The bus drove through lush valleys that fell away into picturesque mudflats, where old people squatted on their haunches to poke around for shellfish. It was a country bus, and everyone seemed to be carrying large bundles into town. A thin, frail-looking old man, who’d smiled at me with rotten teeth, gallantly helped a lady lift her bundles down onto the street when we got to Puan where I was to change buses.
It was lunchtime, and groups of schoolkids shouted ‘Hi!’ and ‘Hello!’ at me, giggling wide-eyed when they got a response. A lady with an umbrella smiled and gestured that I was very tall, and gave me a thumbs-up. In the market, a man had a crowd around as he auctioned of enormous fish with flapping gills. I bought bags of plums and cucumbers, and a pretty embroidered cushion.
The Excellent Express bus sped through countryside where men fished along the riverbank, and beautiful white herons stood and stared into shallow water. In the middle of a weir, a grey heron perched, looking for fish. Low farmhouses with traditional curly roofs painted orange or blue stood alone against the green paddy fields, so much more beautiful than the occasional modern glass and stone building.
The fact that I was fast on my way back to Seoul hit home when I heard a young woman behind me cleaning her teeth, then saw her staring into her mirror for ages. In the country I never saw women so obsessed with how pretty they looked. They were usually busy working in fields or in the market, wearing loose headscarves, loose clothing, boots and gloves.
The road was heavy with traffic but we sped along in the bus lane, back to the big smoke.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
THE BEER THAT MADE KOREA FAMOUS
Shamanism is common to many ancient cultures (the word ‘shaman’ originated in Siberia). I’d been curious ever since seeing a sign on the slopes of Inwangsan in Seoul forbidding ‘camping, fires and Shamanism’. In Korea, the shaman or mudang of ers a sacrifice to the spirits of rocks and trees and mountains and, through singing and dancing in a kind of trance, begs the spirits to intercede in the affairs of humans – from harvests and fishing to marriage and examinations. Frowned on by some in modern Korea, it is an ineradicable part of the cultural heritage, even designated an important ‘Intangible Treasure’.
The shaman is often a woman, who communes with the spirits through dance. This popular village practice was persecuted by the Confucians of the Choson Dynasty, and with its lack of written doctrine was often frowned upon as the superstition of uneducated women. And yet it persisted, with much crossover between Buddhism and shamanism, though Buddhism is seen by many Koreans as intellectually superior.
Poor Gav: I almost didn’t want to tell him about my exhilarating adventures. And he, who couldn’t get away, almost didn’t want to know. In the space of a few days, I’d met monks, eaten astonishing food, hiked in mountains and swum in the Yellow Sea. And he’d played ‘September’ and ‘Mustang Sally’ and ‘Get Down On It’ several more times. At least he’d been getting to know some other musicians, and taken his Aussie friends to Nagwon. It was awkward between us at first – I worried we might be drifting apart – but not for long. I gave him a wooden Buddhist necklace I’d bought for him, and he was very pleased with it.
It was dark all day that first day back, with the clouds low over Namsan, and now the rain was really lashing down, the wind rattling the windows. A monsoonal rainstorm, I supposed.
Just as we were falling asleep the night before, on my first night back in Seoul after those peaceful days in Cheollabuk Province, we heard a woman somewhere nearby scream, and scream again, over and over, piercing the night in a horrible way, then ranting hysterically, angrily. Back to the madness of Seoul, the pollution, the spitting, the roaring traffic. The rubbish piled on street corners awaiting pickup left a lingering putrid smell in the air – until the thunder broke and it rained hard for twelve hours, like today. June, July and August are the rainy season, and now by mid July it was so humid that even when it wasn’t raining, your clothes were damp as soon as you went outside. The noise of the air conditioners never stopped. There was a strange bug that had made its home on the screen window of our bedroom. We called it the wind-up bug, because we were reading Haruki Marukami’s book The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and because this bug made a noise exactly like a wind-up toy with a crazed laugh. It went: zzww, zzzwwiw, ZZWWIW, ZZZZWIIWW, ZZZZZZZWWIWW – heh heh heh. Zww, zzww, zzzwwiw, ZZZWWIW, ZZZZZWWIWWW – heh heh heh.
And then there was the pleasure of being woken up on a Saturday morning from a deep sleep when the vendors drove their trucks into the neighbourhood and competed in decibels for local business. They shouted through booming bullhorns with the intensity of an air-raid warning to advertise their excellent service, ending with a list of their wares. KIM! KIMMM! Yes, the most popular surname in Korea was also the word for dried seaweed.
There was a frail old man who lived in the apartment next to ours. Every day we saw him squatting on his heels outside the front door, having a cigarette, and the rest of the time we heard his hacking cough, heard him clearing his throat, summoning phlegm from its very depths until it all erupted in one evil-sounding spit. He barely acknowledged us usually when we passed him at the doorway. But the next day, a lovely thing happened. Deep Throat, as I referred to him, asked in English,
‘How are you?’
‘Fine, thanks,’ we replied, too surprised to know what to say.
‘Have a nice day!’ he said with an American drawl. ‘Take it easy!’
The people in the tiny local shops were also getting friendlier. The lady at the video shop refused to let me pay extra for returning the video a day late. Now that the shop owners realised we were here for a while, they said hello when I came in to pick up groceries – grape juice and noodle packets and beer, mostly. We’d been getting sick of the taste of the Korean beers, OB and Hite and Cass, which all had a slightly soapy, gassy taste. We’d resorted to buying German Pilsner at 4,000 won a large bottle instead. But we were absolutely delighted to find a T-shirt on a stall in Itaewon that read: ‘OB, the Beer that made Korea Famous.’ Where? Another tourist magazine claimed soju ‘along with whisky and vodka is worldwide famous as a high proof liquor’. Walk into any bar in the world and they’ll have soju...
Alcohol was first introduced to Korea from China. Soju was often distilled in Buddhist monasteries, which was how they made some of their wealth. Other alcoholic drinks were infused with herbs believed to be medicinal. But these days Scotch whisky was also hugely popular, in spite of being terribly expensive compared to soju. In the bars like J.J. Mahoney’s or the Hard Rock Cafe, there were walls full of lockers where people kept their bottle of whisky until the next visit.
In a shop in Itaewon I found a CD of Korean traditional drumming by a group called SamulNori that livened up my evenings at home. Their rhythms and music came from the folk tradition of nongak, from village farmers’ bands and travelling troupes, and songs performed at shamanistic ceremonies, with a contemporary interpretation. Shamanistic music in Korea is both religion and entertainment. One of SamulNori’s songs is a type of narrative prayer that would have been sung by shamans to promote health and prosperity or ensure spiritual support for a building project. According to an ethnomusicologist quoted on the liner notes, ‘Silence gives way to a mesmeric tolling of the gong, slow thuds on a drum accelerate to shrill-pitched rapid strikes. Climaxes are built and subside peacefully in waves.’ That’s exactly how it sounded. When it began, it was so faint you could barely hear it, as if the band was approaching up a country lane; shouts accompanied the different rhythms that combined gradually into a loud cacophony, as I imagined the drummers reaching the village. No wonder people were impressed when I told them my boyfriend was a drummer at the Hyatt. Drumming had quite a tradition here.
Contemporary Koreans were attracted to the shamanistic notion of harmony. The shaman ritual strove for harmony between human and nature, social harmony between humans, family harmony between the living and the dead and between parents and children, and individual
harmony. Harmony was a central concept in Korean life. The Korean flag centred on a Taoist yin-yang symbol of the harmony of opposites.
And here I was, trying to make some sort of harmony out of the two sides of my life in Korea, city life and the village life, westernised life and Buddhist life.
I was getting to enjoy my lone night-walks around Seoul, especially when the rain had cleared the air. Since nobody talked to me in Seoul anyway, I wore a Walkman and listened to music. From the road around Namsan, on a clear night you could see the millions of lights of the sprawling city, TV billboards, the war memorial lit up, the neon crosses of Christian churches. My last attempt to sample nightlife in Seoul had taken me to Shinchon, a university district, where dark sidestreets bristled with brilliant flashing vertical signs Blade-runner-style, but yielded only amusement arcades with dance machines and the usual quiet coffee shops. And then I couldn’t find a taxi willing to take me home. Usually, I just went on a long, long walk, watching people, and then I went to Click to research and write.
Itaewon was still good for a night out, though, when Gav finished work or on his night off. We tended to spend time with the guys from Adelaide, who were good fun but really young, in their early twenties. Same as Gav, but he seemed older. I felt so out of place when they were all talking about music, bands I’d never heard of, guitar chords. In insecure moments I wondered if Gav would rather spend time having an easy laugh with them than struggling to get along with me. But we had a good time when we went to the hole-in-the-wall dance bar Stompers. Walking up Hooker Hill we passed US army tough-guys, bare-chested in gangs with their shirts tied around their waists and their crew cuts, sweaty and tense as they stood around clutching beer bottles outside, sick of being in Korea and itching for a fight. But inside Stompers (which, like Hollywood, was off-limits to soldiers), all was relaxed and easy-going, and many a night went by with mad dancing and drinking and laughing, and trying to avoid being given tequila shots by the owner.
One night the two of us danced together in that unreserved way a few drinks will bring on, and Gav decided to try a new move that showed off his drummer’s biceps, suddenly grabbing me by the waist and scooping me up in the air! He tilted me back and I shrieked, while Gav realised I wasn’t built like a little ballerina and he wasn’t sure he could hang on... ‘Put me down!’ I pleaded, but Gav was terrified he would drop me on the concrete floor and so, to avoid that, he dropped to his knees, severely bruising them in the process. Ah, Gav. The zealous romantic, with bruised knees.
The Australians had been in Seoul longer than Gav’s band and were nearing the end of their contract, preparing to return to Adelaide. So on Friday night, instead of going clubbing, we went shopping with Adam and Andy, the bass player and guitarist, at Tongdaemun Market. This was the other major market at the Great East Gate of the old city wall, open all night until five in the morning. We’d been by day and found the usual combination of everything from plumbing supplies to yellow melons, as well as more unusual wares such as fried silkworm pupae sold from a big barrel for snack food and a salesman expounding the merits of the large snake around his shoulders, surrounded by a group of mesmerised men. Koreans eat snake for its libido-enhancing qualities, along with eel, deer antlers, seal’s penis, and rather less disgustingly, ginseng.
When we visited Tongdaemun after Good Vibes knocked off at 2 a.m., we found Adam and Andy already in a soju tent, eating steamed mussels with potato pancakes. I tasted the mussels and they were among the best I’d ever eaten. Adam, tall and skinny with very long hair and a wide smile, was busy charming the cook, who seemed to have adopted him. Adam was in love with all Korean women. ‘They call it yellow fever, man,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘and I’ve got it.’ He said it in such an affectionate way that you had to laugh, in spite of the unfortunate terminology. He kept us entertained with inside stories of working in the wine industry in Australia, such as when someone lost a whole vat of wine down the drain, and they had to pump it back out again and disinfect it, before bottling it.
We bought cans of OB and wandered around the stalls. At night most of the stalls were in wholesale warehouses eight storeys high, neon palaces filled with bargain clothes. As it was late and quiet, some owners were asleep behind their counters and we had to wake them if we wanted to find out prices or try something on. It made the bargaining a bit harder when you’d woken the poor owner up. But it was still addictive wandering about in the middle of the night and haggling. Adam managed to get prices down further by complaining with good humour that he was only a poor hoju, an Australian with Australian dollars, and pretended to be a kangaroo. He made people laugh. He and Andy ended up with loads of hip T-shirts and shoes, and shook their heads morosely thinking of what little entertainment Adelaide would offer at this hour. When we emerged finally outdoors again, bags of clothes were piled up on the ground ready to be shipped off trucks, and people were sitting down to breakfast at the food stalls.
Good Vibes were to be measured for new stage costumes that would take a sizeable chunk out of the next pay cheque. There was talk of leather waistcoats and tasselled trousers.
Gav was growing increasingly disenchanted with his band. At a recent rehearsal, Leroy the lead singer kept forgetting the words to ‘La Vida Loca’. In an hour of practice, he was only able to get four lines right. Meanwhile Dean was still trying to line up a gig for when this one ended, feeling rather stressed about how difficult it had been, and he thought new costumes would put them in a better position.
To make matters worse, the tailor was outside Seoul at another US army base, and so our Sunday would be spent on a ‘band day out’. Everyone wanted to spend the day sitting in a bar drinking, surrounded by US soldiers. But since we’d come all this way from Itaewon, Gav and I wanted to see somewhere different. After he’d been measured by the tailor and moaned at by the others, we fled by taxi and train to nearby Suwon.
Hwasong Fortress in Suwon was built between 1794 and 1796 by King Chongno for his father’s tomb. Chongno wanted to move the capital here; he set up a provincial government office and started to build a Royal Country Palace. His attempt to move the capital away from Seoul was unsuccessful, however, and the structure deteriorated for two centuries, burned down and collapsed in places, but was rebuilt in the late seventies and is now a source of great pride. In a wooden pavilion stands an astonishing bell, three and a half metres high, weighing over twelve tons, rung every hour as a symbol of the Confucian values of eternal prosperity and filial piety, which Chongno showed in caring for his father’s grave.
The city was built around Hwasong Fortress, now one of Korea’s Unesco Cultural Heritage sites. Grey brick walls followed the ridge of the hill, interrupted every now and then by a sentry tower with scary demon faces. A green belt surrounded the walls, and since the city life went on either side of them, every now and then we found one of the sentry towers being used for a game of chess, or as a quiet place to read the newspaper.
We walked all the way around the walls, then, back where we started at the area called Paltanmun, we discovered narrow backstreets full of small bustling restaurants and bars and buzzing patios. We found a place called Live Bar, and happily ensconced ourselves to drink reasonably priced European beer while listening to Radiohead and Oasis. The young people running the place were welcoming – one of them played a flute, another showed us her tiny kitten and let it play on our table. By the time we left in search of dinner, they had taken our photo to put on the wall.
The unpretentious restaurant we found was equally friendly. When we asked the young waiters what food was on offer, they seemed to be saying ochinga. I thought I knew what it meant but to check I borrowed the waiter’s pen and drew a picture of a squid. No, no, he said, and took the pen and drew a little conical hat on my squid. I was puzzled, so he drew two creatures with tentacles, one with a round head and one with a triangular head, and gave them different names. Aha! Octopus had round heads, squid had triangular heads. As we were their last custome
rs for the night, the young waiters joined us over dinner and insisted we seal our friendship with shots of soju.
This national drink, sometimes called Korean whisky, was firewater that could be picked up for a mere 2,000 won a bottle practically anywhere. It had all the refined qualities of paint stripper, and a sickly smell that’s hard to forget. All the posters advertising it showed pretty, wholesome young girls caressing the green bottles in lush mountain settings, as if they washed their long, clean hair with the stuff, or as if it were good for the complexion. But it actually resulted in horrible drunkenness and excruciating hangovers. Unfortunately, it was hard to avoid sometimes. Having a shot of soju together was part of the culture.
Before we staggered out, the young waiters wrote down their contact information in my notebook, carefully including name, email, ‘HP’ number, age and height. They were as debilitated by the soju as we are.
Back in Seoul, I typed up a story on the fortress at Suwon for the Korea Herald Weekender section and submitted it along with another couple of ideas I’d been tinkering with. One night, checking my email at Click, I jumped with joy to see a message from a newspaper back home accepting my piece on the Sudoksa monastery. I wondered what the Korea Herald would make of my latest one.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
GIRLS’ NIGHT OUT IN KAMPO
In the seventh century, the Shilla king enlisted the help of the Tang Dynasty in China to overcome the rival Paekche and Koguryo kingdoms. Then he drove out the Chinese, and the Shilla capital, Kyungju, became the capital of the newly unified peninsula. Artistry and Buddhism flourished, and the Shilla king Munmu built a pleasure garden and summer palace to celebrate the unification. Rare birds and animals wandered through a park whose ponds and hills were landscaped following the principles of Shinson or Taoist philosophy. Kyungju was filled with temples and pagodas, and the most famous temple in Korea, Pulguksa, was built outside the city. ‘Kyungju, with almost a million people, was one of the world’s largest and richest cities at that time, known and admired as far away as Arabia and India,’ says Colin Mason in A Short History of Asia.
Meeting Mr Kim Page 12
