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[Manghchi]

Pictures are from the internet


What do you think these are used for? I titled this blog as "Mystery Jar" so as not to ruin the surprise at the end of this story.
These beautiful containers have been made of mud, ceramic, copper and stainless steel throughout history and used to be very important for our daily life in Korea.

Surprisingly, this is a pot for urine used at night, before modern bathrooms came to Korea. Our conventional bathroom was an outhouse, and usually situated next to the gate in a house.It would be the most unlikable activity for all family members to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. So this pot, �Yo Gang� was very useful equipment especially at night.

A pot was laid on the wooden floor outside of the room where the family slept. The urine from all family members was collected in this pot. It was useful but always disgusting like a toilet. Early morning, it was emptied and cleaned, and when it became dark,it was put on the corner of the floor at the same spot again.

I had chance to see the �Yo Gang� on the kitchen shelf in someone�s house in America. Once I saw it, I was wondering what made Korean
�Yo Gang� be on the shelf, but not sure if it was real �Yo Gang�. The woman of the house said, �I bought this ceramic jar in Korea when I traveled a couple of months ago, it was very cheap, isn�t it pretty?� She was using it as Jar for strawberry jam!


http://maangchi.blogspot.com/