City Guide Review: Buseoksa Temple
Review by Arista Ngodinh, ETA 2019-2020 City: Yeongju Type of Business: Temple (UNESCO Historical Site) Address: 345 Buseoksa-ro, Buseok-myeon, Yeongju-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do Cost: Adults: 1,200 won / Group: 1,000 won Youths: 1,000 won / Group: 800 won Children: 800 won / Group: 500 won Nestled in the mountains of Gyeongsangbukdo lies one of Korea’s most unique UNESCO heritage sites, Buseoksa Temple, otherwise known as the “Floating Stone” temple. Visitors come to the temple mainly because it is one of the few places in Korea where you can see five of Korea’s national treasures at once, including the stone lantern in front of Muryangsujeon Hall, Muryangsujeon Hall, Josadang Hall, wall painting in Josadang Hall, and seated clay statue of Amitabha Buddha. People love visiting not only for the national treasures and beautiful temple grounds, but also for the magnificent mountainside scenery. While the temple and scenery are stunning throughout the year, many visitors prefer to visit during late October to early November to enjoy the extraordinary reds, oranges, and yellows of fall foliage. The temple is built on terraced hills, and the layout of the grounds is modeled after the chinese character ‘華’ (hua) as a tribute to the beliefs of the Hwaeom buddhist sect. Walking through the temple is meant to symbolize walking towards the heavens, and this is reflected in the architecture. There are 108 steps up to the top to represent the ascension to Nirvana (don’t worry, it’s not as daunting as it sounds). The main hall itself is constructed to draw attention towards the sky. The columns are arranged in ascending height order. The outer columns of the hall tilt inward, and the ends of its roof curve upwards to draw the eye upward towards the heavens. Visitors will first follow a tree-covered path up to the entrance of the temple. Once reaching the entrance, visitors will go up the steps to the first terrace, where they will be met with beautiful temple grounds. Walking further up into the courtyard, visitors will see two pagodas from the Late Silla period. To the right is the first national treasure, Josadang Hall of Buseoksa, and within it the second treasure, the wall painting. Continuing up more stairs, visitors can find the magnificent Beomjonggak pavilion leading up to the main hall. At the top, visitors will finally come upon the main hall, Muryangsu-jeon, another of the five national treasures at Buseoksa. The main hall contains another treasure, the statue of Amitabha in shining gold as well as a beautiful wall painting next to it. Outside of the hall is a final national treasure, the stone lantern. To the left of the main hall, visitors can find the “floating” stone for which the temple is also known. In all honesty, it is not as exciting as the name seems. The stone is only said to be floating by a few centimeters. However, the rest of the temple is incredibly beautiful, and the national treasures allow visitors a firsthand look at the long-lasting and majestic nature of Korean history. For those looking for a unique place to visit that is rich with Korean culture and history but not overwhelmed by crowds of tourists, consider going off the beaten path to Buseoksa in Yeongju. [FinalTilesGallery id=’6′]
Or Banished
Photo by Megan Chung by Sarah Berg or, banished family history is hot these days / so quit asking why / i’m interested / all i wanted / was a story a grandparent / or two / a dotted line / an arrow indicating direction an ancestor imagined / in nineties dress or bad behavior / in shakespearean manner / this story’s rebels do die they who traveled / interior distances / doubled back / into the south looking to me / like foreign newsprint / dead then / i unfeel like dipping / paper in water til / it’s gone forgetting tastes / like strange medicine / remembering like wet ink / from stone i demand to / listen as if / i can understand that / mourning is hereditary / justice feels like weeping til i get / a new tongue or til the border weeps / itself into waiting arms that wait for / mouths / that ex / claim salt
The Foreigner’s Phrasebook for Eating Alone
[Featured photo by La Toya Crittenden] by Paige Morris 1. 초딩 입맛 (A Little Kid’s Tastes) Life as a foreigner in Korea often relies on a fixed script of questions and answers. Where are you from? America. What are you doing here? I’m an English teacher. Over time, the questions grow weightier, more loaded. Are you married? Do you like Korean men? How do you do your hair? Slowly, I’ve acquired the vocabulary needed to respond. After two grant years and even more years of language study, I know how to politely say no, how to demur, how to describe the interweaving of strands, both real and synthetic, that form my braids and twists. But when I first came to this country, I was overwhelmed by the amount of language I didn’t have, all the things I didn’t yet know how to do. Certain lines of dialogue demanded to be learned with urgency. There were interactions I had to become fluent in, fast. One of the earliest lessons I had to figure out was eating in Korea on my own. This wasn’t a skill I was even sure I’d had in English. Back home in the US, I hardly ever ate by myself. In college, eating was a decidedly social occasion, with eateries and dining companions within walking distance from my dorm or apartment. My friends and I hosted huge potluck dinners at least once a month and shared at least one meal a day. I had gotten used to always having someone around whenever hunger set in when graduation scattered us all over the globe, and I found myself in a new place where I knew no one. When I ate dinner with my host family that first year, I felt like I was scratching at something familiar, starting to uncover a sense of closeness that came with eating a meal together. But it was also strange to be treated like another child in this family. I wouldn’t know what that night’s meal would be until I was called down to eat. I would ask questions about dinner, curious to learn all the words for the food laid out before me, but it seemed this frustrated my host mother, who had to set her chopsticks down to look up the words in Naver dictionary. I heartily ate what I was served, but when I set aside the little slivers of egg from my kimbap, my host father chided my choding ipmat and called me a pyeonsikga—a picky eater with the stubborn mouth of an elementary-aged kid. I started to question my every move during meals. If I ate only one serving, would my host mother think I disliked the food? If I went for another bowl of jjigae, would my host father think I was being greedy? Should I wait for my two host sisters to stop quarreling over who was the prettiest member of Twice and finish their rice before I got another pat for myself? Should I have eaten the hodu snacks—even though I’m allergic—so no one would think I was too particular? The anxiety around eating grew so intense, I decided I might be better off having dinner on my own. 2. 한 명이요. (Table for One) More than almost any other cultural differences, my efforts to eat alone proved incomprehensible to the people around me. When I mentioned at breakfast one morning that I’d be getting dinner on my own after work and volunteering, my host parents panicked. “With your American friends?” they asked. “With other teachers?” When I told them the other volunteers lived on opposite ends of the city and I was planning to go alone, they were scandalized. “You’ll eat alone?” my host mother echoed, incredulous. “We can save some dinner for you to heat up when you come back. You shouldn’t do that—eating alone?” She turned to her husband, murmuring, “Where would she even eat? By herself, at that?” It turned out this concern wasn’t for a lack of options, but for the perceived strangeness of the situation itself: a foreigner, or anyone, eating somewhere unaccompanied. The first few weeks of my experiment were predictably difficult. Even at restaurants in bigger cities, it seemed lone foreigners were unlikely customers. I would step inside a kimbap shop, a kalguksu place, a mandu-jip, and be greeted with a look of surprise. Sometimes the surprise melted into excitement, the thrill of spotting an opportunity to try out some English or to ask questions of the Black person who had suddenly appeared in the doorway. Other times, the surprise shifted into panic. What was anyone supposed to do with me? Why was I here, instead of off somewhere eating hamburgers or steak? In any case, the script was initiated as soon as I entered. The waitstaff would ask: 몇 분이세요? How many people? I’d hold up a single finger. The grammar to indicate the size of your party is a pure Korean number, plus the counter for people—myeong. 한 명이요. One person. Just me. Here is where the script might fracture. Sometimes, there was no issue. I’d be ushered to a table. Often, I’d have a good view of a wall-mounted TV showing a drama from the early 00s that I had never seen. Most times, despite some initial trepidation, I managed to order without a hitch, which would put all of us—the waitstaff and the foreigner—at ease. There were times, though, when I’d be met with a firm shake of the head. This was usually at places with grills and pricier cuts of meat: pork and beef. The owner of the restaurant would hold up two fingers and shake them to say there was no room for someone looking to dine alone. The first time it happened, I glanced around the restaurant and saw several open seats, which made me wonder why it was that business from one customer was made out to be so much worse than no business at all. I realized