Bucheonim Oshin Nal

Today, May 12, is a public holiday here in Korea: the Buddha's Birthday. (The date is fixed on the lunar calendar, and so varies from year to year on the solar calendar.) In Korean, the holiday is either referred to as Bucheonim Oshin Nal 부처님 오신 날 ("Day of the Buddha's Coming") or Seokga Tanshin Il 석가 탄신 일 ("Day of Sakyamuni's Birth"). The former is pure Korean, the latter Sino-Korean 釋迦誕辰日. (Of course, both involve Sanskrit borrowings, but that's another matter.)

In anticipation of the event lanterns have been strung up around Buddhist temples for months now (as seen here). Yesterday, however, preparations reached a fever pitch as temples prepared for the major festival. At the Jogye Temple (조계사 曹溪寺), which is Seoul's main temple of the dominant Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, there's was a great deal of chaos. Buddhist believers were praying in the temple while workers were setting up sound stages, testing electronic equipment, stringing lanterns, preparing food offerings, etc.

The sea of brightly colored lanterns overhead was quite beautiful.


Musicians were doing sound checks with traditional Korean instruments.


In front of the main temple building, a crane truck was employed to deposit a very large and heavy festive tree to the temple. (It's visible there in the background, underneath the center of the large sign.)


In the morning I had gone with some classmates to the Mongolian neighborhood of Seoul, near Dongdaemun 동대문 東大門, for lunch. There is a surprisingly large population of Mongolians living in South Korea. We ate at a small place called, of course, Ulaanbataar. One of my Mongolian classmates took us there.

The menu consisted entirely of mutton dishes. On the left you see mutton dumplings, on the right a dish of fried mutton, carrots, onions, and noodles.


We drank salted milk tea, which is far more palatable than Tibetan yak butter tea, but still no great shakes.

We also got two soups: One was a mutton soup, and the other one was a mutton soup.


(Not pictured is the different mutton soup at the next table.)

The Chinese people couldn't manage to eat anything. They said the mutton had a "smell". Most Chinese people say this. I don't entirely understand it. Mutton indeed has a smell -- it smells like delicious mutton.

That very evening I had another interesting though very different meal. The friend whose wedding I attended last fall took me in the afternoon to the Jogye Temple and the Gilsang Temple (길상사 吉祥寺). The former is located in downtown Seoul, very close to Insadong. The latter is beautifully situated up in the hills behind Gyeongbok Palace, in a very rich neighborhood somewhat reminiscent of the Los Angeles hills. For dinner we went to Samcheonggak (삼청각 三清閣), also in those same hills. For decades this location was the private dining area of government officials, but is now an area open to the public for recreation. There is a very fancy and expensive Korean restaurant on the grounds.

We ordered a multi-course set meal called Gungjung Sura (궁중수라), which translates roughly to "royal feast". We also ordered a bowl of makgeolli (막걸리), a milky-white rice wine that is sweet and fizzy. It was served with a big wooden ladle.

The first course was a pumpkin porridge served with water-kimchi.


Second course was a plate of bamboo shoots in persimmon sauce.


Third course was a nine-delicacies platter. In the center is a stack of thin pancakes. You put bits of the shredded vegetables on a pancake, roll it up, dip it in sauce, and eat.


Here's our menu. We were screened from the neighboring tables for privacy.


Grilled cakes: shrimp, chive, and fish.


Raw marinated ground beef. (Surprisingly delicious.)


Although they kept clearing plates away as more food came, eventually the table became crowded with dishes.


Japchae 잡채, which I normally think of as the lowliest of dishes. This was "Royal Japchae", however.


Followed by Royal Hot Pot, served in the cutest little individual-sized firepot.



After all these dishes had been served, braised ribs (galbi-jjim 갈비찜) came out along with four side dishes (banchan 반찬).


Then, in rapid succession, seaweed soup, rice, fruit (chamoe and orange), a sweet dessert drink called shikhye, and tteok.

Today in Seoul, it's possible to eat emperor food up in the hills where once only top government officials could go. That's what political openness and economic prosperity will do for you.

Ganghwado

This past Sunday I went to Gwanghwa Island. I was taken by the husband of a friend, a Korean woman who I met in graduate school. The island is located at the mouth of the Han River, near Incheon, and is an important historical and cultural site.

It was a cold and drizzly morning, which meant fewer recreation seekers and little traffic, so we were able to get there from Seoul in about an hour. The drive, along the banks of the Han River (한강 漢江), was interesting. For several miles there is barbed wire stretched across the south bank of the river, where the river marks the boundary line with North Korea. Inside the barbed wire there are numerous military guardhouses. Some of them looked unused, but some were manned by South Korean soldiers. I don't know if security has always been tight in this area, given the proximity to the North Korean border, or if an incident that occurred in March 1980, when three North Koreans attempted to infiltrate South Korea by crossing the river here, is partly responsible.

I managed to get only one blurry picture of a guardhouse from the moving car. I believe that in this view we are looking east, on a stretch of the river that runs north-south, so the opposite shore is not North Korea.



On the island we stopped first at a small fort, which is now a park with a historical museum. Because of its location at the estuary of the Han River, the island was an important defensive location, as it protected river access to the capital. It also served as a refuge for the royal court during times of land invasion. The island therefore played important roles over the last 1000 years during attacks by the Mongols, Japanese, Manchus, French, and Americans. Korea won some of those battles and lost others. The American marines soundly defeated Korean forces there in 1871, as part of an attempt to force Korea to open itself to trade. It was a short and lop-sided battle: about 350 Koreans were killed, while only 3 Americans died. You can read details here. Recently, America agreed to lease back to Korea the large battle flag that was captured during the battle.

Here's a picture of the flag:

Flowers were in full bloom on the grounds.


There are still plenty of old cannons around. I was reminded a little bit of the forts at Quebec, although the cannons here are much smaller.

That's the history museum in the background of this picture:


We next stopped at the local fish market for lunch. This was the kind of place, and the kind of food, that seemed likely to cause serious digestive ailments for a visitor. But I couldn't pass up the chance to have local, fresh seafood.

We got grilled shellfish. This astonishing dish arrived at our table:


We laid the shells over a charcoal grill to cook them. (This picture is worth clicking on and inspecting in detail.)


Our next and final stop was the famous Jeondeung Buddhist Temple (전등사 傳燈寺), said to have been established in the 4th century. It's set in a lovely U-shaped plateau nestled in the mountains in the south part of the island. The balloons are in celebration of the Buddha's birthday, a national holiday on March 12. The weather had cleared up nicely by afternoon.


Korean Buddhist temples often have a pavilion with bell, a drum, a fish, and cloud plate, all of which are sounded at certain times of day for various purposes, both mundane and spiritual.

In this shot you can see the bell (범종 梵鍾) and drum (법고 法鼓); the cloud plate (운판雲板) is hanging behind the bell.


And here's the wooden fish (목어 木魚 or 木漁).

I found three things on the island that connected to other experiences I've had here in Korea. First, there was a lot of information at the historical museum on movable type, which apparently was invented and developed on the island (hundreds of years before Guttenberg). I'd been learning about that in my philology seminar.

Second, the Tripitika Koreana, which I saw at Heinsa Temple, was carved on the island, while the Goryeo court was taking refuge there from the Mongol Invasion. Actually they were carved twice, as the first set was destroyed by the Mongols. The second set set was later moved to Heinsa.

Third, a branch repository of Kyujanggak, the royal library, was located at Jeondeung Temple. The building is still there, though it is empty now, as all its former contents are either in France, having been stolen by the French, or at SNU.

It was really satisfying for me to see all this historical and material connections, and link together various strands of my sojourn here.

Haeinsa

Last week, before school started, Erma's mother took me to Haeinsa (해인사 海印寺), one of the most famous and treasured Buddhist temples in Korea. It is most famous for housing the Tripitaka Koreana, about more which later.

The temple is about a three-hour's drive from Erma's parents house. Or at least it should be. But for the first time on any road trip in Korea, there was no traffic at all, and we made it in a little over two hours in each direction.

The temple is nestled in the Gaya Mountains (가야산). The approach to the temple is beautiful.




I'll present several pictures without comment.








Our 8-year-old trusty 1 megapixel Nikon Coolpix camera was fatally damaged when I fell ice skating in December with it hanging from my shoulder. This forced us to purchase a new camera, which has features. I tested out the panoramic functionality for the first time. (You'll want to click to see a larger version to get the full effect.)


Here I am inside one of the four temple buildings housing the Tripitaka Koreana (an odd hybrid Sanskrit-Latinate name), which is a complete set of the Buddhist canon, in Chinese, carved into over 81,000 wooden printing blocks. It has survived the ravages of war and the environment since its creation in the 12th century, and is still in good enough shape to be used for printing. In addition to being a living object of devotion for Buddhist practice, its historical and academic value can't be underestimated.

The amount of care and labor that went into its creation and preservation is astonishing to contemplate. Although the interior of the buildings is off-limits to visitors, and flash photography isn't allowed, I was able to stabilize the camera against the window beams and get some reasonably good interior shots. You can see the wooden pages of the canon, stacked two rows deep, shelf after shelf after shelf of them.




The characters were, of course, all carved backwards and in relief into the wood.


The buildings that house the blocks don't look like anything special.


The fact that they date to at least the mid-15th century, and survived fires that seriously damaged other parts of the temple, isn't in and of itself that remarkable. That they and their contents were saved from being destroyed during the Korean War when a Korean pilot repeatedly disobeyed orders to bomb the site is remarkable, but says nothing about the quality of the buildings themselves. (There is a memorial plaque to this pilot located outside the temple.)

But despite appearances, the buildings are scientific marvels.

Something about the foundation, structure, and materials of the buildings maintains optimal humidity conditions for preserving the woodblocks. Notice that the upper-level windows are smaller than the lower-level windows. On the other side of the building this pattern is reversed. Somehow this creates optimal airflow. Somehow the builders knew that it would do so.

Because of the importance of the buildings to the preservation of the Tripitaka, they are designated as a Korean National Treasure and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

You can read more about both the temple and the Tripitaka, if you are interested, at the Wikipedia sites here and here.

I can't resist ending the post with another multilingual pun. We saw this truck on the road to Haeinsa:


It's a Seoul Milk truck. On the left side it says "I heart 乳". The fact that the word "LOVE" is written inside the heart makes it clear that this sentence is meant to be read in English. The Chinese character at the end is, in Korean, pronounced yu (like English 'you'), giving us the sentence "I love you", familiar to every Korean over the age of 2. The character means 'milk', so the sentence is also understandable as meaning "I love milk".

And, just in case the Korean reader doesn't know the character (especially likely if the target audience is children), the pronunciation is provided, visible to those with sharp eyesight, in parenthesized hangeul letters 유, as you can see in this closeup: