Describe an old object your family has kept

The object I'm going to describe is a wooden chest, in Korean we call it a bandaji. It is quite big, around one metre long, and it has brass decorations on the front and a big lock in the middle. Now it is in the corner of my parents' living room in Seoul.

It was belonged to my great-grandmother. She got it when she married, because in that time a bride's family usually give her a chest like this to keep her clothes and blankets. She was from a small village near Andong.

It has been in our family for about ninety years, so four generations has used it. When my grandmother moved to Seoul in the 1970s, she brought it with her on a truck, and later my mother got it after grandmother passed away. There are some scratches on the side, my grandmother said they happened during the war when the family hide it in a field.

I think we keep it because it is a connection with our ancestors. It is not very valuable for money, but for us it is priceless. When I was small I liked to open it and smell the old wood. My mother says one day it will be mine, and I will look after it very carefully.

I'd like to talk about a wooden storage chest called a bandaji, which sits in the corner of my parents' living room in Seoul. It's made of dark walnut, roughly a metre wide, with a heavy brass lock plate on the front and little butterfly-shaped hinges that have gone slightly green with age.

Originally it belonged to my great-grandmother. Back then, when a girl got married, her family would often give her a chest like this to hold her quilts and clothes, so it was part of her dowry when she married into a farming family near Andong.

That means it's been in the family for around ninety years now. It's been passed down from mother to daughter, so my grandmother inherited it, and when she moved to Seoul in the seventies she refused to leave it behind, even though there was barely room for it in her tiny flat. There are a few deep gouges along one side, and according to her, they date from the war, when the family dragged the chest out to a relative's barn to hide it.

As for why we've kept it, it certainly isn't the money. An antique dealer once offered to my mother a fairly modest sum, and she was almost insulted. I think it's because the chest is the only thing in our home that has been through everything our family has been through. Every time I open the lid and catch that smell of old wood, I feel strangely connected to women I never met.

The object that comes to mind is a bandaji, a traditional Korean blanket chest that my mother keeps in pride of place in our living room in Seoul. It's a squat, solid thing made of walnut that's darkened almost to black, and the front is studded with brass fittings, including a lock plate shaped like a bat, which apparently was meant to bring good fortune.

It first belonged to my great-grandmother, who was given it as part of her dowry when she married into a family of rice farmers outside Andong. In those days a bride would arrive with a chest like this holding everything she owned: quilts, a few silk garments, her sewing kit.

So it's been with us for roughly ninety years, handed down through four generations of women. My grandmother was adamant about bringing it with her when the family moved to the capital in the seventies, even though it took up half her bedroom. The scars on its side have a story too: during the war it was hidden under straw in a neighbour's barn, and it was dragged out in such a hurry that one corner was badly split. Nobody has ever had it repaired, and I think that's deliberate.

What makes us hold on to it is that it has outlasted every house we've lived in. It isn't worth a great deal on the market, but it carries the memory of people I only know from stories. Whenever I lift the lid and that faint smell of camphor and old wood comes out, it feels a bit like being introduced to them.