Out and about!

So, yesterday C, Drew, and I took a trip to visit a gigantic brass Buddha statue and a Korean museum. It was sort of a 'well why not let's go right now' kind of trip, but I really enjoyed it. First, to the Buddha.

Christian iconography tends towards the macabre. With the notable exception of the "Buddy Jesus" (with all hatred directed towards Precious Memories), Christian symbols basically celebrate sacrificial love through death. Which is not to say that they aren't incredibly stirring, on many levels, or don't resonate on a personal level. But, they do tend to show, and perhaps linger, on pain. That, and the color palate tends to be pretty drab. Go to any major cathedral, and you'll find somber, dark, and relatively simplistic colors. I'm not denying that Christian iconography can be incredibly beautiful, but it is a bit of a downer sometimes.

Buddhist iconography, however, is pretty much just happy. Buddha, in the Korean tradition, is more somber than the fat and happy buddha that we've all seen in the Chinese restaurants. The Buddha we saw was about 25 feet tall, and weighed about 60 tons (made from bronze). It was, however, relatively bemused, as opposed to 'in pain.' There's a sense of peacefulness from Buddhist iconography that just doesn't really resonate in Christian iconography. We poked around the temple complex, and I took a peek into one of the larger temples that we saw. The colors and patterns are extremely bright; greens and reds are the predominate colors, as opposed to the black and white palate of Christian medieval art. Patternwork covers pretty much every surface; cranes fly, dragons breath fire, and through it all, Buddha sits peaceful. It's quite stirring.

The only Christian building I've ever seen that could come close to the colors of the temple was the cathedral in Buddapest, which borrowed heavily from Islamic tropes. The temple here in Korea was brighter and more vibrant; quite stirring, in fact. I rather liked it, but felt quite awkward about being inside of it. I took off my shoes, ducked through the door, and sort of stood in the entryway. Given that I'm not a buddhist, it felt a bit odd to be inside one of their temples. I'm not familiar or comfortable with the etiquette involved, so I sort of just looked about from my station by the door for about 2 minutes and then left. One lady was praying about 40 feet down from me, which is quite athletic (by which I mean the prayers, of course, not the distance), and I decided to leave before I disturbed her.

After the temple complex, we headed back to the bus terminal and attempted to make our way to a large Korean museum about Japanese occupation. I should note here that our guidebook was completely useless in getting us from point A to point B, and Andrew ended up playing the desparate tourist card of "do you speak English? How do I go here?" twice to get us around. C and I have done it before, and frankly, it's less than pleasant. I was quite grateful that he took the plunge for us on it... Due to the kindness of strangers, we were able to get to both places we wanted to go. I think that's one of the great things about travel; in general, strangers will help you if they can. It's a nice thing to recognize that humans can be kind (but perhaps choose not to be).

Anyway, on to the museum. It felt like an angrier version of the post-soviet occupation Latvian museums. Korea, as it turns out, didn't really appreciate being occupied by Japan for 40 years. the complex was huge (it took us 25 minutes to walk through the entry area to the museum). Quite depressing, overall, and quite the strident tone. Japan has a rather poor relationship with Korea, and it flames up now and then over Japanese revisions of their school textbooks to leave out the history of occupation, or interpretations of treaties, etc. The history is incredibly tragic, and the amount of is pretty staggering. The complex has 7 huge buildings, all detailing a piece of Korean history between roughly 1880 and 1945. There's an incredible amount of pain that the Koreans went through to achieve independence, and it's layed out in pretty gory detail. The Korean story is tragic, and it's heartbreaking that the tragedy still continues to today.