Object description

During banquets in the last days of the Unified Silla kingdom, the king's official and noble guests would sit along the watercourse, chatting and reciting poetry, engaged in drinking games. One of the guests would start by enunciating a line of poetry, challenge one of the other guests to compose an appropriate second line while floating of cup wine in the water. Due to the variety of curves in the channel, the speed the wine cups transversed the course was influenced by the shape of the cup, rate of the water flow and the level of the wine in the cup. Should the cup of wine reach the guest before he could submit a suitable subsequent line he must consume that entire cup of wine and try again, and again, until the task was accomplished.