Ssanggye Temple

Ssangye Temple is a marvelous place to visit. We had the good fortune of having Professor Shin transport us to the temple and guide us around it.

Located near Jirisan in South Gyeongsang Province, it is said to have been founded in the late 700s by monks from China who sought a place to house a portrait of another monk. They built the initial temple, but many other monks later added on to it. The plaque in the accompanying photo provides more detail about the temple; some of the words get run together and some are broken in line wrapping, but it’s got a bit of the history. One has to wonder, however, how much history has been lost, modified, or created over the 1200 years since the founding of the temple.

The temple is in a valley that is flat and narrow with sudden mountains on each side. Among the mountains, we saw the cloud-shrouded top of Cheonwang Peak (AKA Mt. Jiri?; 1,915 meters high), which is Korea’s second highest mountain and is at the southern end of the Sobaek Mountain Range. The valley is chock-a-block with agricultural land. We passed many kilometers of pear orchards—each young pear appeared to be wrapped in an individual bag—and of tea plantings along the way to the site. Of course, there were also lots of slightly flooded rice patties which attracted the requisite egrets.

To get to the temple, one must run the gamut of vendors. Speaking little Korean, I was pretty much immune to their pitches. However, I could see that they had a variety of trinkets and souvenirs; others were offering food in dining areas—one would sit on the floor at the traditional low table in small, covered, open-air rooms—or as carry-away snacks. Of course, a featured item in many of the stalls was teas, probably focused on the local green teas; the smells were good. On our way out, from a young man who appeared to be blind, Pat got some yummy cracker-like objects called (I think) hotteok that we ate later; they are a 10-cm. disk of pita-like bread with a sweet-potato flavor.

The temple area is large and has many building. There are marvelous architectural features to see. For example, these nicely restored eaves on one of the buildings showed the great detail that one can find often in these places. In the more complete set of photos on Flickr there are several shots showing details of the current restoration of some of the images that decorate the site. There are scenes of chickens feeding, people at an apparent picnic, and a tiger in a forest. There is also an image of a huge fish-dragon that was next to a large (1.5 m?) gong; it was oriented the wrong way to serve as a striker for the gong, but it looked like it might serve that function. (Someone who knows about these things is welcome to comment on this page and provide clarification.)

There was also a museum that had many objects of interest. (These musea seem obligatory; we also saw one at Hahoe and [I think] at Beomeosa.) The building was magnificent. As the accompanying photo shows, Pat and Shin were dwarfed by it—they are really hard to see in this thumbnail photo—when the attendant opened the doors to let us into it.

The temple appears to be undergoing another restoration, as indicated by the fresh looking details in the painted eaves and scenes on the buldings. Another hint was the huge timber than we came upon as we went around one of the buildings. Of course, perspective gets distorted in photos (that’s why archeologists often put a familiar object or a measuring stick in photos, no?), so the size of Pat and Shin in relation to this timber may not convey the actual size of the objects. I estimate that the post shown in the photo is 12-14 m. long.

The gardens are quite lovely. The grounds area clean and, because the area has been protected for so long, there are many mature trees. As we walked about, Pat repeatedly noted, “Oh, we have that in our garden. It’s [blah].”

This was a very fascinating site to visit. Tucked away in a draw that leads to a waterfall (we didn’t hike to it) with a water course full of rocks (check the stone work if you visit), it is tranquil and very pretty. The grounds are nicely maintained and there is more than enough to occupy the time. We had the good fortune of being there when it was a quiet day, so we had few other tourists to dodge.

Links:

• The complete Flickr set of photos for this part of the trip.
• David Mason’s San-shin Web site, which focuses on mountain spirits, has more photos and lots of information about Ssanggye.
• Life in Korea page about the temple.