Tongdo Temple

	Tongdo Temple
KoreaMosaic Home Photos Home Country Photos Korea Korea Update 2014 Busan 2013 Busan City 2013		All photos on this page © 2013 John Holstein jfholstein@yahoo.com





The pines have been welcoming visitors for hundreds of years.






Tongdosa is one of the main temples in Korea. For an impressive photo of the entire temple grounds, and explanations about the various cultural assets in the temple, check out the temple's home site (look in the upper right corner for a tiny "English" and, when you get to that page, note "Our Cultural Assets" at the top). The view of the entire temple is at the top of the home page.






One major appeal of this temple is its refusal to cater to modern tastes by keeping everything painted in gaudy chemical paints. The temple is extremely old and it shows.






Each flower pot is the sign of a donation from members of the temple's lay community, as donor-named individual roof tiles are.
















The law says that fire extinguishers have to be provided, and it specifies where. They, like the upbiquitous information signboards, are often placed strategically (it seems) to spoil a good photo op.






No, the names carved on the rock aren't defacements. The story is that the Korean War left many unemployed, among them stone carvers. Visitors to the temple wanted to help them out by paying them to carve their names on these rocks.







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