西洋오랑캐

Well the Lunar New Year (known in Korean as 설날) has come and gone, so let’s get the formalities out of the way. 건강하시고 새해 福 많이 받으세요. Now give me some money and we’ll be good to go.

This is the first time since my arrival in Korea more than two years ago that I’ve actually gotten to see first hand how a traditional Korean holiday is celebrated. Prior to this weekend each and every Korean holiday was celebrated at my house pretty much the same way: vast oceans of alcohol, horrible films on television, and on occassion a trip to some tourist attract that happens to be open (경복궁, I’m looking in your general direction). Since I got hitched not to long ago, I now have a Korean family that I am attached to. So this year New Year’s was spent with a lot less alcohol and Jean Claude VanDamme, and a lot more traditional goings on.

설날 is kind of akin to Christmas in the west. Not such much in that there are a lot of gifts being exchanged, but because it is a big holiday in which families all get together. Additionally, like Christmas, 설날 preparations begin well before the day of the big event. To say a lot of food is prepared for 설날 is something of an understatement! The ammount of food I bore witness to (and consumed) over the past three days was insane.

So earlier in the week, the cooking began at the in-laws’ house. There were vegetables to be peeled, fruit to be washed, rice to be turned into 떡, and 전 to be prepared…and those were just the tasks that I personally had a hand in, and let me tell you, nothing says a fun afternoon like hauling 8 kilograms of washed rice to the local 떡집. The fact that I was willing to, nay, wanted to help in the kitchen was mind boggling to my mother-in-law. Korea, in my experience, still seems to be of the mind set that the kitchen is no place for a man, and that household chores are a woman’s domain, but no matter I was all about cooking 전! From what went down in the kitchen I can best describe 전 as stuff dipped in flour, then raw egg, and then cooked in a frying pan, and did we make 전!!! There was fish 전, sweet potato 전, meat 전 (which had a different name that escapes my mind at the moment), pumpkin 전, and so forth.

The cooking went on for days and days. Saturday evening (설날 eve) saw even more cooking, and I found myself partaking in the more manly 설날 preparation persuit of calligraphy. “Wyatt, what does calligraphy have to do with New Years?” asks a dissenting audience member.

Dissenting audience member, I’m getting a little tired of your interruptions, and your attitude, but this time you ask a valid question. While New Years on the solar calendar (Gregorian calendar?) is a time to get smashed and sing lyrically confusing songs about forgeting friends or not forgeting friends, Lunar New Years (in Korea at least…China, Vietnam and other nations with Lunar New Years may have different traditions), is a time when families gather to pay respect to their departed ancestors in a ceremony known in Korean as 제사 (jae-sa or [insert your favorite Romanization here]). This ceremony involves offering up food to the ancestors and is a little more complex than I really want to get into at this late hour. If you are looking for a more in depth run down of the procedure, check out Nathan’s post here. He even has pictures!

Anyhow, I did have a point, honestly I did. So during the 제사, one of the pieces of equipment needed (aside from mountains of food) are papers with the names of the departed written in 漢字 on them. At one point during Saturday evening I was summoned from the kitchen with a, “Wyatt, you know Chinese characters…come write these with me.” While none of the stuff I wrote was actually used it was still nice to get to write them, and to hear that my handwriting was, “very beautiful,” (though it was slightly disheartening to hear that my writing in 한자 looks better than my writing in 한글).

Sunday morning we all woke up at the crack of dawn. People were coming to the in-laws house, so cleaning needed to be done, and the table needed to be set up for the ceremony. Again I refer you to Nathan and his pictures. Like he says, the stuff each family sets out differs a little, but the pictures give a basic idea of what was there. A little before 9 in the morning the vistors arrived, and the ceremony began.

The ceremony at my in-laws went a little something like this. Candles and incense were lit. There was a moment of silence. Then the men in attendence bowed twice. I’m not talking about your everyday bow either. This was the serious forehead to the floor bowing stuff, and now being a part of this family I partook in it. Women had to bow four times, which I am assuming has something to do with kitchen work. After that, alcohol was poured for each of the ancestors. Then the men each had to add more to the cup. I was the last person to pour into the cups and it was like a science experiment. The cups were on the verge of overflowing when I arrived and I had to pour into each cup three times without causing them to overflow. Anyhow then the papers with the names were burned, and since the in-laws are nominally Christian, someone said a prayer. From there it was time to eat. It was now roughly 9:15 in the morning. I be recalling some of the events out of sequence due to what happened next.

There at the breakfast table, we began chowing down on the food which had been offered up…including the alcohol, bringing the earliest I have consumed alcohol having been to sleep the night before to the time of 9:15 in the morning. Things were not helped by Jinhui’s great uncle who kept pouring me drinks of rice wine. Breakfast also included the traditional dish of Lunar New Year, 떡국 (rice cake soup…forged from the 8 kilograms of rice I took to the shop earlier in the week). After breakfast vistors left, and I had a brief reprive before round two: 외가집 (the mother’s side of the family).

Around noon thirty we piled into an automobile with a box of pears (it is tradition to bring gifts when visiting people at 설날) and a short while later had arrived at Jinhui’s grandfather’s house in the country. There were no less than 50 people there, and for some reason I was headlining event, trumping even a 90 year old grandfather and a 100 day old baby (both big milestones in a Korean’s life). Again there was more food to be eaten, and more people to bow to. A big part of New Year’s involves bowing to elders (새배), and wishing them well (see the string of Korean typed at the begining of this article for the typical New Year’s greeting). For this task children are rewarded small sums of money (새뱃돈), since neither Jinhui, nor her sister, nor I were children we were all doing our bows per-bona, until one uncle at the grandfather’s house handed me 20,000 won (about $20US) proclaiming, “You never got ‘bowing money’ before…” Jinhui later expressed her shock, “That uncle is kind of cheap, none of the kids there got more than 5,000 from him.”

Lunch was served, and again tables were breaking. The men sat around and ate while the women worked the kitchens. Jinhui was pressed into service as a waitress, I was dragged over to what seemed to be the main table for men to regail people with poorly worded tales of America (”Honest fellas, the streets are paved with gold!”), and Jinhui’s sister (aged 24) somehow snuck off with middle school aged cousins thus avoiding all work.

After lunch we headed off in small groups one by one to pay respects to Jinhui’s mother’s ancestors at tombs up a small mountain (this was the country remember). So after a brief hike we arrived at the tombs. Some food and drink were again offered up, though the spread was a lot less grand. Like the travel version of board games, the mountain version lacked a lot of the frills the home 제사 had included. Instead of candles and whole chickens and fruit, all that was presented was a dried fish and some makkoli (unrefined rice wine). Again we bowed. One of Jinhui’s uncles explained to her the 한자 on the tombs and then told her to explain them to me. Jinhui’s father chimed in, “Ah, he knows more than she does…he’ll explain them to her,” and with that we then headed back home.

We then bid the people farewell and headed back to Jinhui’s parent’s homestead. The rest of the evening was spent relaxing with some 윷놀이 (yut), which is a game not that far removed from the royal game of India, Parchessi. In addition to the standard game of 윷, the sticks used to play were also used to devine fortunes for the year to come. I have included the list of possible fortunes in the post directly below this…though at present I have not offered up English translations as I’ve been typing for what seems like hours and want to sleep…which is not a bad idea.

Brief summary of Monday was we paid visits to relatives who for whatever reason could not be seen on 설날 proper.

Again, in summary, check out Nathan’s site if you want to read a much more well thought out and written account of the holiday of 설날, complete with pictures I felt too odd to even ask about taking.

It was a cold and bitter Sunday afternoon in late January. The moment Wyatt and Jinhui stepped off the bus the arctic wind ripped into their faces turning them a lovely shade of communist red. The pair hurried into the COEX shopping center cum aquarium cum expo center cum auditorium cum theater cum research facility, partially to get out of the cold, but primarily to go and look at the latest offerings in the world of wedding related goods and services.

That’s right, this past weekend I spent my Sunday afternoon looking at wedding invitations and talking to photographers. Ok, in all honesty, I didn’t so much talk to photographers as I did yell non-sequitors at them while Jinhui shot me cutting looks and talked about the specifics of various photo packages. The entire wedding expo experience was a lot less painful than it could have been. I mean, I got loads of free stuff, the shop keepers were all really kind and continually told Jinhui I was cute / spoke Korean well (and then proceeded to ask for our money), and we took care of a lot of the big stuff one needs to prepare for a wedding. All in all I had a blast, inspite of the fact that weddings are clearly for women.

“Weddings are for women?!” a shocked voice in the audience gasps.

Simmer down you. Yes, weddings are for women, and I am about to explain to you how and why I came to this conclusion. Take if you will, exibit 1: speaking with a photographer.

PHOTOGRAPHER: (addressing Jinhui) So you will get three dress changes, and five different hairstyles. In order to help you with hair and make-up we have a professional stylist on staff at the studio who can help you. There is also a woman who will give you facial massages. Uh…your fiance gets a vest and a jacket.

WYATT: Can I get in on some of that facial massage action?

PHOTOGRAPHER: No.

But perhaps more telling were the hanbok (한복) merchants. For you see due to the fact that only select members of my family, and only whatever friends of mine dwell in South Korea at the time of my wedding will be able to attend this wedding, Jinhui and I have decided that it would be better to have a wedding here in Korea and a wedding back in the United States, when we eventually end up there. Since neither of us are too keen on doing the exact same thing twice, we decided that while in Korea we should do it up Korean style. Since tuxedos and wedding dresses are not traditional Korean wedding ceremony fare, this means we need hanboks. Luckily for us the wedding expo had countless hanbok merchants.

I had a blast shopping for hanboks. The merchants were all really cool about giving me ddeok (떡 / rice cakes), and answering my dumb(mule) questions…you know, things like, “Why does that tiny hat cost more than it did to rent my apartment for the past three months?” and “Did people in Korea ever notice that M.C. Hammer totally ripped off hanbok trousers in the late 80’s and early 90’s?”

Anyhow I digress…weddings are for women. Ah yes, so the basic sales pitch from the hanbok vendors went something like this.

SALESPERSON: I told you, I don’t know who M.C. Hammer is…anyhow miss, for you, a yellow jacket would probably be the best for you…or some other light color.

JINHUI: White?

SALESPERSON and WYATT: (in unison) No white is for funerals.

SALESPERSON: As for the skirt I think red or pink would suit you the best. By the way are you planning on going back to the United States anytime soon?

JINHUI: Yes, we’ll probably be returning to America in the next year or so.

SALESPERSON: Then you will want to invest in this longer coat for when you attend parties in America.*

JINHUI: No, the basic hanbok will be fine. Now our mothers will be needing hanboks as well, and as you know his mother will be coming from America only a few days before the wedding.

SALESPERSON: That would not be a problem. If she were to arrive 3 or 4 days before the wedding we could measure her for the hanbok and have it ready the day of the wedding. Let me show you some of the more popular styles for mothers and mother-in-laws.

JINHUI: Oh that one is nice.

SALESPERSON: Yes, these colors are really popular these days with the mothers.

JINHUI: Great, we’ll get back to you soon about what we are going to do.

SALESPERSON: Fantastic.

WYATT: Hey, what about me? Don’t I need a hanbok as well?

SALESPERSON: Oh right…you. (Flips through about a hundred pages in the hanbok style book to the last page). These are the men’s hanboks. You can get them in blue, pink, or brown.

WYATT: What about gold sparkley pants? M.C. Hammer had a pair of sparkley pants?!

SALESPERSON: For the last time I don’t know who M.C. Hammer is!

* Every hanbok salesperson used this pitch. “You’ll need the long coat for parties!” Now, I don’t know if these women assumed I was a diplomat, a Hollywood big wig, or some other character that attends black tie galas…like a professional gambler, the chief of police, or Abe Lincoln, but I can count on my fingers the number of parties I have attended that require me to wear something nicer than my most ironic t-shirt, and do not involve me stopping at the local supermarket / liquor store for “a case of anything,” but they all seemed to be under the impression that America is a land of random and spontaneous dinner parties that require all married Korean women to have a long coat for their hanboks.

As some of you may or may not be aware, I recently moved. I am not in America as some people have speculated, but rather living with my wife. That’s right kids, I got married…kind of. We did the paper works involved in a marriage, but it’s still going to be some months before an actual wedding takes place. Anyhow, for the time being I’m in a state of semi-retirement. Kind of like Michael Jordan was. Basically instead of rambling here, and boring you with stories about how I ate kimchi and fish for breakfast, I’m going to go and play minor league baseball…or randomly post when something worthwhile happens in my life. Anyhow it’s been bossume. Keep it real one and all!

多多益善

DSC03737
Originally uploaded by wdunn.

I am now under the impression that there is some sort of 외국인 (foreigner) quota in my apartment building. My apartment has been on the market since late last week, so there has been a parade of humanity strolling through to check out my pad. Today around 3 in the afternoon there was a knock at the door. There was my landlord again, with some new white guy, and said white guy’s Korean buddy / coworker.

“Mind if we have a look around?” the guy asked. Actually “guy” is a poor word choice. “Gentleman” or “chap” would be much better since he was so British.

“Yeah sure buddy, c’mon in,” was how I responded, or at least how I should have responded.

Let me set the stage for you. It was a Tuesday at roughly 3 o’clock in the afternoon, I had not shaved in several days (see picture at right for an artist’s rendering as to how much stubble I had going on), and I was sitting in my room watching pro-wrestling and eating peanuts. Clearly I was not doing anything to dispel the belief that Americans are lazy and gauche.

Like all people who come to visit my house the English gentleman departed 4 minutes or so after arriving. This says nothing of the quality of my room, but more the size of it. The entire thing can be examined in under a minute.

“There’s the bathroom. This is the kitchen. This is the bedroom/living room/dining room/study/Mike Brady’s den, and out there is the laundry room.”

Having seen the room the Englishman departed with a “Cheers,” which was more than any of the other people check out my pad did, and also lead me to believe that British people are totally awesome! I mean “Cheers!” in place of “Bye!”, how radical is that?

A short while later I got a call from the Englishman, which really surprised me since I hadn’t given him my number. Apparently he liked my homestead and was looking to move in. So he came back with his friend to draw up some papers with the landlord, and shake on it so that he had a “gentlemen’s agreement” with me as to my date of departure. I told him I’d be out by this weekend, and then offered up the Kimchi & Me yard sale special deal: all my furniture for one price so low I must be crazy. He snapped it up. I then showed him the washing machine and informed him that for some reason only cold water worked on the machine.

BRITISH ENGLISH EXPRESSION #15: Don’t worry, I had a flat like that back in London.

So we had our gentlemen’s agreement. He told me he would stop back on Thursday to pay for furniture and then departed once more with a, “Cheers!”

Since I have much packing to do, I too must be taking my leave now. Cheers!

Hey hey! Extenuating circumstances have lead to me needing to move in such a fashion that I no longer need / cannot take with me a goodly percentage of my worldly possession. Therefore we here at Kimchi & Me are going crazy with the bargins! (Cue used car salesman commercial voice) EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!

* Sealy Comfort Sleep Twin Mattress SOLD!
* 2 Bookcases - fine Hungarian craftsmanship!!! SOLD!
* 2 Ghetto fabulous plastic chests of drawers SOLD!
* Samsung MyJet Plus (MJC-200i) Printer SOLD!
* Rice cooker SOLD!
* Microwave Oven. SOLD!
* Korean style table (식탁) SOLD!
* Clothing rack…lovely seafoam green. SOLD!
* Cellphone - some kind of samsung phone, the model number I can’t find at present…I can hook you up with a photo if needed.
* Desk. Order now and get a free chair! SOLD!

So if you are the market for some cheap goods, or want some Kimchi & Me mechandise for collecting, or voodoo curses drop me a line at wdunn220@***.com! Everything must go…whatever you kids don’t buy will end up on some poor old man’s garbage cart.

*** = hotmail

Not so cryptic cryptic message number 1.

Yesterday was my sister’s final day on Korean soil, so to comemorate the event, we went to a birthday celebration being held in honor of 진희’s grandfather’s 90th birthday, which is just about the least touristy thing one can do in a foreign country, but at the same time actually gives one a look at the real lives of people living in another country (something one can’t really gain by taking pictures in front of monuments or going to tourist traps).

The party was fairly excellent, and none of the relatives I met seemed particularly preturbed by the whiteness of my skin (nor the whiteness of my sister’s skin for that matter). They were all friendly and extremely pleasant: from the lady (an aunt I believe) who spoke slowly and clearly to me in Korean, as opposed to the rapid fire machine gun like delivery some middle aged Korean ladies rock, to the guy (a cousin’s husband I think) that spoke pretty fluent English and was all about explaining the nuances of rural Korean birthday parties to my sister and I, they were all outstanding.

Following the birthday party luncheon we bid adieu to her family and headed back to my homestead so my sister could finish packing up her suitcases full of gifts and Korean trinkets. 진희’s father offered to drive her to the airport, so we didn’t have to worry about catching an airport limo, which is just about the most awesome thing ever. After packing up her loot, we met up at the pre-arranged meeting place to discover 진희’s father had contacted the character known as “Navigation,” to accompany us on this trip to the airport, which delighted my sister.

A short time later we were at the airport. There was no traffic to speak of from my house to the airport, so we arrived in record time. My sister picked up her boarding pass, purchased some cans of the can coffee she had become addicted to over the course of her stay in Korea, took some final pictures and then proclaimed that we didn’t need to wait around, and that she would just head over to her gate and await the boarding call.

Some lame hugs, cool guy handshakes, “만나서 반갑습니다,” and “Come and visit us anytime,” later she was going through the gates off to her plane. As 진희, her father, “Navigation,” and I headed away from the airport, a gentle snow began to fall. It was a fitting end to my sister’s stay in Korea.

end.

Notes from the desk of Wyatt:

Dear Reader,

I’m sure that the past week’s load of entries have made little to no sense, and I would like to take this moment to explain myself. With my sister staying with me, I had little time to write anything substantial here, so I would on occassion write little notes to myself as to what happened over the course of the day. These took less than five minutes to write, and containing little more than a couple catch phrases and poor spelling. I thought that they were funny at the time and decided to publish them. I may very well go back and write up some versions of the past week’s entries with proper spelling, and things like content, or a may just leave them as is…filled with references to “a dracula,” and random quotes from Degrassi Junior High. Thank you for your patience. Things should return to normal shortly…or as normal as things were around these parts.

Wyatt

Oh ho! It’s 2006 buddies! The new year was rung in as it should always be rung in: brews and card games!!!!!

Earlier in the day yesterday 진희, Mr. Lee, a character dubbed “Navigation,” my sister and I traveled to the northern most edge of South Korea and looked across the boarder with telescopes. Also I bought 평양소주 (Pyeongyang soju), which is for show, not for go. After checking out what the commies were rockin’ the posse went out to dinner at some crazy fancy Chinese restaurant.

And then HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!?!!?! It’s 2006!!!! WOOHOO!!!! AHHHHWOOOOGA!!!

Because it is totally the year of the dog in the event that you didn’t know such things.

Also if you like to look at pictures and junk, then you will definately want to check out this crap.