Temples. . . all over the place

Sometimes I just get lucky.

My tourist M.O. follows the accidental tourist mentality: I drive around until I see a sign pointing to a landmark, follow the arrows, and hopefully when I arrive there's something to see. Usually the objects of the arrows are big and obvious enough that even this English-only American can find them, like the monument to King Jeonjo the Great, and the Anseong brassware museum. Sometimes after following the arrows in circles I just give up, baffled, frustrated and wondering why there's an English sign on the highway but only signs in Hangul at the destination. Ironically, the Korean Literary Museum is one such landmark I haven't yet found. Fortunately, temples are big, colorful, generally hard to hide and easy to spot.

Driving East along highway 38 one weekend I simultaneously spotted a familiar-looking brown sign with an arrow, presumably pointing toward a landmark. I checked the rearview mirror while braking hard and swerving onto the access road, and mentally added 1.2km to the odometer as indicated on the sign. After a few weekends of seeking landmarks my skills are improving, but sometimes I wonder why people don't want to ride along on my weekend excursions.

The road follows a gentle stream with families picnicking on the wider banks, and at the end lies the parking lot of the Seongnamsa temple.


The first building I saw from the parking lot was over the steps to the temple grounds.




The building is a large open room facing the temple grounds, empty except for a stack of woven rugs stacked in one corner. Perhaps this is the dance hall? The pictures really speak volumes more than I can write, the paintwork is absolutely amazing.



The painted dragon banner picture on my blog page is from one of the beams




I do wonder about the wooden fish though...


Continuing up the steps I see the main temple at the top, with its doors open.



Midway up the stairs is a clearing with still more things see



Yet another stone pagoda...



And finally, I reach the temple. I poked my lens inside the open doors and this is what I saw:






And finally, on the walk back to the parking lot, I discovered the how the Buddhists do real Korean BBQ



Until next time...

Jerry.

Three-storied stone pagoda in Dogi-Dong

Finally, I have The Map! One of my coworkers picked up an english-language tourist map for me from the highway rest area. I've been looking for one of these, even asking at the museums and attractions for a map or tourist guide in English without success. And now, in my possession I have a guide to everything historical, photogenic, and cultural around Anseong mapped out on paper. I now know how it feels to have discovered the Rosetta Stone.

Beginning with the most local artifact to my apartment, I set out to find the Three-Storied stone pagoda of Dogi-Dong. According to the map it stands across the street from the Anseong fire department headquarters, which is down the road from the police station. Finding the police station is easy, it's near the park where I joined the nice family for a picnic lunch.

Driving past the police station I quickly found the fire department headquarters and soon thereafter the road past as shown on the map - I'd driven too far. Driving back I discovered a Buddhist temple and thought maybe the pagoda is an artifact on their temple grounds, but alas looking around I saw nothing made of stone or three stories tall. I assessed the gas station as not being pagoda-shaped and not nearly tall enough, but given the fuel prices these days I briefly considered the wisdom of erecting a shrine to gasoline.

I drove around the area, over roads between the rice paddies carefully threading the rental car over the narrow winding paths. All the roads between the rice paddies are about two feet above water and just barely wide enough for a farm truck, strangely crooked and completely flat. I did find a three story church not far from where the map showed the pagoda, but at last check Christians don't build pagodas.


There's lots of egrets around here. I keep taking pictures of them but I haven't gotten any really good close ups yet, they spook easily, and it probably doesn't help to wear an orange tee-shirt while sneaking up on them, either. I can walk or drive within about fifty feet from them before they flee but I keep trying. When I do get a good picture it'll be here, but for now here's one I saw while searching for the pagoda.


How hard could it possibly be to find a three-story stone pagoda? I mentally reviewed what I'm looking for: a pagoda - it should look like big stack of boxes. It's made from stone: I can take it for granite. It's three stories tall - anything that tall should stand out like a huge stone lightning rod around here! I'm in the middle of a huge flooded marsh recently planted with rice shoots, how could I not find it? With frustrations mounting I stop at the intersection of a paddy road and the highway and restore my blood sugar with peanut butter & jelly and an apple. Okay, I admit I did buy the California Farms brand of peanut butter, but it's Ottogi brand strawberry jam and Seoul Food brand bread! I'm really trying to fit into the culture!

As I finished my last bite of apple and swallow of iced tea I saw it: the stairway. Across the rice paddy I spotted a stone stairway and with trembling hands I took a shaky picture zoomed way in to document my discovery. Could this actually be the stone stairway leading up to the Three-storied stone pagoda of Dogi-dong? As I got closer I wondered what type of treasure I might find at the top - the stairway looked ancient, the stair treads possibly worn thin from the of millions of pilgrims that must have made the long journey to Dogi-dong. I could only imagine the relief in the hearts and minds of those who came before as they spied the stairs and gathered all their remaining strength to make the final ascent. I was quivering with excitement, finally have found the steps to the pagoda...




I mounted the stairs, basking in the glow of my good fortune to have come so far from home to visit a sacred relic in the Land of the Morning Calm. At the top of the stairway, just outside the fence guarding the stone pagoda, there's a sign proclaiming that this is an official "Monumental monument" of Gyeonggi-do. The entire plaque reads,

"Three storied stone pagoda of Dogi-dong, Anseong.
Cultural Property of Gyeonggi-do No. 76

This is a pagoda with the height of 5.4m erected on a hill from where one can look over the downtown of old Anseong. The overall configuration indicates that it is one of the pagodas of Goryeo, which followed the style of those of Baekje."

I'll let you do your own Wikipedia lookup for Goryeo - it's amazing how old this is. And here it is, in all it's glory.



So there it is, the Three-storied stone pagoda of Dogi-dong. On my way home I spotted this sign at the highway:



Later in the day I visited two Buddhist temples and they deserve a blog entry of their own. Stay tuned, it's just getting interesting.

Jerry

Namsadang performance center

Saturday May 31, 2008

Three of my coworkers and I visited the Namsadang Performance Center and wandered around for a couple of hours. At the art center there were sculptures and a glassware shop, but most of the time I spent there was watching the show.

At the entrance of the art center there's a building that stands as a reminder that I'm on the other side of the earth. Either that or it confirms that my perspective of the archatechure is upside down. Inside is a gallery of handmade stained-glass artwork from local artists.












There's not a lot to write about the show since the dialogue was all in Korean - the story was truly lost on me. We watched what I understand was a drama, the costumes were colorful and the performance spirited but I couldn't understand a word that was spoken.

Then it got really exciting! A troupe of inmates from the asylum next door managed to get their straight jackets untied and started running around the performance area! Soon their meds started working agian and they walked back inside...

Time to move on to other attractions in the area, maybe something that transcends the language barrier.

More later,

Jerry.

BMW Seoul, and Downtown Anseong

Hello again from Anseong. It's been a couple of weeks since my last blog entry, I haven't had much interesting stuff to post until now.

On Saturday 24 May I went to Seoul with some friends from Osan for a seminar. People back home keep asking about the food here so I'm beginning to bring my camera with me at lunch. This day I had the bimbibap - it was served in a burning hot clay bowl on a trivet, with rice, sliced carrots, seaweed, bean sprouts, and other stuff that I couldn't identify mixed in. In the bowls above it is spiced squid, kimchee, noodles, and bean sprouts. Nothing fancy, just basic Korean food.

After lunch a couple of us snuck down to the BMW dealership to look at the shiny toys. JR wanted to check out a used F650GS they have for sale, so the two of us walked down the street to visit the dealer. The panorama is on the second floor of the dealership where they keep the used bikes with JR checking out the 'gs.



There are some models I haven't seen in the US yet, like the C1 executive they had parked out front. I wasn't brave enough to ask for a test ride, besides I can't imagine splitting lanes on the freeway in San Jose on this, but it would certainly attract attention. And look mom, it must be safe -- it has a seatbelt!

Amongst the used motorcycles there's one green RTP model that I especially liked. If I can't get the entire bike, I would love to have the seat with the radio box for my own r1100 back home. It would be the perfect amateur radio bike for CW motorcycle mobile, and the lights and siren would help get through the morning commuting traffic, too.


On Friday 30 June I picked up three of my coworkers from the bus terminal in downtown Anseong. I arrived about 9:30pm, early enough to find parking and to walk around a bit with my camera until they arrived. With the neon signs lighting the streets the grimey humanity of downtown still shows through, looking only more surreal and desperate than when sunlit. Every time I drive through a downtown section of a city I keep thinking it looks like a hollywood set gone too far, there's way too much neon to be real but it is.

The picture at the left was looking down a side street across from the bus stop.

The panorama was stitched together from pictures taken right in front of the bus station in downtown Anseong, so it's not the best part of town. Even at 10:00 on a Friday night there were middle-school aged students milling about in their school uniforms, I was told after-school tutoring can run late into the night. Most of the people at the bus station looked college-aged, either arriving in town for the university or leaving for the weekend. I saw a few well dressed businessmen walking (stumbling?) around hailing cabs and such, presumably after late night business dinners.

After dropping off the luggage we all went out for a midnight snack to a local restaurant where their specialty is fish stew. It was obvious the meat in the stew was fish (bones and all). There were unhappy little clams, fish, seaweed, tofu, green onions, all swimming in a spicy red pepper stock, and to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, if you gaze for long into the stew, the stew gazes also into you. I'm not used to seeing seafood see me, at least not at the table. If you look closely at the pot of stew you can see the dark nose of a fish poking it's nose above water against the left side, opposite the ladle. I asked what the curly things were, expecting some kind of exotic noodle but no, they're fish guts. Sorry guys, I don't think I'll be asking to go back there on this trip.

On Saturday we visited the Namsadang performance center, and on Sunday I was playing tourist again but this time with an official Anseong tourist map! In English!! I'll have to write more soon but tonight it's getting late. They shifted holidays on us this week: we work on Monday but get Friday off for Korean Memorial Day.

Keep Checking back, I'll be posting again this week sometime.

Jerry.