WEBZINE ACC

Gold has stirred the hearts of people across the ages, but in one specific period, something supplanted gold from its place as the most valuable among the valuables: Cloves and nutmeg during the Age of Discovery.

In the 14th century, the Silk Road between Europe and Asia was blocked, causing spice prices to skyrocket. European powers raced to open up sea routes. The Portuguese monopolized pepper in Africa and the Indian subcontinent, while the Spanish discovered the Americas instead of India through Columbus. In the 17th century, the Netherlands, a latecomer to the competition, founded the East India Company and monopolized the maritime trade, seizing the hegemony over the spice trade. This is the history of the world as recorded by the victors.

Let us stop here and tell this story from a different perspective neither from the perspective of the dominator nor the dominated. This is, instead, the 17th Century Joseon. A Dutch sailor was traveling back to the Netherlands with a cargo hold full of cloves and nutmeg when the ship ran into a storm. He washed ashore in a foreign land and was dragged off to the capital, a blue-eyed man in front of the king. He took a handful of spices out of his pocket and presented it to the king. What would you have done if you were the king of Joseon in that situation?

The first thing you would have noticed was the fragrance that you have never experienced before. But the thing that really would have captured your heart was the “Silk Road on the Sea,” a map of the unknown that this foreigner had drawn with his fingers. The place where India met China, the place open to the world outside, the place where fragrance dearer than gold flows, the port where the stories shine every night. “How can one reach that place?” You ask, and the blue-eyed sailor responds, “One must follow the monsoon.”

The monsoon is a seasonal wind driven by the temperature difference between the Tibetan Plateau and the ocean winds from the Indian Ocean. What if you could follow the monsoon of the 17th Century from the 21st Century Korea?

The first permanent exhibition of the newly reorganized National Asian Culture Center, <A World Unveiled by Monsoon: Port Cities of Southeast Asia>, is filled with the stories and culture that have blossomed along the sea routes driven by the seasonal winds. It is the place where the 400 pieces of artifacts from the “Nusantara Collection” come to see the light of the day, graciously acquired by the National Asian Culture Center in November 2017 from the Delft Heritage of the Netherlands through an agreement. It invites you to the glittering world of Southeast Asian port cities, called “Suvarnabhumi,” or the “land of gold” by the Indians since the old days.

After one passes through the Prologue section, one finds oneself in a cargo hold of a merchant vessel full of treasure in Part I, “Set sail for the monsoon winds.” These treasures, of course, refer to cloves and nutmeg, coveted more than gold. Because these voyages were often dangerous, there were items to which ritualistic powers for safety were prescribed.

In Part II, “Cultural heritage created by port cities,” one steps onto the land. What gods do the people of the “land of gold” worship? Paintings depicting the stories of gods feature the clown “panakawan” of Indonesia. Shadow puppets tell stories at night, accompanied by gamelan music. Women with rattan baskets pass by during daytime, while men, wearing wavy daggers called “kris,” smoke and exchange jokes.

Part III, “Peranakan, the wind of change,” is an imagination of a sailor being invited to the house of a newlywed friend. The friend’s family members describe themselves as “Peranakan,” born between a merchant father and a local mother. His room is decorated with elegant dressers and Chinese-style game tables, reflecting his Strait Chinese heritage. The table has a suite of cards called “Cherki.” The friend smiles and asks:

As an explorer in search of spices in the 17th Century, as the king of Joseon facing the Dutch sailor, and as a person living in the 21st Century, what answers will you give to the friend? Above all, I hope that you will return with a fistful of wisdom from that bygone period, for the unchanging values are there to be found.