News and Views on Tibet

Tibet Museum and raiders of the lost ark

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By Matt Hodges Staff Reporter

Divorcing Tibet from politics is like trying to breathe without using your lungs; with the Chinese government exiling the Dalai Lama, prohibiting access and systematically erasing the culture, it is an issue you have to deliberately neglect. But that is exactly what the Tibet Museum in Anguk-dong asks you to do. Its survival depends on it.

Opened Nov. 1 2001, the compact, two-story museum resembles a cluttered and renovated country house, spilling over with trinkets and talismans Indiana Jones could have salvaged from messianic cults (or, in this case, China).

The shadowy mysterious of President Shin Young-soo embarked on this personal odyssey 10 years ago when he visited Tibet as an Asian antiques collector. Like the comic book hero played by Harrison Ford, he seems engaged in a double life: interior designer and consultant by day; intrepid explorer by night, rifling through the Beijing antique market or scouring rural villages in Tibet.

You’re not likely to meet him. Spiky-haired PR manager slash guardian Martin Shim is the president’s public face on Earth, cracking jokes and refusing to be drawn into dialogue of politics or secret trade routes and contraband goods, clearly relishing his Chinese visa and unable to sanction contact with the Tibetan government.

His razor-sharp pinstripe suit belies a cultured, army-trained fighting machine. The accoutrements embellishing his cramped desk create a jarring juxtaposition of the collector’s instruments of war: a 19th century Tibetan hunting bow complete with silk embroidered quiver hangs on the wall above a state-of-the-art digital camera and detachable lenses.

The Tibet museum, apart from being full of secrets, is clearly a labor of love. Shin spends 100 million won a year updating the 1,500 Tibetan and other Asian artifacts, and is unlikely to recoup this from the 5,000-won entrance fee (3,000 won for students).

Unfortunately, if you don’t read Korean a lot of the history remains buried in illegible script, but Shim turns out to be extremely amicable. “Slowly, slowly, you look around, then come talk to me,” he said.

Casting a hypnotic spell over the tied cloths called “gadak” that Tibetans use to welcome visitors, snake-bone necklaces, socially stratified Buddhist gods and dollar-bill donations, pumping out of ancient speakers and winding its way back through the corridor of time is a mantra-like gospel as hummed by Tibetan monks.

“Tibetans sing this prayer, but many don’t know what it means nowadays,” says Shim, conjuring up a musical hologram of a bizarre, obscured people who wear elf-like space boots and live on the roof of the world.

The museum makes no bones about the fact that Tibetan customs cover the gamut of emotions from cruel and unusual to just plain weird.

Black and white photographs and skeletal relics sit like macabre autopsies on glass shelves. They show cadavers being broken with sticks and fed to the vultures, their skin peeled off and used to coat drums, their bones shaved to form recorders. In a climate too cold for corpses to decompose, with scant wood to build funeral pyres, the practice of “sky burial” is still employed to re-assimilate the dead into the earth. It requires a shift in perception to understand why sinners are exempt from this awkward barbarism.

The second floor of this cultural cache is an anachronistic fashion show. Gnarled garments for Sherpas made of deer leather or yak wool and intricate silk designs for monks show how, among other things, locals fend off the Himalayan climate. The contrast with Korea’s traditional costume leaves the latter sadly wanting in terms of invention or beauty.

“With the Joseon Dynasty came the spread of Confucianism, and Confucianism doesn’t like pretty costumes,” said Shim.

Our guide informs in staccato English about the problem of authenticity with Tibetan antiques (tourists consistently bring him Tibetan artifacts for valuation that turn out to be duds), how this museum is unique in Korea for harboring no fake gems, and the cut-throat business of the saving the past, if not the world. When the Korean Folk Museum borrowed 30 original masks and costumes for six months last year permission was contingent on a 100 million won insurance policy.

Shim points up to a hand crafted iron pistol with what appears to be one moving part. The chamber houses a single, two-inch long bullet, used by Korean resistance fighters against Japanese colonial rule. It belongs to the “Asian firearms” exhibition and will likely be replaced by a more specialized one, he says, probably the “Himalayan knife.”

“Yes, Tibetan culture might die out,” he says, making an obscure reference to the political battle being waged over Tibet’s landscapes while submitting an excellent argument for visiting the museum.

The Tibet Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. everyday. Take Subway line 3 to Anguk and head toward ArtSonje Center. The museum is on a side road diagonally opposite, curving round to the left.

(notengodeniro@hotmail.com)

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