Korea, Day 6.1

The gate to the Gyeongbok Palace, during the changing of the guardI had hoped to be on a plane home today. When I bought my ticket, we didn't realize that the president of Korea was about to call an election holiday. That was today. So all the schools were closed, and there wasn't much I could do about that. Furthermore, the flight I'd hoped to get on was full, and the waitlist was full, and they wouldn't add me to it. So I threw in the towel and decided on a day of tourism and rest.

I joined a morning tour that began at Jogye-sa temple. They had started dressing it up for Buddha's birthday next month. It was a gorgeous building, full of worshipers on this holiday.
As I approached the building, I noticed this happy little buddha waiting for a handout. How could you resist, with a face so cute you want to pinch his cheeks? But I did--resisting both the cheek-pinching and giving him a handout.
Inside the temple were three buddhas. The first one has his hands in the position of teaching. The second one had his hands in the position of sacrifice. Thinking it might carry a significant spiritual lesson, I tried to get the guide to explain what was significant about sacrifice. But even though she tried twice, I didn't get it. So I resorted to the Asian coping mechanism, smiling and nodded knowingly and saying "ah" and "thank you." The third buddha has his hands in the position of healing.

The more I think about it, the more I think there are lessons in this, whether you read left to right, or right to left: Teaching, Sacrifice, Healing. Think about it.
Next we went to the Gyeongbok Palace, established in 1395 by the Joseon dynasty. Originally I'd thought, "I don't want to see any old Asian palaces. I've seen plenty of Asian architecture in my time."

Good thing I had a day to fill. It's a gorgeous place, full of drama, beautiful lines, and color. We began by watching the changing of the guard. Here's a little clip so you can hear the melodious music to which they marched in.


It really was full of pageantry and color. The guys in the red have the highest rank, our tour guide told us. They made a lot of noise, beat on drums and cymbals, played reedy instruments, and one blew on a conch shell. Kind of made you feel like getting up and marching around Jericho.
The guard above, if you click on the picture and look closely, is wearing a fake beard, very cleverly done.
The king's throne room had all sort of symmetry and symbolism in it, all having to do with yin and yang and balance. Round pillars, they told us, represent heaven. Square things represent earth. They are always done in balance, as we saw when we viewed a building on stilts--half of which were round and half of which were square. On the mural behind the throne there is a sun and a moon both depicted over the mountains, again for balance.
There were various courts and passageways between them, all beautifully preserved with simple, elegant lines. The tour guide told us that in the old days there were no trees in the inner courtyards. They were doing all they could to keep would-be assassins from finding things they could hide behind while they targeted the king.
Next to the palace is the folk museum, depicting life in Korea over the centuries. The pagoda is part of that museum.
This particular piece intrigued me. It's a funeral bier. It reminded me of a ship. Check out the little men on animals around the decks, and the birds and various decorations. This was to accompany the dead person happily to heaven. It reminded me of the fancy paper mansions that were built for rich people where I grew up, complete with paper TVs and servants and a paper Mercedes Benz ... all to be burned as part of the funeral ceremonies, to accompany the family member via the smoke into heaven.

From the folk museum, we took a ride past the president's palace. Our bus wasn't allowed to stop, so we caught a one-second glimpse of it with its blue tile roof. They call it the Blue House.

The tour companies have connections with various industries, and they take you there during the tour--sort of like hostages--to buy the products. On Sunday we were taken to an amethyst store, and today we were taken to a ginseng store. They hustled us up via elevator to a display area where they told us how ginseng was grown. It takes 6 years to mature a plant, until they can pull it up and use the roots. So it's expensive to grow, expensive to buy. The store lady went on and on about how the root looks like a human body (see a bunch of them in the photo to the left, which I took surreptitiously after being told not to; that glass tube is as tall as I am). Then they showed us big pictures of ginseng roots looking for all the world like male and female bodies.

Okay. Moving right along.

Next they took us into this room and shut the doors. There was a presentation of the products we could buy, the cheapest of which was a box of ginseng product for $250. You could see the tourists go cross-eyed. We were told how ginseng would undo all the bad habits that could ruin our bodies--smoking, drinking, and so on. It would also give us perfect complexions, and do a few other miracle things that are not supported by scientific studies.

Then we were given little tiny cups of ginseng tea to drink. As one of the other tourists pointed out to me, it was all a very clever ruse, because they next let us out of that room and into a shop where things looked pretty cheap after what we'd just seen and heard. I bought a couple of boxes of ginseng candy (the samples were yummy) for $5 a piece. I think my compadre was right; the clever ruse worked. The tour was going to end up in Itaewon, a horrid tourist-trap shopping street I'd rather avoid, so I hopped off the bus at City Hall and went to see this shrine, which I'd spotted from the hotel restaurant window during breakfast this morning. According to the sign nearby, this was a place where an emperor of the Joseon dynasty offered sacrifices to heaven in the 1800s. It was a lovely, quiet garden tucked down in the midst of the skyscrapers.


They put interesting words they put on their tall buildings around here. I amused myself with this one on the walk back to my hotel. Happy Forever would be a nice place to live and work, don't you think?