Mom & Dad - ChangDeok Palace (Daddy you're Doing it Wrong - (suite))

C'était le premier jeudi de mes parents en Corée du Sud, et c'était également la Chuseok, fête des ancêtres, le plus long congé férié de Corée. Le pire moment pour les gens qui visitent la Corée, parce que les rues sont bourées de trafique des gens qui conduisent pour se rendre à la maison familiale, parce que les trains, TGV et autobus ont vendus leurs billets dans les premières minutes où ils ont étés mis en vente. Parce que la plupart des magasins sont fermés et que la Corée connaît de ses matins les plus tranquilles. 

Mais pas pour nous. Parce que la journée de Chuseok, c'est une des seules journées où la visite des palais de Séoul est gratuite. Parce que c'est une journée où on a beaucoup de chance de voir plein de gens qui portent le costume traditionnel "hanbok" pour se promener entres les bâtiments des différentes parties des palais. Parce que c'est cette journée-là qu'on a choisie pour faire la visite de deux palais, un musée, et le jardin secret de l'empereur au palais Changdeok.

Parce que nous on l'a l'affaire.

Parce que des fois. Ça vaut la peine de prévoir ce que l'on fait. Parce que marcher fait du bien au coeur et à l'esprit, à défaut de tuer les muscles des jambes et des pieds. Et tuer 3 paires de souliers.

Mais nous on l'a l'affaire.

Marche entre le palais Gyeongbok et Changdeok, une marche d'une 15aines de minutes

Bon, voilà le palais. Maintenant, où est l'entrée?

Après avoir trouvé l'entrée, l'endroit où mes sandales ont rendu l'âme après être passé la porte.

Interesting modern setting for that throne room. We didn't have a guide so we just walked though
the place, but then, sometimes it's okay to just imagine what things are, instead of being bothered
by what they really are. Imagination is killed by explanation, and we tend to forget that too often.
Well I do, in any case.

I want a small pagoda-like seating patio in my parents backyard, with those paintings on it.
I have no clue how that'd be done, but I want it anyways. Would look lovely among flowers.

Dormitory. Dunno if it was for workers or for scholars but I tend to think it was for the former.

Bâtiment juste avant d'entrer dans le Jardin Secret

Si vous voulez visiter le Jardin Secret du palais de Changdeok, vous devez prendre une des multiples visites guidées offertes par les bénévoles qui y travaillent. Malheureusement pour nous, nous sommes arrivés trop tard pour nous joindre à la dernière visite guidée donnée en anglais, mais un petit quelque chose me dit que ce n'était que pour le mieux. En prenant la visite coréenne, nous avons eu moins de touristes placotteux (juste 2) et tout notre temps pour apprécier. J'ai pu comprendre la visite à 50% et traduire ce que j'en comprenais quand mes parents étaient à côté et j'en ai moi-même appris beaucoup. 

La plupart des bâtiments du palais de Changdeok sont peints à outrance avec des couleurs vives qui étrangement, se marient bien à la nature qui les entoure. Il y a par contre trois endroits qui étaient dénués de tout attirail de couleur. Un de ceux-là, c'est le dortoir que j'ai mentionné plus haut. Un autre de ceux-là, sont ces deux petites maisonnettes coquettes, à même le "jardin" du roi. La guide a expliqué  que l'endroit avait été utilisé par le prince, dénué d'artifices afin qu'il puisse se concentrer sur ses études dans le calme et la simplicité. Il y a un joli lac avec une petite pagode et un arbre centenaire qui leur font face.

Maintenant vous voyez de quoi je parle quand je dis arbre centenaire...

Le troisième groupement de maisonnettes sans artifice c'est celui-ci, qui a été décrit comme étant un dortoir. Peut-être pour les employés chargés de prendre soin du jardin? Je n'ai pas tout compris de ces explications, mais elle semble avoir dit que des deux entrées, l'une était pour les hommes, l'autre pour les femmes.

Il y avait un couple costumés avec notre groupe de visite.
Ils étaient vraiment mignons. Je n'aurais pas osé demander
à prendre une photo d'eux, mais heureusement, mon père
n'a pas cette gêne de l'anti-touriste. On est touristes après tout.

La peinture à l'intérieur de cette pagode dépeignait le portrait d'un poème écrit par une des rois de l'époque. J'ai malheureusement manqué un peu de l'explications quant à ce que le poème racontait... 

Traditional Korean Dramas....

A little post for updates on some of the dramas I've been watching recently. I haven't really taken the time to write drama reviews so far, as I admit I've been more into things I've actually physically done, but well, I think what makes a blog worth reading is not necessarily to do the same story telling updates on and on, but to vary. Maybe it's to get myself entertained as well, since to be honest, it takes wayyy too much time to write entries about trips and experiences. Expecially if I want to make them interesting to read, at least for myself. People rarely comment, so I have no clue who's reading that, but I know I do :P Cuz why not. 

So if I myself can't find it interesting.....

Jung Yi - Goddess of Fire

Jung Yi - Goddess of Fire Ep: 32 + 2 extra (only 32 ep out so far)

Interesting story about Joseon ceramics. I knew nothing about ceramics, save the part that it's really really fun to do (I made a cup when I went to Japan with my brother last year and the feeling you get when you do that is amazing). Ironically, when my parents came to Korea a month ago, they went to Heyri, a small village near the North Korean border that is renowned for their ceramics, and I could answer a lot of their questions about ceramics thanks to that drama. I am always a bit reticent of relating all the information I get from dramas, as they probably are not 100% accurate, but I watch enough of them to do some give and take. 

Anyways, I usually start watching dramas when I know they are finished airing, as it really pisses me off to have to wait before watching the next of a serie. I mean, I obviously won't watch a whole 20 hours TV show in one go (well... rarely) but I like to be the one who decides when I stop and when I keep watching. 

And that's impossible when the TV show is still airing...

Well I got tricked while watching that one. I thought there were 26 episodes when I started watching and then, as I watched the 25th episode, I realized that there was NO WAY the drama could unfold in a single hour. Then I searched on "dramaWIKI" (My drama best friend) and saw.....32 episode + 2 extras. FML.

Anyways. I love the show. It's weird, because the main actress, both young and old, has a really weird air to her, that is rare in Korean dramas nowadays. Maybe she has less plastic surgery than usual actresses, but her eyes are so close to each other that I can't really say she is pretty. 

Man. Korea is making me so judgmental. 

But then, I am still watching... so maybe I can be saved?

.... the main actor is hot though. So maybe that's why I'm still watching?

Ceramics.

I am obviously watching because it's really interesting to learn about ceramics. Yes. Ceramics....

... Lee Sang Yoon... I mean, ceramics...

Jang Ok Jung

This drama was mainly popular among older ladies and never really made it big even if Kim Tae Hee was the main actress, and just having her on a drama would make a lot of people watch a show that'd have the most meaningless and annoying plot (see "My Princess", that annoyed me so much I haven't gone past episode 5: 5 hours of my life I will never get back...).

The reason I ended up watching it, is because I work exclusively with Korean "ladies" of that age where they like traditional stories and cute young boys like the main lead In Yoo Ha.

Jang Ok Jung - Live in Love Ep: 24

What got me hooked, personally, was the very first episode, when Jang Ok Jung is a no name that focuses on Korean fashion, clothe designing and accessories. While a lot of the things they showed in that drama looked like modernized flower patterns and accessories, I really like that they put a real focus on the clothes of that era <3

Jang Ok Jung's infamous story has been visited and revisited countless times in Korean traditional dramas, and there is a new series that pops up about her or in which she shows up, every few years, so that is why the show was not such a big thing in Korea. Jang Ok Jung is a renowned concubine of Joseon who'd have manipulated the court, framed the queen and took her place for a time, before being discovered and forced to take poison. Sad messed up storie. In The Moon that Embraces the Sun, Jang Ok Jung shows up, as the bad girl, and in other dramas as well. This one, however had her as the main character so we ended up seeing the world through her eyes that got rotten by the mess around her... In any case, I liked to have the story in another point of view. I think they knitted a pretty interesting story while sticking to the main facts and making her look a bit less shrewed than that of the history records. 

Korean Traditional Dramas?

I have always liked Korean Traditional dramas. They are so much more intense and so many people die that we come to think of death lightly, as they did when revenge meant killing each other's family til no one was left... and that's just wrong. So I will just say, I watch it for the costumes. I just love Korean traditional costumes, what went with what titles, how they wore it and how the standard of both feminine and masculine beauty was different. I love the movements of the clothes, the preciousness of the jewels and accessories they use, the blinding contrasts of colors and amazing wigs women wore.

Korean - Binyeo

Binyeo are long stick-like hair ornaments that used to hold Korean married women's hair (unless I am mistaken, my understanding is that unmarried (the idea here by unmarried implies that the girl is still a virgin) women wore their hair down in a long braid (cutting your hair, according to the confucian thought, amounts to spit on your ancestors, as you are changing the body that was given to you .... now let us think about modern Korea and plastic surgery.... but I am diverging, some things really don't need to be elaborated upon) with a ribbon tied either at the beginning of end of the braid. When they got married, maybe for reasons as practical as symbolic (think of cooking and doing shores with a long braid moving left and right) they "put up their hair" in a know and held it with what is called a Binyeo. Gisaengs (Korean equivalent of Geishas, women working on many kind of art skills, but also women who entertained men and had a hand in politics  - politics and dirty money.....), also had the same pattern, but as they were not really getting "married", they put their hair up when they had their baptism with a man (usually, the best for a gisaeng was to get a very high ranked man to take her first, so he would give her riches before the act, and she'd be renowned for her good "first").

Binyeo with a princess outfit. You can tell easily when it's a princess
outfit, with the 4 royal golden circles of embroidery on each arms, back
and front, but also with the lenght of the front part of the blouse: the hands
of princesses were not to be shown to people easily so they would walk with
the hands hidden under the blouse and keep the sight for special people.

Just like Geishas can get "danna", a sponsor, that is the closest equivalent to a husband for people of that field, Gisaengs could get "married" with a rich sponsor who'd provide for her, without having her completely become his. That wedding ceremony was called "the raising of the hair"... possibly referring to the Binyeo...

Now obviously, Binyeo were not all glamorous accessories. If you talk rich merchants and royalty they could get ridiculously elaborated, but it could be a simple metallic piece of 'jewelry'.  Impressive ones would usually have some piece of green jade on it, as it was a prized material throughout Asia in general.

Another royal Binyeo from The moon that embraces
the sun,  of which I talked about in a previous blog....

Modernized Binyeo... I don't know how much of those patterned flowers are
authentic, but they looked pretty.... so here we are. I prefer gold tho. Really.

Amazing looking Binyeo and hair accessories from the drama Jang Ok Jung

... And I haven't started on the other hair and clothes accessories....

I'm done rambling on that for today tho. 

...this blog was never meant to be that long....

Dad, You are Doing it Wrong....

Staying in a Hanok Hostel was a great idea. I have to thank a big sister for the reservations, because the place, people and proximity to everything around Bukchon was blissful. I can say that Bukchon is probably my favorite place In Korea so far. I know, I haven't visited real old villages that probably can give off a feel just as nice as Bukchon, but thing is that what's great about that place, is that while it gives this traditional feeling, it is NOT in the middle of nowhere. It is still easy to go downtown Seoul from there so you don't get that it's-nice-to-be-surrounded-by-old-stuff-but-f*ck,-after-a-while-I-really-want-to-get-to-some-civilization-and-this-place-is-so-far-from-a-big-city-so-I'm-freaking-stuck-here-til-the-next-train-brings-me-back-to-Seoul kind of feeling, real old villages can give you.

Anyways.

The area we were at was right in between two castles. Gyeongbok and Changdeok. That, with an amazing amount of nice traditional houses and small trinkets and clothes stores in between, and Insadong right below, all in walking distance. 

Keep in mind though, that my parents are "walkers". And by "walkers" I mean just that.

They walk a lot. 

I think that we did over 10 km walk average every full day we visited Korea together. 

...So while I mean it when I say everything was in walking distance, it's still good to have a good pair of shoes. 

And please. No judging the state of my foot. It's NEVER like that.

I did lose 3 pairs of shoes during the 2 weeks and half they were in Korea. R.I.P.

On our second day together in Korea (SK D3 for my parents), we decided to go get 'em those castles. So, yah.... lotta walking.... under a Crazy Crazy Hot sun (I mean, WTF is wrong with Fall?).

GYEONGBOK CASTLE

Enjoy piccies taken with daddy's amazing camera...!

 My dad always optimizes the color and re-frames his pictures, so he never really cares about getting them to look super straight (and I am using his original pictures here) so that's why so many of them are a bit crooked.

Mommy and me. Thinking. What the heck are THOSE fruits?


...


Turn around.

Dad. Take a closeup picture of that tree. We want to know what's there.

As you wish princesses.

...

Still have no clue what those are.

When I visited Gyeongbok castle last winter, there were open rooms, among them, the rooms that were heated using the traditional heated flood technique (that are, after a while, almost too hot to stand sitting on), but in this heat, they kept all the doors of the castle locked. Which sorts of sucked, taken that my architect of a dad would have loved to see inside.

He did manage, however, to take a picture of the inside, by photographing through a 2 square inches hole in a door. We didn't get to see the inside in Korea, but he'll get to explore the inside of that room as soon as he gets to that picture when photoshopping... which might take a while, taken that he took over 4K pics in 2 weeks and half. I remember when we went to Germany, in 2001, and we felt like the 500 pics he took in 5 days was an incredible amount of pictures.

Mommy and Daddy <3 

Daddy, You are Doing it Wrong

Please start by taking a look at those nice pictures. On one side of Gyeongbok Palace, there are a cultural center and a museum. In front of it, there was a stage and groups of musicians played one after the other, under the bright sun, in a nice mixture of old and new (there was a weird band from Philippines with flutes (?)).

A bit later, people with really nice costumes gathered on the side of the stage and started rehearsing for what seemed to be a more traditional presentation. My mother and I, at that time, had decided to sit in the small bunch of stairs in front of the museum, not facing but on the left side of the stage while my dad left to take more pictures of the buildings around. The sun was getting the best of us, and we decided to take it easy in the shades. 

After a while, people started gathering on the stairs beside us, and it soon was filled with people. Unknowingly, we had sat in the best shaded place to watch the performance. We saw my dad come back a bit before the performance, and showed him the people on the side of the stage (nice costumes, could make nice pictures) and he went on trigger-happy towards them, as we stayed on the stairs. 

After a while, the people in costumes left toward the side of the museum, probably to get ready to the start of the performance. My dad followed.

As they all left, staff of the place started to clear a good 50 square feet in FRONT of the stage, making it obvious that the upcoming performance was going to be a bit more "eventful" than the previous seated musicians who played gayageum to recent popular tunes.

After a while, the people in costumes started marching toward the empty space in front of the stage.

Enjoy those pictures...

Don't you think they are really good pictures?

I mean, no one in the way, really close up.

Now.


Take a look at those pictures I took with my phone as I was siting in the stairs.

... and if you get what's going on. You can, like my mom and I did, laugh your ass off.

and be a bit embarrassed, like my mom and I did.

See, when my dad followed the marching dancers, the space in front of the stage was filled with small plastic stools and people watching the previous concert-thingy.

He did NOT see the staff clear the area. He was only too happy to find it so easy to follow the costumed people by walking backwards with no one to get in his way to realize that it was not really natural for it to be so easy. 

So here we are, my mother and I, embarrassed as hell, when my dad painstakingly SLOWLY through the "scene" and stops in the middle for a good 40 long seconds. Notice on the left of the first picture, the guy in yellow? That was their "official" photographer. We could feel the awkward atmosphere as people were wondering how they would get that tall white guy out of the scene...

Fortunately, I don't know if he realized what had happened, but he ended up getting out of the empty space on his own and the show went on without any incident. 

One more picture, for the win.

By the way, I am still tearing up as I write this blog. Man that was hilarious.