From: Peter
Wynne-Willson <pwynne@nuri.net>
Subject:
Splendid but Small
Date: Monday 1
November 1999 12:57
More extracts
from life in the Orient
[NB These are
just extracts - spare a thought for poor Ali!]
Wednesday - I
think.....
Everything
here is so so big. I was wondering whether it just looks it, because the people
are a bit on the small side, but no. Things are big. I went into a book shop
today which was like the wholesale Sunday Boot sale on each of eight floors of
a building. Yesterday I went to an electronics centre with more than 20 floors!
All sprung from the emperor-with- inadequacies- big- shed complex if you ask
me.
I thought
you'd like to know what have been the successes and failures so far in terms of
the luggage I carefully assembled.
Firstly, on
the success side, this little computer, which I am using now, is the cleverest
thing on the planet. I can't quite believe how much it does for me. It may have
been a bit of a weight to get here, but my God I'm glad for it. Main failures
have been the digital camera which I haven't managed to bring to life, and my
prematurely dead specially comfortable Clarks shoes, which lasted one
expedition out into Seoul, during which they pinched me for three hours, before
splitting completely down the middle at the back, bah, Clarks sensible shoes
indeed! Runners up prizes go to the little Korean phrase book, and the nearly
finished now chocolate society drinking chocolate [present from Ali] But the
outright winner, and the winner of the 1999 most successful travel purchase
award, is my bag, my gorgeous, beautiful,
a-snip-at-whatever-outrageous-price-it-was bag. It is fantastic, effortlessly
combining an awesome practical ability to carry anything, with the kind of
battered academic chic that is exactly the image I feel becomes a visiting
eccentric, which is obviously my aim. So it was worth it, and will be for
years, or until I lose it, whichever is the sooner. [This is in here because
Ali thought it was a slight extravagance! - Ed.].........
Anyway, back
to the PWW analysis of the Korean character. If I have one reform that I would
introduce here, it would be to lengthen all the brooms. They are all flat
versions of witches' brooms, but sawn off at
about two feet. This is so that those designated to sweep have to bend to
exactly 50 degrees throughout. I think this is a deliberate policy perpetrated
originally by those same kings that built the palaces, who wished their
underlings to be visibly less significant at all times. Frankly, though, it has
infected the national psyche. Yumi, my interpreter, has three degrees [the
qualifications, not the LP] and yet seems to be sweeping with a short broom at
all times, metaphorically speaking. She is quite small, but enough is enough.
'I think Yumi should have a break now' I said, after she had continued
interpreting me right through my break. 'Oh, you are so considerate,
Professor'. She would say this if I were suggesting I was thinking of stopping
beating her. No, the time has come for those handles to grow.
Friday....
I'm getting to
know my graduate students really quite well now. There are three of them, all
in their thirties. Yong, who lived in Illinois for a while, and speaks good
english [insofar as anyone who learnt it in the states can]. He is quite
serious, and has the extra duty of class assistant - a kind of jumped-up board
monitor role which means I am supposed to send him to photocopy things, and ask
him in advance to prepare any materials for my class. This is slightly
intimidating, since it makes me feel like I should be using some materials!
Then there is
Cheong-Myong, who is the most diffident of the three, and the tallest. She is
still slightly anxious I think - always wants to make sure she is doing the
right thing. She is what they call an acting major - the others really have
intentions to be teachers. There was one moment today when she felt very
strongly about something and really shouted. It was brilliant, totally
unexpected. So I think once she relaxes she will be good value.
The third is Chi-Yung. She
is a particularly impressive student. She has a five year old daughter, who
lives during the week with her mother, and is very clear most of the time about
what she thinks. Seems to have a natural understanding of the whole TIE
approach, and will be good at actually carrying it, I think. She and Young-ai
are both clearly part of a new kind of long-handled, if any broom at all, type
of Korean women.
Although they
do bow when I come in, I am really pleased with the way the atmosphere in the
sessions is working. Young-ai comes to most of the sessions, because she wants
to know more about TIE, and there is a good sense of fun. I gave them a huge
speech about how high my expectations are, 'It will not be enough for our
visits to schools in December to be educational, I want them to inspire, to change
lives, to boldly go....' I think having an interpreter gives me just long
enough to work out the next piece of stirring rhetoric. Sometimes Yumi gets
confused and talks Korean to me, and sometimes I get carried away and go on for
ten minutes before she politely interrupts. 'Please can I tell them what you
are saying?'
Big excitement
looked like it was going to come this evening. I noticed that Ally McBeal is on
on the US Forces TV station, the only one in English. Most of it is
unbelievably bad, although has some curiosity value. I now know the number to
ring if I have any questions about my anti-anthrax vaccination, and that I
might get a 'dishonorable discharge' if I ring home on a government phone 'even
if it's my Mom'..... Then after all the excitement Ally McBeal never came on
yesterday. There was a tribute to Payne Stewart instead. Still, heigh-ho and
la-di-da.
Sunday
My plan was to
have a lazy day in the flat, but that was thwarted by the builders' Sunday
working. They are here seven days a week, putting a few more stories on the top
of the Chungsong Art Villa, as we call our humble home. I decided to go to an
event I had seen advertised in the paper. The British Education Fair, at a big
hotel in Seoul. This is a kind of travelling roadshow with representatives from
lots of British Universities, looking for overseas students, and it was in
Seoul for the weekend. The reason I had thought I would go was that several
students had already asked me about possible further degrees in England, and I
don't really know anything, so I thought I could get information. In
particular, Yumi, of three degrees fame, not content with studying a three year
MA at the Shakespeare Institute, wants to do another one, and was wondering
about Exeter! This is presumably because her current letters only qualify her
to be my interpreter, whereas if she becomes the world's leading expert on
Shakespeare she might feel able to carry my lovely leather bag.
Anyway, the
hotel is not very near a tube station, so I thought I would take the chance to
go away from the flat in a different direction. Up to now, I've only really
walked the different routes to the nearest tube station. Going the other way I
found quite a good little playground about 10 minutes away, and a very nice
looking, though closed for Sunday, ancient tomb with wooded garden, about 20
minutes walk. Also some better shops, a McDonalds and Pizza place, all of which
may come into their own when the family arrives. Obviously I myself am now king
of Korean food, and wolfing down octopus tentacles, silkworm larvae and the odd
bear claw with the best of them, McDonalds, pah! Although it is quite nice,
sometimes.
My route to
the hotel took me through the trendy shopping bit of Seoul, Myong Dong [silly
joke deleted] This was fun, and quite promising for Christmas shopping. I've
checked out over the time quite a lot of the centre of Seoul, which is really
completely bewildering. The scale of things is too much to absorb. The
electronics centre I mentioned before, had the floor space of the rag-market,
on each of its 20 floors. Within this, stalls are crammed in and piled high,
and in all parts of it customers are squeezed almost constantly at the level of
New Street on a Saturday [I put in these home-spun references to help you to get
the picture!].
My favourite
part of Seoul for shopping so far is called Insa-Dong [No, stop it] This is a
small road, with rows of gloriously low buildings - the only ones in the city
centre really. It is the crafts and antiques section, with a few galleries, and
bars and street stalls. On Sunday it is closed to traffic. I was there on
Saturday night with my students, who continuing their permanent mission to keep
me happy, were trying to take me to an exhibition. Unfortunately, my class had
run over by an hour and a half, because I got a bit over-excited, and so the
gallery was closed. Undeterred, we went to another gallery, then up some stairs
which no non-Korean would even have thought of going up - round the back of a
building, with only a hand-written note indicating anything was up there. What
was there was a single room, about the size of our front room, with four tables
and little low sofas. In the corner was crammed a gas cooker and fridge and a
small person. The walls were lined with rough paper-coloured paper, scribbled
on by arty visitors, and the two ceiling lamps were shaded by similar parchment
rolled into a fat cylinder, glued to the ceiling at one end, and tied with a
string at the other, looking like my attempts at present-wrapping. It occurred
to me that this cheap but fantastically effective lamp-shade, if in Habitat,
could be £17 or so. Almost interesting, that. The room was very warm, heated by
two old cylindrical paraffin heaters.
This place was
a 'tea-room'. You buy a drink, or some food, at a little more cost than you
might expect, and can then stay there for ever, as long as you are engaged in
sufficiently earnest discussion. Yong and Cheung Myong introduced me to Korean
rice wine, dried little fish and a spring onion pancake/omelette thing, and I
did my best to be arty/political cafe-societyish with them. Again they refused
to let me pay.
By the way,
good news. I am no longer the fattest man in Korea. This is in part because I
am pining away, walking an estimated 47 miles a day, and unable to get access
to any Nutella, but also because I saw him. He was wearing Baden-Powell shorts,
despite temperature in forties, had bright red hair and was pushing a
sit-up-and-beg bike through an ant-nest tube station. Clearly British. We were
swept in opposite directions, so I will never know for sure.......
Anyway, back
to today. The British Education Fair was in a vast hotel, with huge rotating
doors, and shiny bowing doormen. It was set out like the exhibitions at those
events that Women and Theatre perform at, with behind each desk a beautiful
Korean interpreter in traditional dress, and a generally not so beautiful
representative of a fine British University. Not actually any elbow patches,
because these were the people from the Universities' 'International Offices'
which I suppose they all have. I went to the stalls for Warwick [quite chatty,
thought Seoul was lovely, the toilets are so clean compared to Taiwan which is
a dump, apparently] Birmingham [hadn't got a copy of the prospectus for 2000, only
old ones from last year, couldn't wait to get home, and was a bit scared in
Taiwan because of the aftershocks] Manchester [rather sniffy, wanting to make
it clear that it was unlikely they would readily accept students for PhD,
unless they stated very clearly what their area of study would be - there's a
revolutionary thought, thank you for that!] and Exeter [extremely helpful. I
now have the number of someone in Seoul who has just completed an MA there,
related to Shakespeare, and an e-mail address for Peter Thompson - some other
Professor! - so I actually can give Yumi some useful information] Another
mission accomplished, back on the subway and ready for the next challenge. Just
another day in the high-achieving life of your man in the Far East.
Coming back
here another way, I checked out the route to the small but attractive-looking
mountain which rises up from the end of the road where the flat is. There are a
number of picturesque mountains within Seoul itself, covered in trees and very
steep-looking, and just at the moment a wonderful mixture of colours. I have
this one ear-marked for an assault tomorrow. It did rain today though, so I
will see how it dawns, and then decide. Any rain that falls, which has so far
been very light, seems to clear the streets in a way that nothing else can. I
have no idea where people go, since every corner of this place is full, but
most of the Koreans do seem to disappear. They must be lying in very big piles
inside the buildings. Whatever, when the rain comes the streets are left clear
for Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Only me in fact, because Korea being Korea, the
dogs, even the mad ones are not mad enough to brave the streets, and risk being
caught by the cook. I expect mad dog is a particular delicacy. 'See special foam
on mouth'. Anyway, long may it rain, I say.
I've spoken to
Eddie a few times on the phone, and managed to send him a story, which Ali
successfully printed off and read. He is very funny indeed on the phone, but
it's a slightly mixed blessing being able to speak to them so clearly. The
other night I woke up and heard a noise in the flat upstairs, and was halfway
out of bed, to go and see which of the boys had woken up before I caught
myself. Sad. I'm glad I did, though, because I think the Russian professor of
music above may have been a little unreceptive!
Monday
Afternoon The first of November - the very same month during which the family
is coming to Korea, hurray!
This is the
nearest thing to being Kate Adie yet. I am writing this, huddled in one room of
my apartment, the rest of which has been occupied by five men in uniforms
brandishing a range of weapons. They are the actual builders, the ones
previously only seen in the half-light of the entrance alley, or heard banging
on the roof through the long days. Early in the morning a second Han River came
down the stairwell which is common to all the flats, none of it appeared to
come into mine, but the electricity went off, and since I alerted the
authorities it has been the source of a great deal of frenzied speculation and
experimentation.
Jeong Hwan [my
administrative assistant - I hope you're keeping up] was due this morning
anyway, to help install the washing machine, which had been sitting in the
kitchen. It is too big to fit through the door of the utility room, so together
we had to lift it through a window. That was surprisingly easy, and so it is
now in the right place. We plumbed it in as well, now all we needed was some
'Jongiga' - electricity. By fiddling with the fuse box we got everything but lighting,
and it seems likely to me that some water has got into the circuitry, and
buggered it up [to use a technical international builder type term]. JeongHwan
fetched the building chief - a suitably edentulate and wise man, with a good
line in inscrutibility. He fiddled for a while and got a younger builder, who
dismantled most of the light fittings. We seemed to agree that I would not use
the lights, and he would bring someone to check tomorrow. I've already got
candles, because the lights are all a bit bright, so that's not the end of the
world. Anyway, clearly the plan has changed while I was out, and he is now back
with reinforcements. I've just realised it's easier to work with them chatting
in my flat, than when they're at loose, hammering on the roof!
I've been up
my mountain, which was a great success. It's only five minutes from the flat,
closer than I had realised, and one of several within the city limits. It's
called Umyon San, which means 'Sleeping-Cow Mountain', it is 300 metres high,
and like all of the hills I've seen here is covered with trees. The paths were
less artificial than I expected, no concrete or anything, just made into steps
at times using logs, with the occasional rope bannister at the steep parts.
Some of it was very steep - the norm for the hills seems to be for them to rise
quite suddenly, with rather perfect looking rounded shapes. Very quickly you
get past enough trees for the city to disappear from sight, and gradually the
roar of the traffic subsides too. It is actually very like the Lickeys, but
steeper, and with summits, instead of ridges. Nor does it have the level of
blissful solitude that the Lickeys achieves!
Most of the
people walking there today were on their own, like me, but there were quite a
few of us. They don't acknowledge each other as they pass. I did to begin with
throw a cheery 'annyong' at people, but I sensed it was an intrusion. Didn't
stop me doing it of course.
As you go up,
there are various little extra creations. Plenty of benches, and sitting places,
a few watering stops, quite a few exercise areas, with little bits of assault
course equipment, and a couple of badminton courts - the highest of these at
about 290 metres! There seemed to be two types of people there. Those involved
in contemplation, and those involved in exercise. In both cases it seems a very
deliberate course of action. They are there for a reason, and they are
maximising the value of the exercise by supplementing it with 20 press-ups and
a quick knock-up with the shuttlecock, or whatever. I noticed this when I said
to my students I was going up a mountain. 'Ah, you want to exercise, to get
fit?' well in a way... 'You like to hike' .... Really I just want to climb a
mountain. I don't think the 'because it's there' argument would have carried
much weight with Confucius.
One
wonderfully surreal moment was going round a corner and hearing a Baritone
Italian Aria echoing down a valley. Seemed quite well sung to me too. The
singer was visible through the trees, and I'm not sure whether his purpose was
to get an appropriate effect and spirit, or to build his lung capacity by
singing while climbing steep hills, or if he just had too many complaints when
he practised at home. Either way, when I caught up with him I said good
singing, good singing, and he grunted, looking rather appalled. I suspect that
this was my first major faux-pas. Somewhere in my Korean etiquette book there
must be a bit I didn't read - 'when on mountains, do not commend a Korean on
his opera singing. This can result in serious loss of face'. I puffed on up.
At the top, I
had expected the trees to stop, in a sort of monk's tonsure, but there was
still a thin surround, even there. You could see large chunks of the city below
through gaps, but it is a cloudy day, and so I expect the view is often more
impressive. Even today it was quite something.
The summit
seemed to say a lot about Korea. There was a huge, perfectly formed cairn,
about the size and shape of a decent wigwam, but slightly fatter. It reminded
me of a ten foot version of one of those cones of incense. Also there were some
nicely placed benches, a couple more pieces of exercise equipment for real
enthusiasts, a single granite gravestone [one exercise too many, I expect] , a
noticeboard with pictures of the Pope and Mother Theresa, a sawn off lamppost,
with a plastic clock at the top, and a bright blue telephone box, complete with
broom - short handle of course.
I did a little
bit of contemplating, and a token wiggly bit of exercise, in a spirit of
cross-cultural willing, worked out that it was about 5.00 AM in your world and
not a good time to risk a phone call, looked at the view and turned back. On
the way down I saw a fenced off area with a sign saying 'Danger, Mines', and a
nice little picture of a man stepping on one. It seemed implausible somehow,
but I did stick to the path anyway.
The builders
have now rigged up some makeshift lights for me to put in the power sockets,
which still work, and gone back to bang the roof. I think they are bringing the
electrician tomorrow, but not 100% sure. We reached the kind of impasse in the
discussion where all you can do is shrug at each other and agree to leave it
unexplained. This is fine if you are making small talk about your family, but a
little disconcerting when the discussion in question is what not to do to avoid
electrocution. I'm certainly going to stick with my candles in the meantime.
I spoke this
morning to the head of drama at the American high school here, where I might be
doing a demonstration lesson later in the week. I expect that will warrant an
e-mail if it happens! Certainly Mimi Kim sounds promising material.......
Apologies for
the quantity of this again, but you've all got little recycle bins if you want
to use them
With love to you
all, and please pass on my regards to those netless technophobes who are in
line for a single postcard, if they're lucky.
Pete