Foundation Day Excursion: Herb Island

A few Fridays ago was Foundation Day here in Korea--a national holiday celebrating the mythical foundation of Korea by the god-king Tan'gun in 2333 BC. This mythical foundation story is also part of the central creation story of Taejong-gyo, a particular breed of Korean shamanism, and the Foundation Day holiday is celebrated as a religious feast by those who still practice this ancient religion today.

But for most folks these days, Foundation Day is an excuse to get out of the city for a little while during one of the most pleasant seasons of the year. Our Foundation Day excursion brought us to Herb Island, about 40km northeast of town.

Herb Island
Herb Island defies description. In theory, it's a botanical garden devoted (you guessed it) to herbs, and that reason alone makes it one of the nicest-smelling spots within an hour's drive of Seoul. In reality--well, Nana described it best as a sprawling Cracker Barrel, in Engrish.

At first, the afternoon started out just about as normally as an afternoon can in Korea, in a little hilltop cafe, with an "herb pizza" (actually quite good) and a "beauty tea."
You'll have to tell me if it made me more beautiful.
After lunch, we perused one of the greenhouses and a few of the herb-themed shops. The Herb Bakery was a bit of a disappointment (for some reason, people here can't seem to make bread without sugar on top), and while the herb candy (below--the sign says "eucalyptus") was good, it was also ridiculously marked up.
From there, though, the afternoon took a nosedive into the weird. First, we stumbled upon this unexplained--nay, inexplicable--life-sized witch.
Then, we lost thirty minutes wandering through a labyrinth of country kitsch . . .
. . . which, for whatever reason, included an impressive collection of antique or antique-looking phones, scattered throughout the grounds.



Needless to say, most of these were for sale.

The weirdness escalated when we found, tucked away on a big deck at the back of the complex, a row of little pavilions with top-down, 3D dioramas built into the walls.
Bathtime, anyone?
Hands-down, though, the weirdest sight of the afternoon was this hanging blue Santa twisting, lifeless, in the wind. In front of a 15-foot man-made waterfall, of course.
Which even the statuary found a little perplexing.
"Oh, please."

We capped the day off, naturally enough, with Herb Island's mascot--a giant, anthropomorphic persimmon.
I never thought I'd see the day when a five-foot fruit was more shocked to see me than I it. Yes, that persimmon is covering its mouth in surprise.

Limited time only - Columbus????

I love me some Columbus, Ohio, but let's be honest: it's not exactly the sort of city people write songs about. This is why I was blown away last Friday at work to see that the BrainPop video on Christopher Columbus features the most over-the-top ironic salute to the hometown of yours truly, complete with a "hallelujah" sound-effect skyline and a trip to the Shoe.

Check it out at BrainPop.com!

BrainPop's a fee site but this one is free for now as a Columbus Day promotion.

And if anybody can explain "The Arch City" thing - I mean, you know about German Village but forgot that the arch is in St. Louis? Unclear.

GRE/ETS = STUPID

Prepare yourselves for the dumbest thing you've ever heard:

As I mentioned in a previous post, Nana and I are taking the GRE here in Korea. Now, if you've been following our blog, you know that just about everything we try to do in this country goes horribly, comically wrong. The GRE so far has been no exception: between our first round of admissions ticket snafus and our disastrous dry run (it took us 90 minutes to find the testing center after we got off the subway), it'll be a minor miracle if we even get to take the test at all.

To be fair, though, many of our continuing problems with the GRE have nothing to do with Korea--and everything to do with the combination of byzantine registration procedures and abysmal customer service at ETS, the company that administers the GRE. First of all, the GRE registration forms don't make it clear that your admissions ticket (the original copy of which is required for admission to the exam) will be sent to whatever you list as your permanent address. In other words, if you're an expat with legal residence back home, you're stuck--your admissions ticket is going to be mailed to the other side of the world, no matter where you're hoping to take the test.

ETS does, however, offer a version of the admissions ticket that can be printed online--but this ticket apparently doesn't work for the split-administration test. At least, I haven't been able to get it to work.

A few weeks ago, then, I decided to contact customer service at ETS to see if there was any way to have the tickets mailed to our current address in Korea. The result? After no fewer than six e-mail exchanges (I turned to e-mail after being put on hold for thirty minutes when I tried to call), four of which elicited the exact same ineffectual reply from ETS, the problem still isn't solved: our parents have had to mail us the admissions tickets, and we're left hoping desperately that they get here in time.

Honestly, the ETS responses to my questions read like some kind of Kafkaesque farce. One exchange even included the exact lines below:

Me: As suggested in a previous e-mail from ETS, I have tried accessing the online admissions ticket, but I can't get access to the site (http://www.ets.org/gre/viewprintticket).

ETS: You can view and print your ticket at http://www.ets.org/gre/viewprintticket.

Then, these EXACT SAME SENTENCES were repeated in the following exchange. (No joke!)

Finally, then, in the sixth exchange, the ETS folks seem to have given up, telling me that I could print the e-mail they sent me and use it as my admissions ticket--even though when Paul (our hero) talked to the test center they categorically refused to honor anything but the original admissions ticket.

Long story short: our entire hopes for applying to US graduate schools for 2009 depend, not on our test scores, not on our GPAs, not on our recommendations, and not on our personal statements, but on the ability of the notoriously whimsical Korean postal service to get us our admissions tickets by October 25th.

Ugh.

Cross-Bloggular Pollination

On the right sidebar of the blog (you know, over there -->) you can see a link to our friend Rosa's candy review page. This summer, with the formidable help of my mother, I sent Rosa a package of Korean candy. (My mother's post-office skillz border on the legendary, something I'm counting on as I polish off this destined-to-fail-but-what-the-heck Fulbright scholarship application just shy of the deadline from 7,000 miles away).

But returning to the point: Rosa's blog is hilarious. From your regular convenience store candy to your gourmet treats, from gummi sushi to bacon chocolate, Rosa blogs it all with good humor and great pictures.

And now she blogs us, with the classically-Engrish titled "Crunch Ball Crispy Candy," a staple of Korean Kwik-E-Marts. Don't as me what they're like, because I haven't had them. I use Rosa for that. Stop by and see what she thinks!

Now if only I could send her that sketchy cafeteria lunch fish and see if that one's worth eating...

(Non-Korea Post) Congratulations!

We break from our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this not-so-breaking news:

1. My cousin Emily (her blog's in the sidebar at right) is expecting her first. Woohoo!
2. My cousin Chris is getting hitched today. Way to go, Chris & Candy!

(mush) To all of you reading, I wish we could be there to celebrate together in person. In the meantime, all our love. (/mush)

Xian - Last but not Least

I am completely exhausted and ravingly incoherent right now, which is too bad because the topic of this post deserves better. Still, it survived over 2,000 years underground; it ought to survive being in a mediocre blog post.

I am referring, of course, to the Terracotta Army of Shi Huangdi.


The Qin Emperor, Shi Huangdi, ordered these guys to be made for him around 210 BC. He had spent most of his life kicking butt across China and saw no reason to stop simply because he was dead.

It is very difficult to describe this site, especially at this hour. But here's a stab:

- Every soldier was handmade.
- Every soldier has a unique face.
- Every soldier is life-size.
- Every soldier was originally in full color.
- There are close to 8,000 soldiers.

You begin to see the magnitude of this army.

Don't believe me about the life-size bit? Check out this picture of me behind the most famous of the Terracotta Soldiers, the kneeling archer:


And this is the part that just kills me about China: this army was buried and then lost for about for two thousand years. An army - including enlisted men, officers, and cavalry, for goodness sake - of 8,000 figures, built by at minimum several hundred, simply poofed into the mists of time outside of one of the oldest cities in one of the most historically populous nations on the planet. And we're impressed that Walter Raleigh lost a colony on a continent?

I'm not sure what my point about China is here except that it's dang big and dang old. And dang responsible - it was rediscovered in 1974 by a group of peasants digging a well, and they promptly reported it up the chain of command. No pilfering, no looting, allowing this site to be explored and reconstructed by qualified archaeologists. These men are totally on my hero list. One of them was on the site the day we went there and would autograph a copy of a book on the warriors if you bought one. (Did I buy one, you ask? Do you know me at all?)

Nowhere near everything is excavated yet, and many parts that are excavated have not been reassembled. But just a glimpse at what is there is boggling.

Under the greenhouse-style roofs, in the main pits, for example. To put this in perspective, remember that each soldier is life-size. I suppose I'd estimate the main pits at two football fields long:


In close-up, you can see the individual poses and faces. Oh, and the individual hairstyles. Yeah. There's detail for you. (Also note that in the Chinese army, hairstyle denoted rank).



Here's a group of officers meeting in the command center. I will avoid all cheap shots about the lack of heads and simply say that they are either elsewhere being reassembled or did not survive.


Xi'an is out of the way, dusty, and hot as blazes, but when you're standing there looking down at these figures, you don't give a dang about anything else. These things are 2,200 years old. They were molded and shaped while Caesar was still a glint in his great-grandmother's eye. The craftsmanship goes down to individual armor scales and hair ribbons. You walk under those tents and see those faces and you half expect them to salute. And you're itching for the archaeologists - a team of around fifty, I believe, who work entirely at night while the site is closed - to get cracking on the rest of those buried figures so you can see them all, row after row of them, a dead emperor's army that still looks ready to take on the world.

Someday, I hope to get to Egypt to see the Pyramids, but until then - honestly, I'm satisfied with this.

Xian: The City

(This is part of a series of posts on our trip to China last June. We'll be posting for the first several weeks of the school year.)

Finally--a chance to get back to our China backlog. We've still got one or two posts left after this one, so stay tuned!

Xian

Xian ("Western Peace") is one of the oldest cities in China. People have been living in the area since about 5000 BC (Wikipedia), and Xian, under the name Changan ("Perpetual Peace") served as the capital of the Zhou, Qin, Han, the Sui, and Tang dynasties. In the Middle Ages, Xian was best known as the eastern end of the Silk Road, which brought Middle Eastern cultural influences still prevalent in the city today.

Though modern-day Xian is frankly a bit of a dump, the long history and the rich culture earn its well-deserved billing as one of the top tourist stops in China. For history buffs, the Shaanxi Provincial History Museum is an asbolute must, if only for its incredible Silk Road collection, which features everything from Persian Zororastrian drinking horns to Byzantine jewelry to (yes) Scottish Tartan cloth.

The City Wall

Any tour of Xian begins with a tour of the City Wall, which was rebuilt by the Ming dynasty in the 14th century using the foundations of the old Tang dynasty palace, which dated from the first millenium A.D.


The wall has been completely restored in the last few years, and once again completely encircles the old city. The effect is oddly European: the low, choked, and touristy downtown flanked clusters of skyscrapers, where the real business of the city is done.

The City Wall itself, while certainly less a marvel than the Great Wall, is still worth a look--though you can probably opt for the tram tour.

Nana and I rented a tandem bicycle (for the ambiance) and nearly killed ourselves biking the whole 12km circumference of the old city in 98-degree heat. That's probably why she's tried to shoot me in the gut with a 15th-century cannon.
Kapow.

The Great Mosque

The Great Mosque of Xian dates from the Tang Dynasty and is one of China's biggest and most famous mosques. (Seriously--there was a scale model of it at the Islamic Arts Museum in Kuala Lumpur.)
It's not easy to find: you have to start at the Drum Tower (above)--which, along with the Bell Tower, represents the only useful reference point in downtown Xian--and wander back through the Muslim Quarter. Which, I might add, smells delicious.


Signs for the mosque are few and tiny, and at one point you have to walk down a dim alley no more than five feet wide.

But it's worth it: the Great Mosque encloses a stunning silent garden, with a unique architecture found almost nowhere else in the world. The style is Hui Chinese, which describes the culture of otherwise-Han-Chinese-like Chinese Muslims, and blends Middle Eastern planning and detail with Chinese architecture--for example, by substituting a pagoda for a minaret.


You can also find decorative Arabic throughout the grounds--and, of course, no representative art beyond the traditional floral arabesques.

Big Wild Goose Pagoda and Little Wild Goose Pagoda

Central Xian's two other big sites are the Wild Goose Pagodas, each located a few blocks south of the City Wall. Originally built to house Buddhist scriptures, today they're mostly used as pretty backdrops for wedding photos and viewing platforms for tourists vising town. (Locals have long since learned that you don't really want a good look at downtown Xian.)

The Big Wild Goose Pagoda is the larger, newer, and better-preserved of the two. The pagoda and its surrounding temple sit in the center of a huge, tacky tourist village, which was deserted in the blistering afternoon heat.

Thankfully, the pagoda was closed to climbers. I don't trust myself to have learned the lesson of that 12-km City Wall bike ride: when it's this hot, try your best not to move an inch.Even without having climbed the pagoda, I felt like these candles. Ick.

We stopped by the Small Wild Goose Pagoda in the evening, when the weather was much better for a quick climb.
I'd show you the photos from the top, but they consisted mostly of smog and office blocks. I guess the whole pagoda thing was cooler when they were still the biggest show in town.

On the Relative Merits of Xenophobia

At least we don't have to worry about drinking any Chinese milk here in the Korea. Of course, we can't get real cheese, unsweetened potato chips, or good old-fashioned American beef--but at least the Korean market's violent fear of foreign foodstuffs has gotten something right: don't import anything edible from China. (Though I can say from experience that appliances, by deceptively German-sounding Haier, are quite alright.)

Pierogies . . . in KOREA!

Nana and I were watching the Steelers squeak past the Browns last Monday morning (that's last Sunday night, for you folks back home) when the NBC broadcast, coming back from commercial break, ran a clip of some portly Clevelander frying pierogies. I nearly cried: pierogies are the food of my people--not the Poles or the Ukrainians, but the Yinzers, the overwhelmingly Eastern-European denizens of my beloved Pittsburgh. Along with kielbasa, Primanti's sandwiches, and vinegar slaw, nothing tastes quite so much like home as a pierogi. I mean, every home game, the Pittsburgh Pirates pay four poor souls to run a race in giant pierogi suits. (I wish I were kidding.) Pierogies are as Pittsburgh as black and gold.

Anyway: watching the butter glistening on that Clevelander's pierogies touched off a massive craving, which at first we dismissed like all our other TV cravings--namely, by shrugging off the fact that we can't get it in Korea and moving along with out lives. But the craving persisted, until Nana made a stunning realization: we could, in fact, buy flour in Korea, which means that--stay with me here--we could make the pierogies ourselves.

So, yes, as of last weekend, you can get pierogies in Korea, as long as you know the rigth people (i.e., Nana, who ended up doing pretty much all of the work). It was no small task--in the Burgh, pierogies are usually made assembly style for church fundraisers--but as far as the taste goes, it was a huge success. So much so, in fact, that we're hosting a pierogi party this weekend. Thus we continue to spread the faith around the world.

Food for Thought: Korean Emoticons

Koreans, like most East Asians, use very different emoticons from the ones Americans use. In the US, we're familiar with the horizontal emoticons:

:-)
:-(
:-/
:-0

With these emoticons, emotion is expressed mostly with the mouth, though there are a few exceptions, like >:-).

Korean emoticons are vertical:

^_^ happy
\_/ angry/evil
-_- sighing
^_^" nervous (that's a sweat drop)
<_> sad
=^_^= blushing

Also, as you may have noticed, the mouth doesn't really change--instead, emotion is expressed with the eyes or with other features.

Now, none of this is really news to the East Asiaphiles of the world. However, just the other day, I saw a really interesting usage that set my amateur linguist brain aflame. At the end of a very happy/thankful e-mail, an acquaintance wrote:

^__________________^

Upon further inquiry I learned that, in some circles, the length of the mouth can be used to indicate the strength of the emotion being conveyed (not, mind you, the fatness of the face conveying it). I guess the idea is that, the more characters you type, the more time/effort you spend? Any thoughts, intarwebs? (By which I probably mean Leslie.)

Paul Hussey: Once a hero, always a hero

Last year, just about anything we ever successfully accomplished in Korea was due to the stalwart (and bilingual) assistance of Paul Hussey, administrative assistant and god among men. Paul parted company with APIS last year to lead the Itaewon/Hannam Global Village Center, an initiative by the Seoul Metropolitan Government to provide help for foreigners living in Korea. (And let me tell you, foreigners living in Korea need all the help we can get).

As we prepared for the GRE this week, we had some serious linguistic roadblocks with the Fulbright center, where the GRE was staged. Somehow we got incorrect directions on our dry run and ended up hiking around downtown for an hour (if anybody ended up here with a "Korean GRE" google search, the current directions page is quite good). Justin also spent three hours on the phone last weekend trying to hammer out details like scheduling and billing - three hours being about thirty minutes of conversation and about two and a half hours being transferred between test center, Fulbright staff, and test center again in pursuit of somebody who spoke English.

Then, on the morning of the test, we double-check the GRE web site and are told we need an admission ticket. We have no admission ticket. We don't even know what an admission ticket looks like. We don't have three hours to spend on hold.

Enter Paul Hussey.

I whip out my phone and call up the Global Village Center (at 02-796-2459) and ask for Paul. I tell him our panic-ridden tale. He jots it down and says he'll call me back.

One more phone call, to exchange some reservation numbers, and we have a verdict: no ticket necessary, but bring a passport and a printout of the confirmation e-mail. We go downtown that afternoon and lo and behold, it is as Paul said it would be. We actually get there an hour and a half early (I am my mother's daughter) but since computers are available, they let us start, and we get out a few hours later, a bit shell-shocked but halfway through with our Korean GRE.

So let's hear it for the Global Village Center, and let's hear it again for hero Paul, who towers above mere mortals like the Calgary Tower over his beloved home city. Long may he flex his linguistic might!

Taking the GRE in Korea

As you may have gathered, Nana and I are in the process of applying to grad school this fall. Considering that some people, especially those applying to top programs in their fields, take an entire year off to prepare for the GRE General Test (and, if necessary, one of the Subject Tests) and apply to grad school, the fact that Nana and I are trying to do the same while teaching more than full-time certainly isn't making our lives easy these days. Add in all the extra frustrations of trying to file paper applications from a foreign country (more on that later, probably), and you've got yourself one heck of a fall semester. So far, we're surviving, though, and the practice tests we've taken give us reason to hope all will be well.

Anyway: the GRE in Korea. In China, Korea, and Taiwan, the GRE General Test is not offered in its usual, computer-based format, but in a "split-administration" format. In this format, you take a computer-based version of the Analytical Writing section, then several weeks later, a paper-based version of the Verbal and Quantitative sections. (If it helps, you can think of the GRE as the SAT for grad students.)

This format has several advantages: First and foremost, you get to take a paper-based version of the test. This is an enormous advantage because it allows you to skip questions you're unsure of and come back to them later, time permitting. In the computer-based version of the test, you can't skip questions. What's worse, on the computer-based test, any skipped or wrong question in the early portion of the test has a disproportionate effect on your score, because any time you fail to get the right answer, you're bumped down and given easier questions (which are worse fewer points). This hugely increases the penalty for leaving questions blank: whereas on the paper-based test, a non-response simply gives you no credit for the question (and an incorrect response gives you no credit plus a .25-point penalty), on the computer-based test, a non-response early in the test can lower your overall score drastically. This means that, on average, savvy test-takers should score a few points higher on the paper-based test.

The second advantage to taking the GRE in Korea is that you get to take the test on two separate days. One of the most difficult things about the GRE is keeping focus through the whole enormous test. By taking the Analytical Writing portion early (this week, for us) and the rest of the test a few weeks later, you effectively halve the length of any one testing session.

However, there are also some disadvantages: When you take the split-administration version of the GRE, your scores aren't available until mid-December at the earliest, which is after the application deadline for most liberal-arts programs at most schools. Many schools are flexible about receiving GRE scores by the deadline, as long as the rest of the application is done, Some schools, however, make a huge number of their admissions decisions in the first two weeks of December, and for other schools, late receipt of GRE scores puts your application at the back of the line. In other words, for those schools, even though you're technically allowed to submit GRE after the application deadline, most of the admission letters have already been written by the time your application is considered. I personally have cut 3-4 US schools from my list for application this year simply because my late GRE scores will push my odds of acceptance from astronomically low to astronomically lower. (On the plus side, these GRE scores will still be current for next year's applications.)

A second disadvantage of taking the test in Korea is the fact that testing centers are few and far between. In any sizeable city or university town in the US, the nearest test center is rarely more than 15-20 minutes away. From our home in Nowon, the most densely populated district of one of the most densely populated cities in the world, the nearest test center is more than one hour away, in downtown Seoul. Of course, the longer the ride to the test center, the greater the potential for diaster . . . and you only get one shot at the test in Korea, or else you have to wait six months for the next test date.

All told, though, I'm glad we're taking the test here--for me, the advantage of taking the paper-based test far outweighs the disadvantages.

I'm not happy, though, about trying to send applications to the other side of the world . . . or about having to take the infamously brutal Subject Test in English Literature. 170 minutes of minutiae, no breaks, questions on just about any moderately important book ever written in English, ever. Ick.

Another Week of Scant Posts

Sorry to trot out another one of these tiresome apologies, but it doesn't look like there will be much time for posts this week as we stagger towards our Chuseok break. (More info on the Chuseok holiday here.) Look for the last handful of China posts, an update on our now-shorn (and no longer Ewok-ish) dog, and possible a post on the hassles of taking the GRE in Korea (which we're trying to do). Until then . . . bask in the glorious return of NFL football to the airwaves.

Dog... or Ewok?

We report, you decide.

Return of the Pupdates: Lucky Lotto

As evidenced by our adventures with Annie, Justin and I are suckers for dogs. We are simply happier when we have a dog in our life. After Annie's adoption (you can see the Animal Rescue forum confirmation here, along with a picture in which I very poorly MS-Painted out Annie's terrifying redeye) we found ourselves dogless. Fortunately (well, unfortunately, I guess) we may be dogless, but Korea sure isn't.

So say hello to School of ROK's new puppy (or "kangaji," as the locals are wont to say): Lotto!

She's a tiny 8-year-old Shi-Tzu/Yorkie mix, which I guess makes her a Shorkie, because it's less rude than combining them the other way. And this picture is very old - we have to take her to get groomed this weekend because her fur grew in with her old foster parents and boy howdy, does she have some matting issues. Unfortunately, the flash is broken on Justin's camera and we'll have to wait for the weekend when we can photograph her in daylight.

Anyway, it's good to have a dog again, even if she pees on the floor, tries to sneak into bed at night, and refuses to keep walking with me while Justin goes into the bakery to pick up a baguette to go with dinner. Seriously, she wouldn't budge. You could tell she was thinking, "Look, you may be so dumb that you forgot we had another person when we started this walk, but I remember him, and we're not going anywhere until he gets back." It's kind of touching, actually, although it does put a cramp in my plans to abandon him willfully at the dry cleaner...

PS. The good thing about teaching more than one section of the same grade? Double the bang for your lesson-plan buck. The bad thing? 32 rough drafts to read in two days last weekend, about to become 32 final drafts to grade tomorrow. And did I mention that I'm somehow now assistant-teaching first grade art? Stay tuned to find out if I live until October...

Travelocity!

I got an e-mail from my mother today. It read:

"Ever notice your resemblance to the roaming gnome? Well, we did!"


To which I can only reply, as I have for many years now: Dignity. Always dignity.

[Edit: As per Mom's request, Photoshop credit goes to my sister Jackie, the patron saint of using her powers for evil]

Beijing: Lama Temple and Dongyue Temple

(This is part of a series of posts on our trip to China last June. We'll be posting for the first several weeks of the school year.)

During our time in Beijing, we visited two major temples, in addition to the Temple of Heaven (previous post): Dongyue Temple, a vaguely Taoist shrine in one of Beijing's biggest business districts, and Lama Tempe, a Tibetan Buddhist lamasery on the northeastern edge of Beijing.

Dongyue Temple
Dongyue Temple, founded during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), is the largest temple of the Zhengyi Dao school of Taoism. In the early part of the Zhengyi Dao movement, practitioners were best known for peddling talismans and prayer tablets like those shown below.


Zhengyi Dao is a very old sect, and Dongyue an old temple, which is easy to tell from a quick stroll around the grounds. The place is littered with steles (inscribed stone tablets) from the Yuan Dynasty and later.Eventually, though, like most Taoist sects, Zhengyi Dao was absorbed into the religion of the imperial court, and that's where the fun begins. The imperial religion of China is CRAZY. (See previous post on the Temple of Heaven.) Basically, the emperor and his cronies decided that they loved their overbearing earthly bureaucracy so much, they wanted to take it with them into the afterlife. So they carved heaven into a bunch of departments, each tasked with regulating some aspect of heavenly business.

And Dongyue Temple includes a statuary shrine to each and every one of them.


Some of the departments are not terribly surprising, merely the predictable marriage of a bureaucratic world view to the standard polytheistic fare. For example, the Department of Forest Deities, depicted below:
The departmental shrines, however, quickly veer off into the goofy, the gory, the terrifying, and the downright arcane.
Behold, the Retribution Department, a paean to poetic justice, featuring . . .
. . . a liar having his tongue cut out . . .
. . . a thief with his hands lopped off . . . a (surprisingly thin) glutton with his guts spilling out . . .
. . . and, of course, an unspecified ne'er-do-well being hanged.

Other gruesome departments include the Department of Suffering, represented by a sick young man and a starving bum . . .
. . . and the Department for Implementing 15 Kinds of Violent Death, which appear to include beheading and drowning (below).
Many of the statues in the temple are surprisingly expressive, despite being covered with dust. Take, for example, this wily fellow, from the Department for the Suppression of Schemes.
My overall favorite display, though, was probably the Department for the Prevention of Obscene Acts. Not only does it feature an apparent prostitute trying to entice a potential customer with a flash of skin . . .
. . . it also has a creepy, toothless old man leering at her from several feet away.
Clearly, someone put considerable time and effort into these displays, and for that I can only thank them, whoever they are. Especially considering that the departments shown here only scratch the surface of the dozens of displays on the Dongyue Temple grounds. Just a sampling of the deliciously bizarre corners of heaven not depicted here:

The Death and Life Department
The Department of Resurrection
The Insect Birth Department
The Mammal Birth Department
The Evidence Department for Issuing Warrants
The Department of Controlling Bullying and Cheating
The Door God Department
The Jaundice Department
The Department of Pity and Sympathy
The Department of Signing Documents
The Signature Department (by this point, even the Taoists were beginning to lose track)
The Department for Three-Month-Long Meditation
The Toxicant Department (which had, by far, the most donation of any shrine in the place)

Lama Temple

In addition to Dongyue Temple, we also visited Lama Temple, the main site for the practice of Tibetan Buddhism in Beijing.

The story of exactly how Tibetan Buddhism got to Beijing is an interesting one. During its early, missionary period, Tibetan Buddhism spread among the peoples along China's Western and Northern edges, while more traditionally Chinese strains of Buddhism, such as Chan ("Zen"), dominated within China's borders. One of the places Tibetan Buddhism took hold was Mongolia, so that when the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty (see above) conquered China, it brought Tibetan Buddhism with it. The same happened again several centuries later with the Manchu (Manchurian) Qing Dynasty, and it is this later invasion we can thank for Lama Temple as it stands today.


Lama Temple was built in 1694, during the early years of the Qing Dynasty, and originally served as a residence for court eunuchs. It was converted to a lamasery shortly thereafter, and granted permission to use the signature yellow roofing of the imperial house after an emperor was buried there in 1735.

The temple is a blend of Han Chinese and Tibetan architecture, providing for some stunning little nooks and crannies utterly unlike anything else found in Beijing.

Unfortunately, photographs are prohibited in the worship spaces, which house enormous statues of the Buddha and look like something straight out of a classic kung fu film. These exterior shots should give some idea of the structure.

And yes, if you couldn't tell already, our visit was blessed by some afternoon rain. Not only did it take the edge off the day's heat, it also lent some welcome atmosphere to the scene.

Stay tuned for more shenanigans!