really, it's one big complex. I think I read somewhere-- but I'm not sure where-- that the use of blue tiles on the roof of the Blue House (which is why it's called that) is because in an earlier era they were reserved for royal palaces. Not sure how I feel about that. But then, none of the palaces had blue tile roofs, while the pagoda or whatever on the Folk Museum did.
Ok. About the time I was done at the first palace, my batteries ran out. One of my first thoughts when I woke up that morning was what an idiot I was for not having put my rechargeables in to charge overnight. Incidentally, I think I had made it to that point in my Korean sojourn on the batteries I had charged up in Illinois (which are different batteries than the ones I had neglected to charge the night before-- different voltages). I went to a place across the street and got some disposable batteries. I also got a disposable camera, because my recollection was that a digital camera will eat through a pair of disposables in just a couple of snaps. If it was as few as I remembered, it might be less frustrating to just go with the disposable camera. I don't know where it was that I formed that impression. It may be that it was in India and someone sold me a bad set. Anyway, the guy gave me my banana milk on the house, which was nice. When I came back out there were some guards in white suits and funny hats setting up in front of the gate, and I took a picture of them, I think with the disposable camera. Then I took a picture of a tower, I think also with the disposable camera. This tower was, actually one of the older things around. Originally part of the temple complex, it's now in the middle of the intersection at one corner of what's there now.
I checked the map and it didn't look like it was worth taking the subway one stop to go to the next palace, so I set off walking. On the way I passed a building called something like Hyundai Cultural Center. But I think it was something a little more amusing.
Anyway, the next palace was guided tours only. The sign said that the grounds were being degraded by people's feet before they made that rule. And, it also said that there were no tours in December. So, I was out of luck, and headed on to palace number three, which was just around the corner. But, as you can imagine, those are big blocks, when every house is a palace. Still, it was a nice walk. Busy street, but tall stone walls on both sides, and the light hitting the one on my side of the street nicely.
Ok, so next palace was a nice one. Well, they were all nice. (There's still one more coming...) This one was a bit smaller, but had nice grounds. Big, with a lot of stuff on them. One thing that was weird was the royal placenta burial site. Then there was this thing that looked a bit like a beach lifeguard chair, made of stone, and, called an observatory, I guess like the one in KyeongJu. Also there was a greenhouse. This was called a botanical garden. Well, or rather, what's inside it was. I say this because I thought at first that they would be two different things while looking at the sign, and I generally think of botanical gardens as being large outdoor things you walk around in. Also, there was a nice big pond that I walked around.
Now, one thing from a sign I read which I probably won't get quite right. Like the other place, this place had separate buildings for the kings and queens residence. And, on the queen's building, there was no beam across the top, and that was explained, roughly thus. The beam represents a dragon. The dragon is a messenger from heaven, and the queen is sort of a conduit for heavenly power. A beam on the top of her house would block the power of heaven.
Now, in the back left corner of the grounds were some steps going up. At the top was a gate to the palace next door-- the one which I had been not to be able to visit. It was one of many. Anyway, it was locked. And there was also a gate to a small overpass. This was over the road I had just walked along, spanning the gap between those high stone walls. I'd seen it while walking along the road. Anyway, it was nice, and a little incongruous, this little bridge between these two quiet, timeless, contemplative spaces, with the heavy traffic of the street below.
Anyway, when I first found the footbridge, I wasn't quite ready to move on from the palace, so I went back and walked around there a little more before heading across.
Now, what was on the other side was the royal shrine of the Choseon dynasty and its grounds. The shrine itself was probably the largest individual building of any of them. It reminded me of a barn. Inside are "spirit tablets." It didn't really say what those were. Now, as I got closer to the front gate (having arrived at the back of the grounds) there was a building which had something to do with the rituals that the new king has to perform for his father when he dies. As I strolled by... oh, damnit. Al Jazeera informs me Ash and Abishek are engaged... well, anyway, as I strolled by I looked inside and saw a raccoon, or some very similar creature. I tried to take a picture but the move for my camera led it to dive through a hole into the crawlspace below the room next door. I gasped and kind of looked around to see if anyone else had seen it. No one had. A Korean woman guessed roughly correctly what was up, and said "Cat?" But, for some reason I just assumed she wouldn't know "raccoon" and so was speechless.
Next door was a very small building which I think was supposed to be a place either where a certain member of the Choseon royal family painted, or maybe had some of his paintings? I forget. Anyway there were a couple of paintings hung in there which were clearly reproductions, and one which looked like it might be an original. I should perhaps mention, this wasn't the only building where they had sandals out front so you could take off your shoes, put those on, and putter about inside a little.
Oh, one other thing I meant to mention before moving on from the palace, was that it seemed to be a favorite puttering-around spot for the older set, whereas the first palace seemed to be a younger crowd, and the one from the 12th was all schoolchildren. As for the shrine, most of the people I saw there were one big tour being conducted in a tonal language. Maybe cantonese?
Ok. In front of the gate of the shrine there was a giant square with maybe 50 games of something going on. I don't think it was Go/Paduk. It looked like the pieces were little hexagons of varying size, with characters on them. And each game had maybe 20 onlookers. So it was quite a sight. I think I got a photo, but I don't think it will do it justice. I looked for a little bit at these paintings some guy was selling, but decided that they said "Hey, fellow Westerners, I am a souvenir from the mystic East" in a rather loud voice and moved on. To be fair, I am not sure that these don't have some other meaning in Korea. I would guess they are produced for tourists to buy as souvenirs. But maybe if I'd gone to a Korean person's home, I would have seen one hanging there saying something else. And if purchased by a member of the tour I will continue guessing was Hongkies, it has another meaning. But all of this is beside the point in regards to my decision to pass...
Past the guys playing Paduk or whatever were some benches that were not full, and I sat on one and rested. Some guy came up to me and started talking to me in Korean. I think I mumbled out my Hanguk bal beo te yo
or whatever, which didn't work. It reminded me of when I asked people in Japanese if they spoke English. It would completely backfire because by asking them in Japanese I'd given them the go ahead for a soliloquoy about god knows what in Japanese. Telling people in Korean that you don't speak Korean doesn't seem to work much. After all, you've just spoken Korean. So... Anyway he prattled on a little bit and said "American" a few times. I tried to nod politely for a little while, and then said "well I'm going to head off now." He said something I will assume meant something like, "oh come now stay and chat a while" and actually pulled me back down by the hem of my jacket. I was prepared to be a little indulgent and after wrapping up his point, he let me go. I headed to the subway, and just before getting on saw a building that looked like a 70s retro sweater. It what just a big rectangular office tower, but it was colored in bands of green-grey-brown in a certain way...
And then
We pick up the day after the day I went to the tower with my advisor. I believe this would have been December 11. This is the day on which there is the least to say and the most pictures to look at, because this day I mostly want to palaces from the Cheosun dynasty. As I write this I do
not have the Seoul map with me or access to the internet. Perhaps I will come back and update later with names.
Anyway, the first thing I did that morning was go to a big palace. There are three large palaces in Seoul. I had been looking around a Korea tourism website and decided to go first to the one it billed as the most unmissable.
Looking at my notes, I see I didn't have too much to mention about that one. It was a huge complex with separate subcomplexes for the residencies of the king, queen, crown prince, crown princess, and queen dowager (king's mom). The buildings were all traditional style but many of them were quite young. Most of them had something about having been burned to the ground and then restored. Some of them as recently as 2000. And, it looked like there was more under construction.
Next door on one side was the Korean Folk Museum which had a very impressive tower-y structure I'm tempted to call a pagoda on top. But I don't really know what a pagoda is. There were steps all the way to the top but one isn't allowed to climb any of them. (Well, actually, the
chain is about 10 steps up, so in principle one could climb 9, but....) Next door on the other side is the Blue House, which is Korea's equivalent of the White House. I don't know whether the similarity of the names is coincidence. Really, it's one big complex. I think I read somewhere-- but I'm not sure where-- that the use of blue tiles on the roof of the Blue House (which is why it's called that) is because in an earlier era they were reserved for royal palaces. Not sure how I feel about that. But then, none of the palaces had blue tile roofs, while the pagoda or whatever on the Folk Museum did.
Ok. About the time I was done at the first palace, my batteries ran out. One of my first thoughts when I woke up that morning was what an idiot I was for not having put my rechargeables in to charge overnight. Incidentally, I think I had made it to that point in my Korean sojourn on the batteries I had charged up in Illinois (which are different batteries than the ones I had neglected to charge the night before-- different voltages). I went to a place across the street and got some disposable batteries. I also got a disposable camera, because my recollection was that a digital camera will eat through a pair of disposables in just a couple of snaps. If it was as few as I remembered, it might be less frustrating to just go with the disposable camera. I don't know where it was that I formed that impression. It may be that it was in India and someone sold me a bad set. Anyway, the guy gave me my banana milk on the house, which was nice. When I came back out there were some guards in white suits and funny hats setting up in front of the gate, and I took a picture of them, I think with the disposable camera. Then I took a picture of a tower, I think also with the disposable camera. This tower was, actually one of the older things around. Originally part of the temple complex, it's now in the middle of the intersection at one corner of what's there now.
I checked the map and it didn't look like it was worth taking the subway one stop to go to the next palace, so I set off walking. On the way I passed a building called something like Hyundai Cultural Center. But I think it was something a little more amusing.
Anyway, the next palace was guided tours only. The sign said that the grounds were being degraded by people's feet before they made that rule. And, it also said that there were no tours in December. So, I was out of luck, and headed on to palace number three, which was just around the corner. But, as you can imagine, those are big blocks, when every house is a palace. Still, it was a nice walk. Busy street, but tall stone walls on both sides, and the light hitting the one on my side of the street nicely.
Ok, so next palace was a nice one. Well, they were all nice. (There's still one more coming...) This one was a bit smaller, but had nice grounds. Big, with a lot of stuff on them. One thing that was weird was the royal placenta burial site. Then there was this thing that looked a bit like a beach lifeguard chair, made of stone, and, called an observatory, I guess like the one in KyeongJu. Also there was a greenhouse. This was called a botanical garden. Well, or rather, what's inside it was. I say this because I thought at first that they would be two different things while looking at the sign, and I generally think of botanical gardens as being large outdoor things you walk around in. Also, there was a nice big pond that I walked around.
Now, one thing from a sign I read which I probably won't get quite right. Like the other place, this place had separate buildings for the kings and queens residence. And, on the queen's building, there was no beam across the top, and that was explained, roughly thus. The beam represents a dragon. The dragon is a messenger from heaven, and the queen is sort of a conduit for heavenly power. A beam on the top of her house would block the power of heaven.
Now, in the back left corner of the grounds were some steps going up. At the top was a gate to the palace next door-- the one which I had been not to be able to visit. It was one of many. Anyway, it was locked. And there was also a gate to a small overpass. This was over the road I had just walked along, spanning the gap between those high stone walls. I'd seen it while walking along the road. Anyway, it was nice, and a little incongruous, this little bridge between these two quiet, timeless, contemplative spaces, with the heavy traffic of the street below.
Anyway, when I first found the footbridge, I wasn't quite ready to move on from the palace, so I went back and walked around there a little more before heading across.
Now, what was on the other side was the royal shrine of the Choseon dynasty and its grounds. The shrine itself was probably the largest individual building of any of them. It reminded me of a barn. Inside are "spirit tablets." It didn't really say what those were. Now, as I got closer to the front gate (having arrived at the back of the grounds) there was a building which had something to do with the rituals that the new king has to perform for his father when he dies. As I strolled by... oh, damnit. Al Jazeera informs me Ash and Abishek are engaged... well, anyway, as I strolled by I looked inside and saw a raccoon, or some very similar creature. I tried to take a picture but the move for my camera led it to dive through a hole into the crawlspace below the room next door. I gasped and kind of looked around to see if anyone else had seen it. No one had. A Korean woman guessed roughly correctly what was up, and said "Cat?" But, for some reason I just assumed she wouldn't know "raccoon" and so was speechless.
Next door was a very small building which I think was supposed to be a place either where a certain member of the Choseon royal family painted, or maybe had some of his paintings? I forget. Anyway there were a couple of paintings hung in there which were clearly reproductions, and one which looked like it might be an original. I should perhaps mention, this wasn't the only building where they had sandals out front so you could take off your shoes, put those on, and putter about inside a little.
Oh, one other thing I meant to mention before moving on from the palace, was that it seemed to be a favorite puttering-around spot for the older set, whereas the first palace seemed to be a younger crowd, and the one from the 12th was all schoolchildren. As for the shrine, most of the people I saw there were one big tour being conducted in a tonal language. Maybe cantonese?
Ok. In front of the gate of the shrine there was a giant square with maybe 50 games of something going on. I don't think it was Go/Paduk. It looked like the pieces were little hexagons of varying size, with characters on them. And each game had maybe 20 onlookers. So it was quite a sight. I think I got a photo, but I don't think it will do it justice. I looked for a little bit at these paintings some guy was selling, but decided that they said "Hey, fellow Westerners, I am a souvenir from the mystic East" in a rather loud voice and moved on. To be fair, I am not sure that these don't have some other meaning in Korea. I would guess they are produced for tourists to buy as souvenirs. But maybe if I'd gone to a Korean person's home, I would have seen one hanging there saying something else. And if purchased by a member of the tour I will continue guessing was Hongkies, it has another meaning. But all of this is beside the point in regards to my decision to pass...
Past the guys playing Paduk or whatever were some benches that were not full, and I sat on one and rested. Some guy came up to me and started talking to me in Korean. I think I mumbled out my Hanguk bal beo te yo
or whatever, which didn't work. It reminded me of when I asked people in Japanese if they spoke English. It would completely backfire because by asking them in Japanese I'd given them the go ahead for a soliloquoy about god knows what in Japanese. Telling people in Korean that you don't speak Korean doesn't seem to work much. After all, you've just spoken Korean. So... Anyway he prattled on a little bit and said "American" a few times. I tried to nod politely for a little while, and then said "well I'm going to head off now." He said something I will assume meant something like, "oh come now stay and chat a while" and actually pulled me back down by the hem of my jacket. I was prepared to be a little indulgent and after wrapping up his point, he let me go. I headed to the subway, and just before getting on saw a building that looked like a 70s retro sweater. It what just a big rectangular office tower, but it was colored in bands of green-grey-brown in a certain way...
posted by GB at 1:48 AM
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