Riding the escalator down to the train at Itaewon Station on Thursday, Masato, Matt, and I wondered aloud about the verb “to heal”. It’s 낫다, and my foot feels much better.
(And in California, I hear, so does Anastasia’s.)
On Wednesday afternoon, I met up with Presca at Anguk Station to explore Changdeokgung Palace. I got to the station much faster than I anticipated, so I began walking the area around exit 6, stopping every once in awhile to shake my foot around. A block east of the exit, a small, quiet street running north to an odd castle and Bukhansan beyond it is lined with small restaurants and teahouses; clogged by vending trucks rhyming out advertisements for god, fruit, or eggs — I’m not sure which. I had wanted to reach the castle — which looked like a transplant from Princeton or Yonsei — but I was already late in meeting Presca.
We made our way over to Changdeokgung to buy tickets. After turning away both Presca’s Seoul Dae and Yale IDs, the ticket salesperson shocked us both when she pointed to a sign for the International Student ID Card and asked us if we had those. After traveling Italy two years ago and failing to get even one discount out of that useless piece of plastic, I was more than a little skeptical about how useful it would be on this trip. But at Changdeokgung, where self-guided tours run $15 on Thursdays (never go on Thursday), Presca’s ISIC (I’d left mine at the goshitel) got us two tickets for about $3.
The Injeongjeon, with walks and minister’s place-stones.
Changdeokgung was handsome. Designed as a royal villa in 1405, the palace was constructed over time, resulting in an asymmetric set of buildings facing in different directions — in harmony with nature. After touring the Injeongjeon –whose three walks were flanked by the ministers’ place-stones, and the Queen’s quarters — Daejojeon, or something like the “Hall to Make Great Things Happen” — we made it over to Biwon, the secret garden. The Juhamnu overlooks an elegant pond, the Buyongji, and a small pavilion, the Yeonghwadang, was placed at what was determined to be the most aesthetic part of the garden. From the Yeonghwadong, the King would administer the final stage of the Confucian state examination, the Jeonsi, to the scholars assembled on the lawn below. A scene in Im Kwon Taek’s 2000 Chunhyang shows Yi Mongryoung writing what I think is the second part of the Gwageo, the hoesi, and describes how he even chose a calligraphy style delicate enough to carry his answer to the ethical question posed. While I sweat over a few words of thanks for the ciders Presca and I bought from the garden’s vendor, I thought about the thousands who had sat here trying to enter the civil service, dipping their buckets in foreign seas of characters and frantically painting their poetry on the lawn, and it was hard to shake Confucianism’s ever-widening distance between me and the venerable past.
The entrance to the Daejojeon.
At Buyongji.
But Changdeokgung is a palace of mixed-up time. After visiting the royal garage — which housed a Daimler and a Cadillac next to the convertible palanquin — and the Western-furnished King’s quarters, I wondered about what kind of meeting it must have been when the King ordered electric lighting for the Daejojeon, or a pagoda to house his Cadillac. Presca stopped to take a picture of the exquisite rose-glass lamp hanging over the exit of the Daejojeon — the electric glass inside the palace inside the electric glass city. Yet like the many of restorations to Changdeokgung of the past century, my wondering dresses up history for the occasion.
After Changdeokgung, Presca and I headed over to Seoul’s huge COEX underground mall. We wandered around the stores a bit — including Artbox, a store graffitied with so many positive messages that it was hard for my foot to remember to limp out. We were surprised to find only a small wall of Korean music at the music store, but there was enough there for me nearly to buy one of Jang Sa Ik’s albums. We caught a showing of Ocean’s Thirteen, which left me in a funny place as the lights came on at the end of the film and I found myself remembering that I was in Seoul, South Korea. For dinner, I tried bokkeumbap for the first time.
A tree on COEX’s Forest Walk.
On Thursday, I headed into Itaewon for the Yale Club of Korea summer get-together. Meeting the Class of 2011 was a lot of fun — the alumni were really excited to show them a good time, and the whole night ended up having a friendly feeling to it.
On Friday, I attended the famous Chavy and Sung Ho’s Chicken Day at Neh Neh Chicken. Since Monday, my class had been tittering about chicken — it became a verb in its own right as we explained our plans for the weekend or greeted one another:
A: 안녕?
B: 안녕. 이번…금요일에… 치켄?
A: 물론! 같이 치켄하자!
After class, an army of some 30 of us assembled in the courtyard outside Arupe Hall and marched over to Neh Neh, making sure to leave at least one person behind at each turn to guide the rest, and arrived near E Dae around 1.30 to find the restaurant dark and closed. After Sung Ho assured us that he had made arrangements for the restaurant to accommodate us yesterday, we milled around for 20 minutes until the owner swooped in with bleary eyes and bed hair to let us in. We created a table the length of the restaurant and sat down to feast. After almost 3 hours of chicken (which was American-style at Neh Neh’s, but still pretty tasty) and beer and laughter, a group of us stood up to head back to school to meet our conversation partners. (Sogang is really a fantastic place.)
My conversation partner is a junior at Sogang named Hye Ji. She studies Asia Pacific History, and she was there to meet me on her last day of exams. We had coffee and chatted for awhile at one of Sinchon’s Pause Cafes — and despite being truly confused for half an hour as I misunderstood one of her answers, I had a great time hanging out with her. I worry sometimes about what kind of image I must be creating with my jabber about anything I can articulate, but then in class I had to chuckle when students from all over the world took only three or four days to start teasing Masato and I about the same things we’re teased about at home.
From there, I walked over to Sinchon Station and hopped on the train to Hyehwa, which lets off at Daehagno, the home of Seoul Dae before it was moved in 1975 as a way to suppress student protests. There, I met Presca in Seoul’s experimental theater district, and we wandered around a bit until we found a jazz club. Inside, what appeared to be a mediocre band was jamming out some American tunes led by their main singer, a flashy guy pumping his fists and playing air guitar. The place was filled with happy looking people, and I really enjoyed myself. We took in the lively atmosphere for awhile, but then the lead singer got off the stage and the guitarist took over. He was fantastic. After that, two of the backup singers took turns singing “Train, Train, Train” and “I Can’t Live (If Living is Without You),” and they were stunning. The pianists continued looking dour, but everyone else was blown away. The rest of the performance was the lead singer teasing us by quieting down every now and again to let us experience the extraordinary talent that he was otherwise drowning out, and after a string of great guitar solos, we took our happy — and slightly bewildered — leave.
On Saturday, I invented a laundry line for rainy days by looping my dental floss around the towel bar and back to the coat-hook. With Kaila at Hyundai Baekhwajeom, I found the banana milk I’d been looking for.
My cell phone number here is 010 8693 0721. If you’re in Seoul, give me a call sometime. All pictures except the laundry are Presca’s.
2 Comments
24 June 2007 at 8.51 pm
Your posts, with all the links and insights, are becoming a veritable guidebook!
11 July 2007 at 2.13 pm
i dreamed with you last night! sounds like you’re having a happy time over there; love you!