That's right, it's the new year. According to the lunar calendar, anyway. Unlike the Chinese New Year, which is the same thing but in China, the Korean lunar new year is called "Seollal" and revolves more around the family than the animal of the year. I'm heading into Seoul tomorrow, so hopefully I'll bea ble to get some photos of festivities. I have a wonderful three-day weekend, which I have spent sleeping, cleaning, cooking, and sorting through photos from Fiji. Enjoy!
FIJI PART TWO
It's been over a month since I returned from Fiji, but I'm still going through the photos. This is not because I have too many photos, but simply because I am lazy. Almost every photo requires color correction to get rid of the overwhelming blueness. Fortunately, I think the results were worth the wait! Up first, a very cool creature called the Striped Surgeonfish (Acanthurus lineatus). It mainly lives alone or in small groups, and feeds on plankton and algae. It also goes by several other names, including Clown Surgeon, Pajama Clown, and Clown Tang. (Heads up: tangs, surgeonfishes, and unicornfishes are all in the same family, Acanthuridae. Say it. Fish names are fun!)
I dunno, it doesn't really look much like a surgeon to me.
Closer-up! Hard to believe there's fish this brightly colored!
Looking down from the top. It's not a very wide fish; most fish of the Acanthuridae family are very thin.
Here's another, less exciting Acanthuridae called the brushtail tang. It's not a very pretty one.
The grey fish in the back is the tang. The two in the front are called lemon butterflyfish.
In the same family is the brightly-colored Sailfin Tang, shown below. This was one of the hardest pictures to color-correct because no matter what I do, it looks artificially colored. It's just so bright!
The color-corrected version...
...and the original, unaltered photo.
Zebrasoma desjardinii, what a cool scientific name!
While the stripes are the most prominent feature, there are also some spots if you look closely.
And how cool is that eye, with the black stripe running right through it?
Enough of the surgeonfish, time to move on to another very cool animal: the wrasse!
Front and center! Ignore the reef-destroying whale-creature in the background.
This gorgeous fish is called the Sixbar Wrasse, Thalassoma hardwicke. They have six black bars on their backs, and their faces... well, see for yourself.
Check out that coloring. It looks like somebody took a rainbow fish and grabbed it with black ink on their hands.
Close-up time. Simply incredible.
Each sixbar wrasse has five streaks pointing away from its eye. Most of the streaks are pink
but the front-facing and rear-facing streaks tend to have an orange tinge to them.
This is one of my favorite fish. It looks fake!
Gorgeous.
Juvenile sixbar wrasses are bluer, and the black bars get darker as they mature. This little guy is getting there!
Awww, look at the baby!
And one more mature sixbar to leave you with.
Another cool wrasse is the threespot wrasse, Halichoeres trimaculatus. This is a less-colorful female.
Subtle coloring, but mostly white.
The male of the species has stronger coloration.
Not a great photo, but salvageable.
Close-up!
This cutie is the striped puffer, Arothron manilensis. It's also known as the narrow-lined toadfish, which is a much less attractive name. Puffers are popular in the aquarium trade because they non-aggressive, easy to not kill, and have a surprising amount of personality for a fish. They have sharp teeth that grow throughout their lives, and their diet consists mainly of hard-shelled foods that keep their chompers in check. They're fun for divers and snorkelers because they don't move very quickly!
Just chillin' and eatin'.
How these guys swim with those tiny fins is a mystery to me.
This was an unusually pale specimen. It's not bad coloring, he's just very white!
Same guy. Check out those bright yellow eyes!
That tail is unusually large for a puffer.
This is a different specimen, maybe even paler than the first one, but with a more normally-sized tail. Cute though!
Here's a small puffer, gently gliding through the sand. They're not very scared of people.
Here's a few butterfly fish photos:
Chaetodon ephippium, the saddleback butterfly fish.
They mate for life, and are never far from their partner! Cute!
Same couple.
Here's (what I'm 90% sure are) a few juvenile saddleback butterfly fish:
D'awww, so cute!
So petite. I love 'em.
A moorish idol, like that one in Finding Nemo:
Zanclus cornutus, it's the only species in the Zanclidae family. All alone. :(
Last on the list for today is the Melanurus Wrasse, Halichoeres melanurus. This is a seriously cool little rainbow fish. Sadly, they're a bit hard to capture and I've only got one photo. (Although a few more might turn up as I continue to go through the pictures--fingers crossed!) It's very similar in appearance to the Ornate Wrasse; the major and most easily recognizable difference between the two is the black tip of the tailfin on the Melanurus Wrasse, whereas the Ornate Wrasse's whole tailfin is colored.
So pretty!
A nice close-up. See the black tip of the tailfin?
Stay tuned for more crazy ocean creatures in the near future as I continue to wade through the sea (har har) of photos!
Just as you leave the Gyeongbokgung subway station, on your merry way out exit 5 to the expansive Gyeongbokgung Palace--remember that?--you will pass a museum. It doesn't look very big, and there's more signage for the cafe/shop than for the museum itself. And admission is free, so obviously it sucks, right? Wrong. The National Palace Museum is actually a pretty cool place.
What's in the Palace Museum? It's not just portraits and hair ornaments. They've also got an impressive collection of artwork, military relics, and even musical instruments. But let's start with the hair stuff. If you didn't know it, the Korean female royalty was fairly obsessed with fake hairpieces. Here's a headpiece that has the fake hair conveniently attached:
It's pretty big, I have no idea how it stays on the head.
And here's a real court lady wearing it:
Can't see it very well?
No problem. Take a good hard look.
It was popular to braid the hair and tie it off with a ribbon at the end. How convenient, this fake hairpiece has already done it for you! (No idea what's on the right. More hair ribbon, I imagine.)
Unlike weaves in other countries, this hair is indistinguishable from real Korean hair.
In addition to fake hair, Korean royalty had an incredible number of hairpins. How they held up their head is a mystery to me. Very strong necks, those people.
And this is just for the PRINCE. Add the fake hair and even more pins and you've got a princess's head decor.
Decorations for women weren't limited to the head! Women also wore ornamental tassels, called 'norigae' (노리개) that hung off their dresses or jackets. They were sometimes dipped in perfume, according to the very limited English on the plaque.
Ornate, that's for sure!
This particular set of three is called 'samjak norigae,' where 'sam' means three and 'jak' (maybe?) means small. These three are a set to be worn together, and were worn by a prince's mistress, apparently. I get the blue (coral) and red (butterfly) ones, but what's hanging off the white one? It looks like a liver.
I honestly think it's a liver. Seriously.
You may remember that I actually wore one of these when I wore my hanbok-style dress to my school's anniversary party:
It's a bit blurry, but you can see the tassel on my dress in this photo.
There were a few beautiful pieces of traditional royal clothing that were ornately embroidered, but unfortunately the lighting was too poor to get photos of them. The museum had very dim lighting, which I assume is to preserve the goods.
Very pretty, looks like it might be gold thread!
Some of the clothing I couldn't get good photos of had large round embroideries on the back. This is a stamp that was used to help make those embroideries. It's about 10 inches tall, so it's pretty large.
I want this to be my personal stamp.
They had a few pieces of furniture as well. Here's a drawer-and-cabinet set.
This all appears to be wood with mother of pearl inlay.
Not gonna find this at Ikea.
Because of the poor lighting, I had to change the exposure settings on my camera. This sometimes created this cool white-background effect.
I want this.
I've been thinking about thrones, and I must say, Europe had Asia beat when it comes to comfortable seats.
I sure hope they put a cushion on this fold-out chair throne.
Yikes. Not a nice color OR comfy.
Let's compare this throne...
To compare, here's a throne from the mid-1800's in the Netherlands. Much comfier, no?
...to this throne from the Netherlands.
Here's some old-timey postcards of Gyeongbokgung palace:
These are from the 1920's to 1940's.
It looks the same, just more touristy now.
Here's some decorative stuff. The writing is in Chinese characters, but when Koreans use them they're called 'hanja.' The Japanese do the same thing and call them 'kanji.' It's all Chinese to me.
I wish I knew what these said! Even with my very rudimentary knowledge of
Chinese characters, I can only make out two. Pretty writing is hard to read.
You must admit, Chinese characters are beautiful.
Here's some roof decorations. They had a bunch of them, but most were so worn that you couldn't tell what they were. Here's a few that were still recognizable:
Dragon!
Also a dragon!
Let's take a quick revisit back to Gyeongbokgung palace, and look at those roof decorations again. I think I know what most of them are now. They're a mixture of dragons, two-headed dragons, pigs, pangolins, horses, and monkey kings.
Dragon head on the left, monkey king or horse (?) on the right.
Okay, apparently one is a pig, one is a two-headed dragon, one is a monkey king, and one is a pangolin.
The pangolin is the middle-right one with the scales, but the other three... your guess is as good as mine.
If you are wondering what a pangolin is, you're not alone. I'd never heard of it either. It's a real animal, and it's cute! It's basically a cross between an anteater and an armadillo. They live in Africa and Asia. It's a mammal, and gives birth to one baby at a time. Unlike most mammals, their tongue is between 10-27 inches long (that is not a typo) and is attached near the pelvic cavity.
Here's the Chinese one, which the Chinese people find very tasty. They eat by keeping it alive until a customer orders it, then hammering it into unconsciousness, then cutting its throat to drain the blood, then making a variety of dishes from the meat. Customers apparently get to take home the blood. Seriously, China, why do you have to eat all the cute things into endangered-species status?
How could you take a hammer to this cutie's head?! I don't understand you, China, and I fear I never will. Photo from Wikipedia.
The most common subspecies, the tree pangolin, apparently climbs trees like this:
Okay, okay, enough of the pangolins. Back to Korean museum stuff. Here's some protective wards against fires!
The big character says 'water' and I'm not sure what the tiny ones say.
Another fire protection ward, a dragon!
A tapestry with what appear to be monster-turtles:
Uh, are those... teeth?
Yes. Yes they are. Sharp teeth, too.
On the Gyeongbokgung palace grounds there's a ceremonial chimney-thing with some crafty carvings on the sides. Somebody took prints and put them here in the museum.
Clockwise: deer, flying horse, birds, and an elephant.
There were also some writing samples from kings.
This probably says something important, but what's really nice here is the calligraphy.
Here's a book of some king's aphorisms. I should write a book of aphorisms.
"Patience is its own reward," for example.
Some bamboo sticks with Confucian sayings on them:
Once I write my book of aphorisms, I'll write those aphorisms on wood sticks and hand them out to unsuspecting strangers.
If the king summoned you in ancient Korea, you got one of these cool things. Old Korean script looks amazing, doesn't it? So cool.
Love love love old Hangul script.
Medallians with old Hangul characters.
Personal stamps are big in Korea (and also Japan, I hear). Instead of signing documents, Koreans carry a personalized stamp. The stamps of old kings were much bigger and cooler.
This is about 2 square inches.
Check out this stamp. Wow.
Here's an illustration of a Confucian school ceremony:
I'm not a big fan of Confucianism because it's all very sexist.
Some military stuff:
1960's photo of the Korean king and his top military folks.
Medals! They're all slightly different, I believe those bars represent the elements, like on the Korean flag.
The signage was a bit confusing but I think this is a gun from the 1600's. (Or is it a cannon?)
A shield! Cool.
Metal clubs with silver inlay.
There were some banners as well, all beautifully painted.
Flying tigers.
Not sure if this is three birds or a three-headed/three-legged bird.
Sure is pretty though!
Here's a royal hat, looks like it'd hit you in the face whenever you moved.
Pretty, I guess?
A passport from 1904:
I guess it's for a French guy?
Printing plates (for currency) from the 1890's:
Interestingly, this is still how we make money. Hasn't changed toooo much in the last 120 years.
A tapestry map. A mapestry?
Mapestry. I love it.
Ornate alcohol jar for the king:
What's up with the elephants?
Uh, here's where it gets weird again. These are placenta jars. The placentas of high-born folks, especially the kids and grandkids of kings, were placed in jars and buried in auspicious places. This ensured a good, prosperous life for the kid. As it turns out, this is not the weirdest placenta custom around... if you're curious you can read all about it here.
Placenta jars. Korea, I hope you never change.
They also had a collection of palanquins that I suspect are replicas.
Helpful 'Anatomy of a Palanquin' sign.
This looks too well-preserved to be real.
Same with this one. I call replica.
Fans and such, held and waved by the people lucky enough to not be carrying the palanquin.
I'm not sure if this counts as a palanquin, but it's still my favorite. It's like a unicycle!
If I were a queen, this is what I'd ride.
I don't think this is a palanquin. I don't know what it is, honestly.
There's a lot of animals integrated into this piece. Maybe it's a drum?
Aaaand last but not least, a collection of musical instruments from the palace.
"Percussion instrument," according to the plaque.
Also a "percussion instrument." Don't ask me, I don't know how it works.
Bells?
I think it's a bell of some kind? Check out all the animal art on top,
don't pay attention to the lame ducks.
Dragons on top, and I'm gonna guess dogs on the bottom?
On second thought, maybe a pig.
And that's just about everything worth looking at in the National Palace Museum of Korea. It was a lovely little museum, just the right size--big enough to be worth my time, but not so big that I felt overwhelmed. I hope you at least enjoyed looking at the pictures, even if you didn't read all my sassy comments.
In the works: part 2 of my Korean alcohol review, more Fiji photos, and since spring is coming you can probably expect some more palace pictures (there are 5 in Seoul) in the near future.
