In the Land of Dragons: Stone Dragons

This is Part Two of In the Land of Dragons: Stone Dragons.  There are of couple of iron dragons in here, too.  If you are intested in seeing more South Korean dragons, please see last week's post called In the Land of Dragons: Painted Dragons. 

Most of the stone dragons I saw in South Korea were decorative posts for stairs or bridges.  I also saw a number of dragons atop stone pillars at many of the temples.

Dragon guarding a bridge at Gyeongbokgung Palace, Seoul

Another bridge dragon at Gyeongbokgung.

Many of the rooftops have these protective charms.  I think the dragon head may be iron. 

See the dragon in the top tile?   I'm pretty sure these are slate tiles.

This dragon tops a huge 10 foot tall  bell at Suwon Fortress.

Twin dragons commonly appear on these temple pillars.  This pic was taken at Tangeumdae Temple in Chungju.

More temple pillars at a countryside temple and burial mound site outside of Chungju.  The next few pictures show the twin dragon details of these pillars.

That's all the dragons I have for South Korea, but I've been snapping pics of Vietnamese dragons for my other blog:  http://www.vietnaomi.blogspot.com/.  I'm still collecting those pics, so it'll be awhile before I post them, but keep checking back. 

In the Land of Dragons: Painted Dragons

South Korea is dragon country.  Dragons in South Korean lore are not the flying, fire-breathing, princess-eating, gold-loving types.  In fact, the notion of dragons in South Korea is nearly opposite of the European idea of dragons.  South Korean dragons bring good luck.  Instead of lighting castles on fire, Korean dragons are meant to deter fire.  Most of the dragons in South Korea don't even have wings.  They are slithery serpeants with legs and feet.

This is Part One of In the Land of Dragons: Painted Dragons.  Dragons are painted as protective spirits on eaves, beams, and ceilings of important structures.  These photos were taken during my visits to various temples, shrines and palaces in South Korea.


Smoke breathing dragon face in the beams of Chungnyeolsa Shrine

  

Painted dragon incorporated into the royal furniture at Suwon Palace.



Suwon Palace



A ceiling at one of the gates at Suwon Fortress



Dragon-faced window panels at Suwon Fortress



Faded dragon-faced wall panels at Suwon Fortress





Eaves outside main entrance at Tangeumdae Buddhist Temple



Ceiling of small forest temple outside of Chungju



Outside of the main door of a Buddhist Temple near Chungnyeolsa Shrine.




The back of the same dragon at the main door of the Buddhist Temple near Chungnyeolsa Shrine



A beam inside the Buddhist Temple near Chungnyeolsa Shrine



Part Two of this article will feature Stone Dragons. 

Town and Country

Chungju is a mix of town and country, a perfect blend of urban and rural.

Towering into the skyline are a series of apartos.  These multi-story skyrise apartment buildings are the height of a prestigious South Korean lifestyle.  To my American eyes, the identically-built structures, identifiable only by the number painted on the side, look like 1970's low-income or Cold-War-Soviet projects--not somewhere that I would ever want to live.

Apartos

Just as these apartos come on one-shape/one-size-fits-all form, other buildings mimic each other in a similar sameness of dull, concrete-grey, pseudo-marble boxes.  In each box you can find, either a technology superstore, climbing goods stores attempting to pass as haute couture houses, or a series of coffee shops and PC Bongs (internet gaming house).  If you are looking for something else, then just trust that you have ventured into the wrong country city or possibly, the wrong country all together. 

Another series of apartos

All of these buildings give a modern, urban feel to Chungju, but there is a rural element just outside their doors.  Between and among these buildings, there are many green gardens.  Tended mostly by weathered, bent-backed old folks, the gardens produce a year-round supply of fresh vegetables.  One such garden, thriving below my window, grew a steady rotation of Korean radishes, sesame leaves, lettuce, tomatos, corn and red chili peppers.  It's care-taker arrived most mornings at 5:30 to pick, weed, hoe, and plant. 




Fall garden below my window.





Old man clears the fall garden and plants his winter crop.

 

If these gardens can flourish amongst all these ugly buildings, I wonder why American cities don't host more gardens of their own?  South Korea is proof that urban living does not have to mean a total abandonment of rural values.  Enjoying a country lifestyle does not have to mean a shunning of modernity and urban comforts.  I wish that my own country could adopt and adapt to the South Korean style of town-and-country living (minus the hideous buildings, of course).



Urban garden: corn and concrete



Lost in Translation: Episode 2

Funny foods:



This chocolate is better than crunchy; it's CRUNKY and boy, can it dance!



For My Body: No Sleep Gum because it's good for you like a caffeine overdose, chrystal meth, or cocaine.



Now, here's a truly evolved food brought to you by Darwin:  Dick Stick!  Sounds appetizing, doesn't it?  I mean, who wouldn't want to pop a Dick Stick into her mouth?  Right, ladies?  Ummm...NO!



South Korea's Top 10

South Korea has some interesting traits, many of which I really liked.  Here's my top 10 (in no particular order).

1.  Color has no gender.  Boys and men wear pink, ride pink bicycles, carry pink backpacks...  It doesn't make them girly.  It's no big deal.

2.  Hand-holding with friends is okay and quite common.  You needn't be boyfriend and girlfriend to hold hands.  It's quite normal to hold hands with any friend at an time.  Even boys hold hands or cuddle affectionately at any given moment.

3.    No gym membership required!  Almost every park is outfitted with exercise equipment, including different weight and stretch machines.  My favorite of these is the walking path paved in squishy, impact-absorbing material like on a professional running track.  No joint damage during jog time!

4.  Radiant floor heating.  As in traditional Korean homes, the standard (assuming it is in operational order) is to heat the floor through a system of hot water pipes running under the floor boards.  Since heat rises, this makes wonderful sense.  Plus, my cat really liked all the warm spots that this generated on the floor.




Moomarelli stretched out on a warm spot on the floor.

  5.  Seaweed and mushrooms are available in several varieties and are inexpensive.  Some of the mushrooms available at a Korean grocery store I've never even heard of, and some are available in the US for expensive "gourmet" prices.  Back in the USA, I was a wild-harvester of seaweed and really love to eat it.  So, I was very happy with the variety of seaweed available in stores.  And, talk about cheap!  A pack of 10 nori sheets goes for about $5 stateside, but in Korea $5 will get you 100 sheets.

6.  Coffee and pasteries.  Yum!  Nearly every other business in South Korea is a coffee shop.  The trick is the pick one that is not too expensive.  At some shops, the price for a single latte can be as much as $6.00.  Yikes! To go along with that cherished cappucino, French pastries are abundant.  Many bakeries feature French-style goods and sport names like "Paris Baguette" and "Tous Les Jours."

7.  Vintage clothes are easy to find in used clothing stores.  In Seoul, you'll pay a pretty penny to purchase vintage and retro, but in smaller towns like Chungju, you can purchase a vintage dress or sweater from $2 to $10.

8.  Hanbok.  I love folk clothing and the hanbok is no exception.  This lovely dress comes in vibrant colors and is positively charming.  Almost everyone has a hanbok.  However, it is also true that hardly anyone wears it aside from very special occasions like traditional weddings.  Hanbok shops are everywhere!  Used hanbok go for $5 childrens and $25 adult.  New hanbok are a couple hundred dollars.  Colors are chosen according to age, status, employment...

9.  Buddhist temples painted in vibrant colors.  The eaves and ceilings are painted with such detail!  The most common themes for the eaves are flowers, chickens, and dragons.  The carved doors are painted in bright teal on the outside and lined with paper on the inside to allow light to pass through and create beautiful shadows. 




Notice the chickens?



Door from outside.

The same door from inside.

10.  Lotus gardens.  The lotus is a much larger flower than I had thought.


Lotus leaves are as large as my torso, and the flowers are about the size of my head.



       

SIM City

One weekend, Darby, Kris, and I took the morning bus to Seoul on a  cell phone-purchasing mission.
Upon arrival in Seoul, we hopped on one of the busy city buses and headed into the neighborhood of Itaewon.  Itaewon is known as the "foreigner district" of Seoul (and possibly all of Korea).  It is one of the only places in Seoul where you can see up to 12 westerners on the same street at the same time.  This familiarity should be comforting, but for some reason that I can't quite pinpoint, I find the foreign presence a bit eerie and unnerving.  Hmmm...maybe it's the huge military complex across the road.

Anyway, we were counting on Darby to guide us to the tiny, back-alley, Nigerian-owned convenience store that has the cheapest cell phone deals in the country.  However, considering she'd only been there once, and that the neighborhood is littered with back alleys, it is no surprise that we got a little bit lost trying to find it.  We did get to wander around a great little area full of antique shops, so the search was nice even though we never made it to the destination.

We never did find the store that day, but returned the next weekend and found it with the help of a map, hand-drawn by a co-worker who is more familiar with the area.  The Nigerian was a nice and attractive man.  His store sold a smattering of foreign goods (dried chickpeas, Nutella, Campbell's soup, coconut milk, Guiness...) and an array of recycled cell phones.  Appartently, it's quite easy and standard practice in Asia to recycle a cell phone by simply switching the SIM card hidden behind battery in the back of the phone.  What a revelation!  The SIM cards access different satellite signals and come with a generous first helping of minutes.  I bought a Barbie-pink phone (the cheapest he had that day) with about 100 minutes for $25.  If I'd been there a day or two earlier, during his special cell SALE, I could have got the whole sha-bang for $10.  If I'd had a compatible phone, I could have just switched the SIM card for about $5.

The moral of the story is: When in Asia, skip the house phone, and just buy a new SIM card for your existing phone.

Scooby Doo and a Mummy, Too!

The onset of the Christmas season reminds me that I have yet to post my Halloween blog.  So, here it is:

Since Korea does not celebrate Halloween, the academy requested that foreign teachers host special classes/parties to teach the kids about the holiday.

They wanted special class content, games, trick-or-treating, snacks, costume contests, class decorations... "Make a list of what you need," they said.  "Costumes are mandatory for foreign teachers."  Loving Halloween, we eagerly wrote lists and waited, and waited, and waited for supplies.  We waited so long that, the night before the party, most of us broke down and bought candy and games out of our own wallets so that the kids would not be disappointed, and we decorated our rooms with monsters and haunted houses colored by the kids. Then, come the day of the party, the school finally showed up with supplies thirty minutes after classes started.  (Hmmm....typical.) 

It took over a week to introduce Halloween.  After all, in Korea, the scariest thing they can think of is a kitten (and I'm not kidding about that).  I taught them all about monsters, dressing up in costumes, trick-or-treating...  They didn't like the idea of a holiday dedicated to fear, but they quickly warmed up to the idea of free candy.

On the day of the party, a few kids and teachers managed to come in costume.  Luckily, the local markets had a small stock of Halloween items available.  The Korean teachers decorated the hallways with black balloons and fake spiderwebs while the foreign teachers were in classes.  They organized designated trick-or-treating and costume-contest time.  Of course, all of this was worked out in Korean, so come trick-or-treat time, they failed to include the foreign teachers in their plans.  So, sadly, many of the kids missed out on the fun.  Luckily, my room is right next to the main room, so I was able to figure out what was happening and send my kids out to join the party.



Coral Teacher as Frankenstein-Reaper and Christina Teacher as Vampire-Witch (serious monster confusion).





Costume Contest





Annie Kitten



Jasmin Kitten

My classes got to watch Scooby Doo episodes.  They seemed to really like it and laughed at the oddest times.  Then, we had mummy races to see who could wrap their partners up in toilet paper the fastest.  The kids especially liked the idea of all that TP at a school that does not provide TP in the bathrooms.   



Mummy Races.  She looks so happy because she knows that today, at least, she'll get to wipe her ass at school.


Kris Teacher dressed up like a cat.  This genuinely horrified many students who cowered away from him in the hallway.  I dressed as the Wicked Witch with green skin.  This mostly confused the kids, since they don't have witches with green skin in Korea.  They asked if I was Fiona from Shrek.  I did managed to instill quite a bit of fear, however.  My littlest kids were truly freaked out.  The best moment was when I entered my middle school class and got full-on, super-scared, top-of-the-lungs screams out of 7 teenagers.  Awesome!

Kris and Moomarelli = Twinsies



Me as the Wicked Witch








Fall and Falling

For the past couple of weekends, I've gone hiking in nearby Woraksan National Park.  It's a beautiful, but small (by American standards) mountain range forested with deciduous trees such as japanese maple and ginko.  The display of fall colors was wonderfully reminiscent of my New England childhood.  Full of reds, yellows, and oranges, the trees dropped leaves like a ticker tape parade. 

The hikers were many.  In Korea, it's en vogue to get decked out in the lastest, top-of-the-line hiking gear when visiting a mountain, regardless of how far or long you plan to hike.  Also, it doesn't hurt to have a ski pole or two for use as hiking sticks.  I was sadly underdressed in my jeans, rainbow sweater, and worn-out sneakers.

At the foot of the hill stands an ancient shrine called Mireuk-ri.  Having been to this shrine before, I knew it was worth seeing again before heading uphill.  You can see pics of this shrine in my past post "Rainy Day Woman."

The last time I visited Woraksan, four of us hiked up the mountain, following a well-worn and wide path through the trees.  It was incredibly easy to reach the first summit, so we decided to move along to the next peak.  Here the trail got a bit tricky.  We had to topple over loose boulders, and then, the trail stopped, and we were left to grapple up a suddenly-steep mountain side.  Slipping on fallen leaves, and falling on our asses got to be too much, so we turned back.  Heading down the mountain was just as sketchy, to say the least.  Let's just say, the leaves weren't the only things falling.  At random steps, our feet would give way and send us sliding at alarming rates down the near-cliff-like mountain.

On the way back down, we met of group of middle-aged Korean hikers who insisted on sharing their tangerines and makoli (rice wine).  By this time, we surely needed it!  We all grinned stupidly at each other for a while (mostly oblivious to each others' languages), took a couple of photos, then continued back down the trail.  Having made it past the most treachorous terrain, we were able to slow down and enjoy the breath-taking fall colors. 

I most have snapped a hundred photos trying to do photographic justice to the fall colors.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed the real thing.