An afternoon respite from the rain: a walk in Gangnam, Seoul's hub of modern architecture...and site of an 8th-century temple...
Rain pattering on the roof, I woke up to this sight this morning,
the sliding papered doors of my room:
Even though these are very simple accomodations, I love the feel of staying in this hanok...But having to trek across a flagstone courtyard and down some granite steps to a shared bathroom during the monsoon season--not my favorite aspect of staying here as the remnants of typhoon Maeri (which formed a few days ago down by the Philippines) rain down over Korea...
It poured pretty heavily all morning, so I slept in...did some reading...But finally, hunger and the need for real coffee pushed me down the hill and out into the rain--kimchi and "juk" (rice porridge, congee if you're familiar with Chinese menus) for lunch, and then un café Americano at the underground "Paris Croissant" in the local metro station...And by then, the rain and wind had begun to die down.
Not knowing when it would start raining again, I thought it would be a good idea to find something indoors to do on my penultimate day in Seoul--maybe, like, hanging out in a giant shopping mall--the largest underground shopping center in Asia. So, I took the subway down to Gangnam, the new part of Seoul, south of the Han River. ('Gahng' meaning 'river,' and 'nahm' meaning 'south.')
A generation ago, that part of the city looked like this:
It wasn't even 'the city' yet--much of it was still farmland as recently as the 1980's!
Today, the population of the district has grown to around a million, and it has buildings that look like this:
...fancy digs for dentists and aestheticians, eh?
When I surfaced south of the Han River, it wasn't raining at all, so I walked around a bit, to get an idea what the hub of modern Seoul is like...
...corny fun--but you gotta love a King-Kong-size King-Kong on a public building, eh? AND he's wearing a backpack...above an Outback...
The Hyundai I-Park Tower, also known as 'The Tangent,' designed by American architect Daniel Libeskind; I love the way the façade is reminiscent of a Kandinsky painting...
...a melting (?) sculpture beneath Seoul's 748-ft tall World Trade Center Tower, one of the city's tallest buildings...
...the glass-tower-lined canyon of Seoul's modern financial district...
...and some less flashy, typical middle-class residential architecture--high-rise apartment blocks:
Now, for the ancient Buddhist temple in the middle of all this...(Although it dates to the end of the 8th-century, the temple has been rebuilt several times after fires and wars...) Until a generation ago, Bong-eun-sa temple was on a hillside overlooking farmland; today the complex, with its 7-story-tall Buddha,stands in the midst of commercial high-rises:
...such a contrast, as the Buddha faces the skyscrapers--the traditionally ascetic worldview of Buddhism vs. the ultra-capitalistic global materialism represented in the World Trade Center COEX complex across the street...
...looking back at Bong-eun-sa from the COEX convention hall...
...underneath which is the underground mall (what else?)--the largest in Asia...
aww...a trip-contest for our old home-town...
...and, of course, within this underground CoEx Mall--
a KIMCHI MUSEUM!
Admission was cheap; I had to go in...
All a bunch of propaganda, no?
If you're not already a fan of fermented Asian food, isn't it time you became one?
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