4
Toung Mahng Left Alone, 1940
Any efforts had not been made on both parties to invite Toung Mahng's parents to Manchuria. Barring expenditures, diplomatic and other impediments were in the way. So Toung Mahng had had to relay his situation he was in via his cousin Toung Doung personally to his parents back home. In effect Toung Mahng had taken himself hostage to the Huang Suan family.
Toung Mahng was eventually left alone as Toung Doung had left the Manchurian shelter for good because he had been notified of his father's "bad health." The telegraph hadn't mentioned any specific condition of Toung Doung's father but his gut feeling had told him that his father's life would be at risk.
He had had a hard time waiting for his son. His father had been dead and buried a week ago. His mother wailed at the sight of the returning prodigal son, hitting him on the chest with her frail fists. His wife Boolim Lee was wiping her eyes with apron cloth, in front of the kitchen door.
The aunts and uncles of the clan, many times removed, came to Toung Doung, casting stares of rebuke at him, wondering what had happened to Toung Mahng. Toung Doung was somehow at a loss how to explain about his desertion of his cousin in a faraway land.
Toung Doung had hand delivered his cousin's personal letter to his parent, Uncle Wang backed off a few steps and received the envelope in dread in which Toung Mahng had extended a sincere apology to his neglect of filial piety and sought his parents' pardon for his "truancy." He then had asked his parents to hear details from Toung Doung.
He could not immediately get down to the truth of Toung Mahng's truancy, having sensed that improvisations were of no use, though. Looking around at the worrisome faces of the uncles and aunts of the Wang clan in the small room of a tin-roof house, Toung Doung made it sure again and again that his cousin's welfare was guaranteed there.
Despite Toung Doung's assurance, the uncles and aunts hadn't been convinced. They had wanted to know more about what had caused Toung Mahng's failure to come back home. Not reassured just by Toung Doung's stuttering account that their son and nephew was safe and sound away from home, they got jittery about what had caused him to fail to show up.
A sharp riposte from an aunt had been raised against Toung Doung's oft-repeated bald remark to the effect that Toung Mahng's marriage to the daughter of a Manchurian householder was inescapable. "How?" "To what degree?" she demanded. "To the degree that he has turned his back on his parents?"
Toung Mahng's mother had been silent all along. But his father hadn't. "My son did not desert us parents and did not betray his family clan, either," he had snapped. He had given a hard pull at Toung Doung's arm and given a supportive pat on his back. He declared solemnly "Toung Mahng, my son, took an eating mouth off our house," sarcastically mentioning the famished situation of the family clan at the time.
The spring famine, called the Barley Pass, had been into an ugly phase. The folks of a small hamlet, surrounded by low-lying sun-lit hills at Danuishill, had been occupied peeling the barks of pines, crushing and brewing, mixed with a small amount of wheat flour, to get a lukewarm soup out of it.
Because deprivation had been a major meat of the era, ritual procedures, including funeral, could not be complete. That they had not been able to keep them was more like it. The conventional three-year mourning custom had been passed over.
The household gods, or the dead spirits including the spirit of Toung Doung's dead father, had been starving because the hot rice bowl, offered during the mourning period, could not be placed on the altar. The grieving survivors, who were much too weakened by the lack of nutrition, could only blurt out low sobs, short of wails or cries.
The valley in the early morning, for which Toung Doung was scheduled to pay respects to his father's grave, had been shrouded with fogs. The shallow creek had long been dry. A steep hill leading up to his lonely resting place had been covered with stinging thorny bushes and weeds.
A while later, his guide, two-times-removed cousin, who was four years senior to Toung Doung, stopped walking. There was a grave mound which must have been freshly formed. Earth was new and green grass had been planted on top, just like quilts. No stone table had been erected yet, which is used for donating offerings at times of seasonal rituals. No epitaph, either.
Toung Doung stumbled and fell to the ground. Wails trailed along the hills. Doves and mountain birds stirred and fluttered to the air. He had "much to say" to his father. He had missed him badly. He was so sorry for all the ills and the sudden death. He had sinned, for which he would never be forgiven.
5
A Night with Boolim at Danuishill, 1940
Toung Doung's wife Boolim Lee threw an adoring glance at her husband as she put a room pot of copper make under a corner window sill, which she had brought with her at the time of her marriage to Toung Doung Wang. Country lavatories were usually situated "two and a half miles" apart from the main living quarters of a house because it had been considered best left alone for hygienic reasons.
As a result, a convenient substitute with a compact size was concocted for human relief particularly during nightly hours for spouses. Which is why a yokang, that is, an urn for urination, had taken a place in common households then. Toung Doung's eyes went so far as to meet Boolim's just above the pot.
The thatched-roofed cabin, shaped like hangul character ㄷ, which housed two living rooms and other adjacent small rooms, a cow barn and a warehouse for farming tools, was not tight, indeed, because the rest of the residential area around the two rooms was a spacious lot, of which the one room was allotted for the head of the household and male people and the other room was for his wife and female population.
The husband used to receive guests, changed clothes, dined, and slept in the sarang, or sarangbang, by which it meant the room for the patriarch. It had been actually reserved for the male people of different age levels while the wife had spent days and nights in the anbang (pronounced ahnbahng), by which it meant the room for the matriarch. It had also been used by the female population of various age levels.
There used to be a concept of distance, or separation between the husband's habitation and the wife's. That is, they had resided in the same house but had not "lived" in the same room. To elaborate, they had not slept together for most days of the year. To that end, the two rooms had not been contiguous to each other. They had been "far" apart from each other. Herein should lie a partition space called maru, the wooden floor which bridged the two chambers.
A maru had played a role as a podium for the chief who could command domestic functions. He had for most of times directed the household chores and checked their procedures. Most of the country dwellings had been so erected on elevated ground levels that the chief of a specific household could shout directions on the maru from way up to his servants down below, if any, and his inferiors.
The maru as a border line had not demanded visas. It had demanded that you keep a semblance of human propriety or decency. Still, a head of a household had without permissions or restrictions from anyone been allowed to cross the border and enter the anbang. But it had been regarded as an indecent act for a host of an anbang to cross the maru to enter the sarangbang, which had been considered a taboo.
How indecent? It had been considered indecent to the extent that it would probably be played on the mouths of the villagers, especially women, giggling away. Rumors had usually been milled around the village well from which it had taken wings.
There hadn't been a concept of trespasses. The villagers had gotten their living quarters open. Most of them had had no gates. Even if some of them had, visitors hadn't been trapped in or out of the quarters because the village folks had not kept their gates locked and not their doors, either.
They had had no locks. They had known the outer world, of course, in which the locks had been being used. But they had been afraid of biting opinions and gossips of others. (What is there to hide?) That is, they had hated themselves to become the objects of the other folks' gossips and back talks. They had not wanted to be thought of as man-haters or guest-haters.
They had also been ignorant of knocking. They might have developed an instinctive hatred for blunt impersonal sound. Or they had preferred human voice to mechanical noise or otherwise. They had naturally coughed. Coughs had really been humanitarian. What kinds of coughs? Asthmatic or convulsive coughs penetrating the ears of those around? No, not real coughs. False coughs, indeed. You could name them gentlemen's (or ladies') coughs.
Thus they had coughed all along the way. In a decent manner in front of the lavatory (Is anybody in there?), louder and longer before the gate (Hello!), in a low and calm voice before someone's room (Open the door! Or be prepared for my opening it). Then there had been responding coughs from inside the lavatory (I am here! Or you are supposed to wait!) Or there used to be voices from inside the house (Who's there?).
Toung Doung Wang gave low coughs and threw a quick glance toward his wife one more time. He wanted to know about his mother's whereabouts that night. His wife's voice trembled as she casually uttered a tip that their mother would while the night away at a "a clan sister's".
The ondol floor was aptly warm as changjak, or chopped fire woods were burning under the floor. The room was smelly, which was not undescribable. As the room got warmer, a miasma of urine and delicate aroma of wheat flour paste pricked Toung Doung's nostrils.
Toung Doung had had a nose for smells. He had been able to identify the sources of smells in the room and he had liked them all as parts of his life. The urine, which was not so strong, must have erupted from the room pot and the aroma of wheat flour paste must have come from the quilt which had been washed, starched, dried and ironed. The wall of clay of course prided itself on its own aroma.
The room was not so bright. But Toung Doung wanted the room to get dimmer. "Why don't you darken the room?" She nodded and crawled several kneels to the lamp and toned down the light a notch, which gave them a cozier ambience.
Without further warning she began to arrange bedspreads with pillows side by side yet with "an aisle" apart. "Why don't you lie down beside me?" Toung Doung suggested. "We mustn‘t," she insisted, blushing beside herself. "Why?" he demanded to know. "We're in mourning," was her crisp reply.
He had been sorry for all the toils she had had to go through during his absence. Their mother had been a nagging and drilling type even before she parted with her sick husband at a relatively young age. Boolim's privations were high and deep. Her tasks which had to be taken care of by her on a daily basis were "mounting." Preparations of three daily meals were her major job. She had to feed a bull and two cows. There had been higher people up the tiers of ranking in the familial pecking order.
Sorry expressions and comforting words had failed him. They had from time to time been at Toung Doung's tongue tips but actually been out of reach for her. His hearts had always ached at the thought of her wife in plight back home when he had been in Mudanjang. Now she was near at his arm's reach but consonants and vowels could not compose any significant remarks to comfort or apologize to her. He had not been good at them, not having been trained in them. He only stammered, saying, "I am leaving for Nippon tomorrow."
She knew that second hand from her mother-in-law. She had already packed his belongings for his departure. She took it for granted that her husband was again on the move. She had to accept it as a fate of the people of the ruined country. Overwhelmed with emotions she betrayed her sorrow, showing tears and hurriedly wiping them with her knuckles. Toung Doung gave her a hard pull at her shoulder and let her lie down flat on the warm ondol spread. Then he pulled the top bed sheet and covered her body.
He got undressed and moved his naked body onto the thick cotton blanket. Stirring, she shifted. She turned sideways to the left. Holding her by the shoulder with his left hand, he put his right hand on her hips. He clung to her just like cicadas do to the trees and hugged her from behind. He shoved her soggot, or, rather loose underwear to find that it was parted in the middle, his right hand gliding up to her privates. Her opening was wet and hot...really hot.
He tried to part her thighs. Fuming a moan, she recoiled like a cocoon. He clung to her more tightly, with his hand massaging the wet opening. She spread her thighs a little beside herself for his hand to move with more ease. Holding her breath, she found his yangkun (the root of yang) rising its way to huge erection. Sensing his body touching her, she made a backward protest. She pushed his hand backwards with a damp palm of her right hand, her trembling voice uttering, "No, we can't!" "Yes, we can," he whispered to her hot ears.
He bent his lower body, with his right hand pulling down her underwear from her waist down. She made a meager protest this time, too, but with futile efforts. Boolim was still his bride. She was just like a virgin up to the time. She was so fresh, so new to him. This must be what the paternal ancestors had used to tell their sons on the eve of the departure for the wedding at the brides', he thought aloud. "Do as your mind guides you," he had also heard at that time. His shaft knew its way. Tightening the grip on her shoulder by the left hand of his, his stuff went uphill toward her opening with the aid of his right hand. To his pleasant surprise, her right hand held out to meet his big stuff, holding it gently and guiding it to her wet and hot stuff. Her stuff was wetter this time to the extent that his stuff would trip and fall.
He entered her from behind, a totally new and unexplored approach. The thrust met no hindrance, though. Slow yet brutal, the rough and hardened staff penetrated far deep into her. She gasped and fumed a moan. His proud staff, exploring the walls of the cave, sent titillating waves onto his spine and hers, too. She squirmed, turned her head backward to the right and bit his arm. Popping it deeper into her walls and then pulling out of them, he kept pounding her with regular frequency. Then he gave her a slight push and let her take a prostrate position, him mounting her back, with his legs enveloping hers.
The feeling was so good...and hot, with her vaginal opening clamping on his hard stuff with regularity. Her opening was getting more juicy, him feeling her liquid running onto his shaft. She was biting off screams, gritting her teeth, blurting out feverish moans. He at last kept pounding in successive rapidity, exploding. He ejaculated his semen deep into her in convulsive tremble, falling to her back. Ecstatic waves overwhelmed him and her. She panted loudly with short breaths and then remained motionless eternally, with her extended right hand holding his.
2009년 10월 4일 일요일
Fascinating...
2
Toung Doung in Manchu, 1930s"The good Nipponese," was a mantra Dano's parents used to recite. "They were nice to you," Dano's mother used to say. "You were very weak then and the village doctor at a small town of Nagasaki Prefecture always treated you nice and well," she used to recollect. "The Japanese people were gentle, kind and generous," Dano's father-in-law once told Dano in his early thirties.
The words of affinity toward the people across the East Sea, which Dano had heard from his mother as a child, were ringing in his ears. It just happened that the dormant noises came to and were married to the images, that is, converted into the mobile and living human figures. Two dissimilar things were adjoining. It was just like the ancient chords were superimposed on the Japanese tourists. So transcendental. So mystic.
The major topic of her oft-repeated recitation was "the good Japanese physician." Dano had been sick and injured so often. He had been taken ill every other month and tripped and fallen so often that his mother had had to take him to the doctor time and again and at wrong time.
"Ohira san (Mr. Ohira) had not blurted out a complaint," she reminisced. Not even once. He had been always at smiles, warm and nice. He had wanted to know what was wrong with "Masao san." Masao had been Dano's Japanese-type name as a child.
"If a big house is set on fire," Luo Guanzhong says in The Romance of Three Kingdoms "sparrows will leave from the nests of the eaves." It just happens that when a big mountain collapses beasts are bound to be dispersed. Once the nation ruins the people are scattered like anything.
Although the Chosun Kingdom (1392~1909) had succumbed to the Imperial Japan, lost its national sovereignty, gotten annexed to the mighty archipelago, and plunged into the sorrowful state of a colony, Dano's father Toung Doung Wang had had no time to have the luxury of national mourning.
He bolted one night from a rustic tenant house, took a train to Seoul, and then an overnight train to Shinuiju. He had not been entirely lonely because he had had a four-times-removed remote cousin to keep his company. Away from home, Toung Doung drifted, hitting every valley of the wild Manchu (Manchuria) and knocking on literally every residential door.
Hunger had been their eternal companion. Their stomachs had almost always been empty, which had made them realize the presence of their real company. They had sought jobs, any jobs, however menial they might have been, to sedate the stomachs in acute craving pain. Rejection was in store. Although they had been rebuffed in front of any residential entrance, they had not gritted their teeth. They had tried to take all the snubs in their stride.
Youth might have exerted its force on them. The rustic pair hadn't had a hard time adjusting to the harsh element of the north eastern Manchu climate and rough-hewn shelter. Survival had been a foremost matter of importance. So any cheap labor would do if it had provided a bowl of rice for them.
The life mode of theirs had been the camaraderie of apportionment. They had had "to break a bean and divide it evenly between them." They had shared everything: crude meals, ill-starched odor-soaked denim quilts, and the derision with which they had been branded stateless waifs.
Homesickness had crept into bone-deep, soaked to their blood and running in their vein. Nearly everything they had encountered along the route of the foot traffic had been incarnations of the homebound yearning. Toung Doung and Toung Mahng had thrown a nostalgic glance at monthly full moon seen through the glass window of a foreign shelter on lonely nights as if it had been their mothers' face.
They had had a hard time of it, putting their noses, and feet, to the ground. Toung Doung had been a young man of stout build, which had been suitable for a big haul. He had been actually pulling and pushing the cart, loading and unloading the cargo. Lugging the cartload along in the street of 1930's Mudanjang, Henlongjang.
There had to be some wherewithal of any variety. Since attempts had failed to stash away what little money they had earned at some unfamiliar places, they had reached the decision that their earnings, however small in amount, be left with the proprietor of their lodging house, who, impressed by the diligence and integrity of the two young men from Chosun of the unfortunate kingdom, had agreed to take custody of it.
They had written to their parents often at whichever time the exchanges of greetings had been grandiose. It's because, like a locomotive train, a major transportation machine of that time, tidings personal and social had been slow. Extremely slow. Letters had been coming and going at a snail's pace, and telegraphs had been too expensive for common use.
The words contained in the correspondence had been "long-winded", sent especially from Toung Doung to his parents. The epistolary verbiage had been a common practice at that time. Time was fast flowing like water and the earth was revolving around the sun. He wondered, for waking hours or on sleeping beds, whether or not the esteemed bodies of his parents were well cared for.
3
A Fascinating Union in Manchu
Young folks should have an opportunity for amorous alliances. They had been famished for companionship with the counter sex. And it seemed there to have come a chance for romance for Toung Doung at least. That is, the landlord had had a daughter named Huang Mai in her blooming 20. She was pretty, smart and kind. Among all things, she was in her prime.
The older Huang had kept an eye on his guests, and in the process he had taken a liking for the two young boarders from a neighborly colony of the Imperial Japan. He had come to favor Toung Doung. Having been informed of his confidence and pressed by the landlord to get his position known, Toung Doung had balked. Although away from home for more than two years, Toung Doung had wanted to keep his fidelity because he had been bound by matrimonial ties and enamored of his wife at home.
Although Huang Suan had been very disappointed, he had not insisted. The younger Huang, bewildered by her father's frustration, had set her hearts on Toung Mahng instead, a more fuzzy and warmer type of person.
Her reason had restrained her but her desire, another turf of her realm, had gotten the better of it. Her legs had almost always carried herself unawares to a deep mountain trail not taken up to that time, where she had had a secret rendezvous with Toung Mahng.
It's like the two young folks had been attracted to each other. So much so that as soon as they had a heart-to-heart talk with each other, Huang Mai had gotten very much attached to Toung Mahng. On a late autumnal day they got to the place their legs had carried them.
Before they knew, they had been in each other's arms. They had gotten entangled in the confines of nondescript bushes just like the gnarled and entangled chilggi, Aristolochia manshuriensis. It eventually happened that Toung Mahng had cracked open the mysterious crevice of Huang Mai. The sky above the hill had consecrated their consummation with showers of its warm autumnal sun rays.
There had been a momentary pause after an initial union. A short while later there ensued a recurrent surge of the urge to crave to fascinate. Toung and Huang were reunited with more strength. Spontaneous cries of duet orgasm had erupted, drifting on the wings of the autumnal breeze.
Stillness like death had taken the place of the upsurge. A euphoric fatigue had overwhelmed them, with the breeze only tickling their naked bodies. They had lain there motionless for a while. Huang Mai (Huang had been her family name), turning around to Toung Mahng Wang (Wang had been his family name in this case) from his left side and covering their bodies with their clothes, had whispered to him, saying, "You won't leave me, will you, Mr. Wang?"
Toung Mahng, holding her hand with a good grip, had given her a steady stare. Then he had held up his index finger and written something briskly on her abdomen. She had wiggled her upper body a bit with a stare of titillating interest, giggling with a tickle. "What did you write?" she had wanted to know. Huang shim, or steady mind, he had solemnly pronounced.
Although his country had been raped of her sovereignty by the brutal country of Japan, he would keep his mind integral. He did not think the promise, even though it had been made during a passion job, would not last. Even though the moon changed its colors his mind would not change. He would love her for ever.
The older Huang had taken notice. Suspicions had been raised. Severe reproaches had been given. The initial denials and undertones had been offered; Facts had been confirmed and witnesses had been provided; The inescapable admission of transgressions had been made at last.
The disclosure had gotten Huang Suan speechless for a long while, his arms shaking and his eyes blood-shot, with his wife giving accusatory stares to the culprits. Disappointed by the improper behavior of his daughter and angered by the indiscretion done on his daughter by the lodger, the senior Huang had had to shout to the two lowered heads, saying "get out." He needed time to collect thoughts.
Mr. Huang had sat motionless, coughing a few awkward coughs and earth-sinking sighs. Comforting words from his wife had passed his ears. Time heals. At dusk he had had to muster courage, calling a family rally, the unwelcome one included.
He deplored the fact that "the distance had been violated." His motto for life was : "Keep the distance at any price." So much so that he believes that distance should be kept between people: Between parents and their offspring, the sovereign and his subjects, men and women, and between husband and wife. Toung Mahng Wang and Huang Mai should have kept it. He had not dared to say that there should have been distance between the girl of the Middle Kingdom and the young man of a small ruined country.
Explanations had been given by Toung Mahng, with enthusiastic vindication extended by Toung Doung for the sake of his cousin. Avowals of fidelity had been offered from Toung Mahng himself. The suggestion of pardons and tolerance on the grounds of inevitability had been made by Mrs. Huang. In time the landlord had seemed to relent.
Huang Suan had put forth three separate periods of one month: the one period of disciplinary sanctions on his daughter, the other period of mature consideration for the patriarch himself, and the third period for the assurance of the suitor's willingness to marry. Huang Suan's suggestion was that any party who would dissent on the union would hold the right to repeal the compact.
Hardly had a scant three weeks passed when the proprietor had announced all the periods putting to a stop. The chief of the house had declared the business off, starting from the 18th of October in lunar calendar. Red light lamps had been removed over the entrance of a small inn house of Mudanjang. Close relatives had been invited. A pig had been slaughtered. Mantou, dumplings of mashed pork, and other local dishes had been prepared. There had been an extended feast of three consecutive days.
(to be continued)
Toung Doung in Manchu, 1930s"The good Nipponese," was a mantra Dano's parents used to recite. "They were nice to you," Dano's mother used to say. "You were very weak then and the village doctor at a small town of Nagasaki Prefecture always treated you nice and well," she used to recollect. "The Japanese people were gentle, kind and generous," Dano's father-in-law once told Dano in his early thirties.
The words of affinity toward the people across the East Sea, which Dano had heard from his mother as a child, were ringing in his ears. It just happened that the dormant noises came to and were married to the images, that is, converted into the mobile and living human figures. Two dissimilar things were adjoining. It was just like the ancient chords were superimposed on the Japanese tourists. So transcendental. So mystic.
The major topic of her oft-repeated recitation was "the good Japanese physician." Dano had been sick and injured so often. He had been taken ill every other month and tripped and fallen so often that his mother had had to take him to the doctor time and again and at wrong time.
"Ohira san (Mr. Ohira) had not blurted out a complaint," she reminisced. Not even once. He had been always at smiles, warm and nice. He had wanted to know what was wrong with "Masao san." Masao had been Dano's Japanese-type name as a child.
"If a big house is set on fire," Luo Guanzhong says in The Romance of Three Kingdoms "sparrows will leave from the nests of the eaves." It just happens that when a big mountain collapses beasts are bound to be dispersed. Once the nation ruins the people are scattered like anything.
Although the Chosun Kingdom (1392~1909) had succumbed to the Imperial Japan, lost its national sovereignty, gotten annexed to the mighty archipelago, and plunged into the sorrowful state of a colony, Dano's father Toung Doung Wang had had no time to have the luxury of national mourning.
He bolted one night from a rustic tenant house, took a train to Seoul, and then an overnight train to Shinuiju. He had not been entirely lonely because he had had a four-times-removed remote cousin to keep his company. Away from home, Toung Doung drifted, hitting every valley of the wild Manchu (Manchuria) and knocking on literally every residential door.
Hunger had been their eternal companion. Their stomachs had almost always been empty, which had made them realize the presence of their real company. They had sought jobs, any jobs, however menial they might have been, to sedate the stomachs in acute craving pain. Rejection was in store. Although they had been rebuffed in front of any residential entrance, they had not gritted their teeth. They had tried to take all the snubs in their stride.
Youth might have exerted its force on them. The rustic pair hadn't had a hard time adjusting to the harsh element of the north eastern Manchu climate and rough-hewn shelter. Survival had been a foremost matter of importance. So any cheap labor would do if it had provided a bowl of rice for them.
The life mode of theirs had been the camaraderie of apportionment. They had had "to break a bean and divide it evenly between them." They had shared everything: crude meals, ill-starched odor-soaked denim quilts, and the derision with which they had been branded stateless waifs.
Homesickness had crept into bone-deep, soaked to their blood and running in their vein. Nearly everything they had encountered along the route of the foot traffic had been incarnations of the homebound yearning. Toung Doung and Toung Mahng had thrown a nostalgic glance at monthly full moon seen through the glass window of a foreign shelter on lonely nights as if it had been their mothers' face.
They had had a hard time of it, putting their noses, and feet, to the ground. Toung Doung had been a young man of stout build, which had been suitable for a big haul. He had been actually pulling and pushing the cart, loading and unloading the cargo. Lugging the cartload along in the street of 1930's Mudanjang, Henlongjang.
There had to be some wherewithal of any variety. Since attempts had failed to stash away what little money they had earned at some unfamiliar places, they had reached the decision that their earnings, however small in amount, be left with the proprietor of their lodging house, who, impressed by the diligence and integrity of the two young men from Chosun of the unfortunate kingdom, had agreed to take custody of it.
They had written to their parents often at whichever time the exchanges of greetings had been grandiose. It's because, like a locomotive train, a major transportation machine of that time, tidings personal and social had been slow. Extremely slow. Letters had been coming and going at a snail's pace, and telegraphs had been too expensive for common use.
The words contained in the correspondence had been "long-winded", sent especially from Toung Doung to his parents. The epistolary verbiage had been a common practice at that time. Time was fast flowing like water and the earth was revolving around the sun. He wondered, for waking hours or on sleeping beds, whether or not the esteemed bodies of his parents were well cared for.
3
A Fascinating Union in Manchu
Young folks should have an opportunity for amorous alliances. They had been famished for companionship with the counter sex. And it seemed there to have come a chance for romance for Toung Doung at least. That is, the landlord had had a daughter named Huang Mai in her blooming 20. She was pretty, smart and kind. Among all things, she was in her prime.
The older Huang had kept an eye on his guests, and in the process he had taken a liking for the two young boarders from a neighborly colony of the Imperial Japan. He had come to favor Toung Doung. Having been informed of his confidence and pressed by the landlord to get his position known, Toung Doung had balked. Although away from home for more than two years, Toung Doung had wanted to keep his fidelity because he had been bound by matrimonial ties and enamored of his wife at home.
Although Huang Suan had been very disappointed, he had not insisted. The younger Huang, bewildered by her father's frustration, had set her hearts on Toung Mahng instead, a more fuzzy and warmer type of person.
Her reason had restrained her but her desire, another turf of her realm, had gotten the better of it. Her legs had almost always carried herself unawares to a deep mountain trail not taken up to that time, where she had had a secret rendezvous with Toung Mahng.
It's like the two young folks had been attracted to each other. So much so that as soon as they had a heart-to-heart talk with each other, Huang Mai had gotten very much attached to Toung Mahng. On a late autumnal day they got to the place their legs had carried them.
Before they knew, they had been in each other's arms. They had gotten entangled in the confines of nondescript bushes just like the gnarled and entangled chilggi, Aristolochia manshuriensis. It eventually happened that Toung Mahng had cracked open the mysterious crevice of Huang Mai. The sky above the hill had consecrated their consummation with showers of its warm autumnal sun rays.
There had been a momentary pause after an initial union. A short while later there ensued a recurrent surge of the urge to crave to fascinate. Toung and Huang were reunited with more strength. Spontaneous cries of duet orgasm had erupted, drifting on the wings of the autumnal breeze.
Stillness like death had taken the place of the upsurge. A euphoric fatigue had overwhelmed them, with the breeze only tickling their naked bodies. They had lain there motionless for a while. Huang Mai (Huang had been her family name), turning around to Toung Mahng Wang (Wang had been his family name in this case) from his left side and covering their bodies with their clothes, had whispered to him, saying, "You won't leave me, will you, Mr. Wang?"
Toung Mahng, holding her hand with a good grip, had given her a steady stare. Then he had held up his index finger and written something briskly on her abdomen. She had wiggled her upper body a bit with a stare of titillating interest, giggling with a tickle. "What did you write?" she had wanted to know. Huang shim, or steady mind, he had solemnly pronounced.
Although his country had been raped of her sovereignty by the brutal country of Japan, he would keep his mind integral. He did not think the promise, even though it had been made during a passion job, would not last. Even though the moon changed its colors his mind would not change. He would love her for ever.
The older Huang had taken notice. Suspicions had been raised. Severe reproaches had been given. The initial denials and undertones had been offered; Facts had been confirmed and witnesses had been provided; The inescapable admission of transgressions had been made at last.
The disclosure had gotten Huang Suan speechless for a long while, his arms shaking and his eyes blood-shot, with his wife giving accusatory stares to the culprits. Disappointed by the improper behavior of his daughter and angered by the indiscretion done on his daughter by the lodger, the senior Huang had had to shout to the two lowered heads, saying "get out." He needed time to collect thoughts.
Mr. Huang had sat motionless, coughing a few awkward coughs and earth-sinking sighs. Comforting words from his wife had passed his ears. Time heals. At dusk he had had to muster courage, calling a family rally, the unwelcome one included.
He deplored the fact that "the distance had been violated." His motto for life was : "Keep the distance at any price." So much so that he believes that distance should be kept between people: Between parents and their offspring, the sovereign and his subjects, men and women, and between husband and wife. Toung Mahng Wang and Huang Mai should have kept it. He had not dared to say that there should have been distance between the girl of the Middle Kingdom and the young man of a small ruined country.
Explanations had been given by Toung Mahng, with enthusiastic vindication extended by Toung Doung for the sake of his cousin. Avowals of fidelity had been offered from Toung Mahng himself. The suggestion of pardons and tolerance on the grounds of inevitability had been made by Mrs. Huang. In time the landlord had seemed to relent.
Huang Suan had put forth three separate periods of one month: the one period of disciplinary sanctions on his daughter, the other period of mature consideration for the patriarch himself, and the third period for the assurance of the suitor's willingness to marry. Huang Suan's suggestion was that any party who would dissent on the union would hold the right to repeal the compact.
Hardly had a scant three weeks passed when the proprietor had announced all the periods putting to a stop. The chief of the house had declared the business off, starting from the 18th of October in lunar calendar. Red light lamps had been removed over the entrance of a small inn house of Mudanjang. Close relatives had been invited. A pig had been slaughtered. Mantou, dumplings of mashed pork, and other local dishes had been prepared. There had been an extended feast of three consecutive days.
(to be continued)
Dano and Tschai, 1997
While checking the shopping list of the next morning, Tschai casually wanted to know the availability of her husband's company. "You are sure to come, aren't you?" Though she pretended to ask a favor from her husband, he knew her question was final. The finality had long been taken for granted between the two.
Girls' and their mother's accessories took the better part of the shopping list. As Christmas neared, Tschai Lee's visits to Namdaemun Sijang were getting more frequent and her store was beginning to brim with all assortments of frills, tinsels, ornaments and trappings.
Though Tschai was not well dressed to fit an average proprietor of a usual accessory store in a major town of Seoul City, she was not so bad as to be named a worst dresser, either. She was shapely but not trendy enough. She was not interested in the brand-new clothing that is worn by most of the tinsel shop ladies. She was very resourceful in dealing in fashion items but she was not the type to dress up with fashionable outfit. That is, she was a minimalist.
As in another line of her duties, Tschai hated delays. She was punctual. She did not enjoy the luxury of procrastination most women do while doing makeups. Like a daughter of a rustic farmer, she was brisk, tough, direct and street-smart.
The early morning traffic was light. The sky was low and gray. Tschai had not figured out the distance between Kepo-dong #4, where she had been living for five years, and the South Portal, but she knew it usually took 20 or so minutes to get there by the city bus during the no-rush hours.
The seats of the bus were visibly vacated, the emptiness of which gave light chills to the couple. When they got by Itaewon, the couple found the city scape beginning to sink with precipitation. And the subterranean dens of the Itaewon area were now disgorging nocturnal wayfarers soaked with inebriation.
The passage of the Namsan Hill Tunnel almost always meant a launch into the whirlpool of a downtown. Getting off the bus at Hoehyon Bus Stop, Tschai accelerated her pace, with Dano picking up just behind her. Crossing a pedestrian underpass, passing a cavernous arcade, they came out breathing deeply once or twice for fresh air, bombarded with the fuss made by shop clerks and inhaling the scent of the morning coffees brewing along the path.
Whenever Dano Wang stepped into the heart of the Namdaemun Sijang, he had mixed feelings about it. Undescribable virility on the one hand and uncontrollable pity on the other, that is. Dwarfed by the towering presence of MESA just on the one flank and intimidated by the Shinsegae Department Store on the other, the popular conventional place of a merchandise trade kept standing, breathing and surviving...
In an effort to survive, the folks of the market used to get involved in copying state-of-the-art fashion items with bogus tag plates of famous original fashion artists plastered on. Local police more often than not raided the "bad stores" in the basement arcade and confiscated Prada handbags, Armani sunglasses and Cartier watches to discard them.
Legend has it that overall alterations are possible in a minute or two even when one stepped stripped and bare-footed into the area, he or she should appear casual and mature. Unlike in the United States, firearms are impossible. But impossible should not be categorical.
“Yobo (darling), what department shall we start with?" Dano asked. "Let's hit Department D first," Tschai said. Flurries of snow were everywhere. Passengers were picking up their paces. Tschai grabbed his hand and pulled him closer. "Watch your step, honey. You could trip and fall."
Winter gears were not really up for grabs. So they hastily bought scarves, leather gloves and children's socks. Dano once asked her why she did not haggle ever. "We do not try and cut off prices," she said between her teeth. "Haggling is not the mode of doing business here. They sell the merchandise to our store owners at a wholesale price."
The carriage of shopping items posed a challenge. A lot of resourceful customers used to run wheel bags to the bus or subway stations. Others employed backpackers with jigae, or wooden A-frames to their cars. Dano used to upload and download the bags as they moved along, which was his usual line of work.
A considerable time of 30 minutes or so passed, the couple plying between departments and mounting and dismounting the stairs. Packing bags in front of the escalator of the first floor of Junggang Sangga (Central Department), she left three large bulging bags with him. "Stay here, yobo. I'll collect some more."
Snow was falling down slow and steady. The vast store windows were getting blurry. Traveling a while around the terrestrial and subterranean wonderland, Tschai returned with an armful of Santa's goodies and Rainbow softies. Repacking, she said, "Shall we go eat some food?"
Dano and Tschai made a little fuss at the entrance of the Snow White, shaking and tapping. They shook their shoulders and took a few lousy taps to get rid of snow dirt. The flavor of various foods in the cafeteria stimulated their appetite.
They ordered two haejanggook (porky vegetable soup known to be good for the release of the hangover.) Picking his spoon and starting to eat, Dano said expansively, quoting "Hunger is the best sauce." Tschai dissented, saying that she didn't agree to the widely held adage. Dano wanted to know her better reasoning. She said hard work was. Dano questioned what she meant. She didn't mean anything.
Merry and resonant human voices were heard around in the cafeteria. They were those of the Japanese folks who had just come from across the East Sea by Japan Air Lines. Or, they might have stayed overnight here in Seoul. Their major quarry of Namdaemun shopping tour used to be Korean mountain herbs and marine products--mostly Korean songhi (pine mushrooms) and tastier laver.
They were rather garrulous yet melodious. They looked to be laid-back yet not indecent. They sounded confident but didn't sound haughty at all. They seated themselves in twos and fours. They didn't rattle off the order; They were so precise; Each one ordered their favorites from it.(to be continued)
While checking the shopping list of the next morning, Tschai casually wanted to know the availability of her husband's company. "You are sure to come, aren't you?" Though she pretended to ask a favor from her husband, he knew her question was final. The finality had long been taken for granted between the two.
Girls' and their mother's accessories took the better part of the shopping list. As Christmas neared, Tschai Lee's visits to Namdaemun Sijang were getting more frequent and her store was beginning to brim with all assortments of frills, tinsels, ornaments and trappings.
Though Tschai was not well dressed to fit an average proprietor of a usual accessory store in a major town of Seoul City, she was not so bad as to be named a worst dresser, either. She was shapely but not trendy enough. She was not interested in the brand-new clothing that is worn by most of the tinsel shop ladies. She was very resourceful in dealing in fashion items but she was not the type to dress up with fashionable outfit. That is, she was a minimalist.
As in another line of her duties, Tschai hated delays. She was punctual. She did not enjoy the luxury of procrastination most women do while doing makeups. Like a daughter of a rustic farmer, she was brisk, tough, direct and street-smart.
The early morning traffic was light. The sky was low and gray. Tschai had not figured out the distance between Kepo-dong #4, where she had been living for five years, and the South Portal, but she knew it usually took 20 or so minutes to get there by the city bus during the no-rush hours.
The seats of the bus were visibly vacated, the emptiness of which gave light chills to the couple. When they got by Itaewon, the couple found the city scape beginning to sink with precipitation. And the subterranean dens of the Itaewon area were now disgorging nocturnal wayfarers soaked with inebriation.
The passage of the Namsan Hill Tunnel almost always meant a launch into the whirlpool of a downtown. Getting off the bus at Hoehyon Bus Stop, Tschai accelerated her pace, with Dano picking up just behind her. Crossing a pedestrian underpass, passing a cavernous arcade, they came out breathing deeply once or twice for fresh air, bombarded with the fuss made by shop clerks and inhaling the scent of the morning coffees brewing along the path.
Whenever Dano Wang stepped into the heart of the Namdaemun Sijang, he had mixed feelings about it. Undescribable virility on the one hand and uncontrollable pity on the other, that is. Dwarfed by the towering presence of MESA just on the one flank and intimidated by the Shinsegae Department Store on the other, the popular conventional place of a merchandise trade kept standing, breathing and surviving...
In an effort to survive, the folks of the market used to get involved in copying state-of-the-art fashion items with bogus tag plates of famous original fashion artists plastered on. Local police more often than not raided the "bad stores" in the basement arcade and confiscated Prada handbags, Armani sunglasses and Cartier watches to discard them.
Legend has it that overall alterations are possible in a minute or two even when one stepped stripped and bare-footed into the area, he or she should appear casual and mature. Unlike in the United States, firearms are impossible. But impossible should not be categorical.
“Yobo (darling), what department shall we start with?" Dano asked. "Let's hit Department D first," Tschai said. Flurries of snow were everywhere. Passengers were picking up their paces. Tschai grabbed his hand and pulled him closer. "Watch your step, honey. You could trip and fall."
Winter gears were not really up for grabs. So they hastily bought scarves, leather gloves and children's socks. Dano once asked her why she did not haggle ever. "We do not try and cut off prices," she said between her teeth. "Haggling is not the mode of doing business here. They sell the merchandise to our store owners at a wholesale price."
The carriage of shopping items posed a challenge. A lot of resourceful customers used to run wheel bags to the bus or subway stations. Others employed backpackers with jigae, or wooden A-frames to their cars. Dano used to upload and download the bags as they moved along, which was his usual line of work.
A considerable time of 30 minutes or so passed, the couple plying between departments and mounting and dismounting the stairs. Packing bags in front of the escalator of the first floor of Junggang Sangga (Central Department), she left three large bulging bags with him. "Stay here, yobo. I'll collect some more."
Snow was falling down slow and steady. The vast store windows were getting blurry. Traveling a while around the terrestrial and subterranean wonderland, Tschai returned with an armful of Santa's goodies and Rainbow softies. Repacking, she said, "Shall we go eat some food?"
Dano and Tschai made a little fuss at the entrance of the Snow White, shaking and tapping. They shook their shoulders and took a few lousy taps to get rid of snow dirt. The flavor of various foods in the cafeteria stimulated their appetite.
They ordered two haejanggook (porky vegetable soup known to be good for the release of the hangover.) Picking his spoon and starting to eat, Dano said expansively, quoting "Hunger is the best sauce." Tschai dissented, saying that she didn't agree to the widely held adage. Dano wanted to know her better reasoning. She said hard work was. Dano questioned what she meant. She didn't mean anything.
Merry and resonant human voices were heard around in the cafeteria. They were those of the Japanese folks who had just come from across the East Sea by Japan Air Lines. Or, they might have stayed overnight here in Seoul. Their major quarry of Namdaemun shopping tour used to be Korean mountain herbs and marine products--mostly Korean songhi (pine mushrooms) and tastier laver.
They were rather garrulous yet melodious. They looked to be laid-back yet not indecent. They sounded confident but didn't sound haughty at all. They seated themselves in twos and fours. They didn't rattle off the order; They were so precise; Each one ordered their favorites from it.(to be continued)
Prologue
Prologue
This is a modest record of primitiveness to civilization. I say modest because I am too common a grassroots guy to be recorded even in the local Who's Who. But I have long been tempted to put in writing what I have witnessed. Though the experiences might have turned out to be trite and trivial, I thought then and there and I think just now that if global citizens were to get intrigued to what I am now about to relate, it will be worthy of a try.
This is a sober record of things past in which a rustic rough life had unveiled its uncultured features in the raw. For example, the country women then had gone out with their breasts bare at which no guys had thrown dirty sidelong stares. So casual. What is meant by primitive? To what extent had the South Korean rustic folks been primitive excepting for what the women folks had had the custom of revealing their breasts?
I had my ears bombarded as a kid with my grandma nagging my mom for fire preservation efforts. "Keep fire seed alive!" she had warned. And when my mom had made a mistake, against her persistent warning, of killing the seed of fire, my grandma had blurted out all kinds of bad words toward my mom. My poor mom had sobbed so often, for which she had been cursed.
This is also a record of my gratitude, enormous gratitude, that is. Could there be any thanks more meaningful and more profound than the benefaction of my birth into this bright world? My father had kept his son and family safe and sound through all his life and through all his efforts, as a poor citizen of the ruined country and as a coal miner of the Imperial Japan.
What an idiot of me not to have known about my father's grueling job of crawling in the coal pit with his hands and feet for quite a few years before the Liberation of 1945. He had vaguely mentioned his previous job as a miner in a district of Japan by the name of Nagasaki but he had not specified what category of a mining work he had been engaged in. Nor had I pursued further as a kid and as years passed by, my otherwise serious inquiry got it lost somewhere along the route.
I find the road to civilization from uncivilization lined with all the gamut of contrasts, contradictions and conflicts. The excitement, which my family had had when Dad had bought home a box of stick matches from a local bazaar, not just gave us convenience but the fear of a fire accident. The older family members had seen to it that my toddling brothers do not touch it.
I discovered that early literacy had often found itself into the chill of fear. Just like the kids, who, playing with fire during the day hours, will probably have "to wet the pajama while sleeping," the joy of reading The Story of Three Kingdoms, which had been serialized then in the Dong A Ilbo newspaper, had more often than not given me a chill and/or a nightmare.
Hardly had night fallen and the scattered cottages been shrouded in darkness when the lights of kerosene lamps glimmered like glares of wandering ghosts, I was wondering then that village dogs might have been so scared of darkness or that they had witnessed so many rampaging ghosts they were barking furiously. I was also wondering from time to time with cold chill running in my spine whether Tsao Tsao's army troops were invading the village, butchering and vandalizing with impunity.
Grandma had been a lily. Like a mountain lily, she had been long and tall. She had been so long in her lonely widowhood she was strict and harsh toward my Mom. She had been long in herbal medicine which had been used in treating her weak grandchild. She had been long in gourmet cooking which had been used in nourishing her dear family.
Grandma had been a paragon of familial civilization and culture. She had been so versed in letter writing that she had done the toiling of long letter- writing between family clans. The lengthy epistles had been written on paper scrolls and sent from the one patriarch or matriarch of a family clan to that of the counter family clan which had eventually been, or would be, connected each other with marriage...and delivered by a family servant on behalf of or for the sake of the illiterate senior family members of the clan for herself so often.
Grandma had been a power, a formidable power, that is. She had been domineering especially over her captive daughter-in-law, my poor mom, that is. One unfavorable condition for Mom was that her husband had opted to keep mum about the whole situation and the other aggravating condition was that her dear grandchild had opted to side with the power, opting to ignore his poor mom. Why? Because by doing that he had been able to dine with his grandma on the same dining table, such as it had been, on which meat and fish had been put, infrequently as they had been, though.
I had been such an easy prey for all kinds of illnesses, say, malaria, against which Grandma had turned out a family doctor, that is, a doctor of the alternative medicine. I had had lots of falls to each occurrence of which my grandma had raced with helping hands with comforting words. Which had been one of major reasons I had not been able to face up to Grandma to protect Mom, for which I have harbored the guilty feeling for Mom for the whole life of mine. Grandma had also done the trouble of waiting every night by herself, holding a kerosene lamp, for the late- coming grandchild for a long while on the top of the pine hill.
This book or novel or something is designed to record every conceivable gamut of fear, ranging from Grandma's nagging to startling nightmares to persistent bullying I had once gone through and to provide the ways and means by which I had at least had to alleviate and further to eliminate it.
Time heals. Grandma is long gone and Mom is 93 years old as of July, 2009. In her later years Grandma had been remorseful, and after she had gone to her oldest son's house to prepare for her last days, she had been very nice to her hitherto patient sermonee, a tolerant listener, a tearful nagee and a subservient daughter-in-law. But the days of her belated niceties had been too short: She had been confined in captivity in a small patio because of her severe senile dementia, or Alzheimer's disease.
I find myself a double sinner both to my grand mother and my mother. I should have earlier expressed my sincere gratitude for Grandma for her endless love of her grandchild who had needed protection and endorsement. In the same context, I should have been more considerate of her. So I should have been nicer to her with grateful words and hilarious anecdotes which could have made her laugh. When I found myself hugely indebted and I'd have to pay even for one thousandth of the debt I had owed her the debtor is gone forever.
On the other hand, the coward in me had made my lonely mother lonelier than ever. My mother had actually been robbed of the affection for her son, which he should have realized. That is, her mother-in-law had expropriated the parental love by her daughter-in-law. As a result, my mom had found no opportunity to express her love to her son, which had been deemed improper of her to do so.
Civilization was thought to be a whole process in which "marginal actions are disrupted and brand actions are created." The marginal actions, which could be profiled as clinical or categorized as superstitious, had been disrupted by science. For example, Grandma's knife- throwing and spirit-cursing was replaced by the medication of quinine. The canine consumption of human feces was no more in sight since the mean treat around the year 1949 in which the distant aunt of the family clan had let her husband slyly consume rice meal while she had served the coarse barley meal to their inviting young nephew.
"Figuratively speaking, civilization could be defined as a pollination process, that is, a human pollination process," I myself thought aloud. The Western thought, technologies and languages are bees and butterflies which are deemed essential for the social and cultural pollination. Suppose civilization was to be defined as a sophisticate interactive process, which could be compared to the pollination made by the external medium, and the bully nation of DPRK should deserve the designation of an incestuous sovereign entity.
The English language, which had been transmitted to the North America by the Puritans and which had undertaken a great metamorphosis that could deserve a fresh linguistic identity as the American language, was a major mechanism needed for the process of the civilization or the Westernization of South Korea. The foreign language had been very strange at first, very awkward to get started with, and has been very difficult to get familiarized with, like we go often through intricacies of the Western table manners.
The veneer, or facade seemed to take its precedence at every inception of civilizational activities. Hardly had I said a few hellos to the personage of the American language when I found the addresser impersonating himself as her best friend. A bizarre footage was that I, or the impersonator of the American language, was carrying the TIME magazine wherever I went.
It was since 1959 when I had run into her at my freshman year of Andong Normal School. I had just turned 17. She was sitting daintily at The School Book Store. She was a real beauty. She made her presence especially felt by her beautiful red borderline. I remember I had a crush on her from the very moment of "our encounter."
But the impersonation was a behavior of pretension at best, and one of a hoax or scam at worst. I didn't know her actually well but I kept posing as her best friend. I hadn't actually had a semblance of her knowledge. Nevertheless folks around me had taken me for her boyfriend, or a real wizard of the English language. I enjoyed hearing the folks talking behind me, saying among themselves in subdued whispers, "There goes English!"
“Vociferous are beginners!" so goes an old wisecrack. A just-married couple are conspicuously active. The religious beginners, say, especially Korean believers in Christianity, are cantankerously ubiquitous in various areas of human activity. They more often than not will stop your progression and hand out religious leaflets.
"Believe in Jesus," they whisper to your otherwise restful ears. "Or, you'll plunge into the labyrinth of Hell," they publicly threaten you in a bloodshot voice with bloodshot eyes. You know you have to be obliging, pretending to be eager and accepting their fanatic leaflets. Cornering the street and making sure you are not being seen, you must decide to keep, or dump them on a garbage can along the way.
Thing is that some people are easy to deal with, and the others are difficult to handle, in this whole wide world. On the one hand, there had been clay cottages in which I had been given a barley treat, while a mutt had been consuming human dung. and there should be high rises in which a vintage treat will be available. There is easy English, that is, easy American, and difficult English, that is, difficult American, of course. I used to be stunned finding myself shrinking at the level of difficulty ratings, say, in TIME articles. Some marveled at me seeing me holding the TIME magazine, saying "Are you a TIME reader yourself?" "Yes?" I replied in an unconvincing voice, inwardly startled.
I have not been a TIME reader these quite a few years but when I had taught the TIME articles, 20-some years ago, to a group of college students during their summer and winter recesses, I had professed from time to time ignorance about some specific passages or paragraphs, or about the whole exposition. Then and there a disappointing audience of mine had thrown a disapproving stare toward me, protesting "How dare you not know it as TIME instructor?"
Profession of ignorance is better than the false veneer of knowledge. I think that you shouldn't be ashamed of yourself, admitting your ignorance to a specific private citizen or to non-specific groups. It's your privilege to do so. No. The linguistic pretension is not a mere bad habit but a cultural chicanery or a crime.
I am hard of hearing a little bit. And I so often feel dizzy at the speed of a bullet with which the dialogues between the respectful Hollywood actors and actresses are done. I do not wear a hearing aid yet, which is considered a show of an old dad's vanity.
I won't forsake the privilege of a skeptic. I'll keep asking until my linguistic doubts will have been solved. I'll always prepare some notepads and Staedtler ball point pens for my linguistic search, tormenting interviewer. If these humble and coarse works of mine were to see a bright sunny day of a global publication, it would be mainly thanks to the great help of the esteemed Google Corporation, especially through Google's image searches. (www.google.com/images)
I think a national delegate sitting for a trade negotiation should not have to pretend to know everything, that is, every prose document. So a vainglorious nodding by an ignorant negotiator or two in a false recognition of the confusedly complicated exposition, which should have taken its place on a topmost level of the difficulty rating, would definitely result in perfidious national harm.
National snobs, please get out, who have been used to approvingly nodding something they actually were ignorant. Get in the ignorant, who are armed with courage who can honestly say they don't know. South Korea should have to crush its infamy as “a nation of misinterpreters or mistranslators.”In short, the so-called translators' prevarication by equivocation should not have to be tolerated any more.
A social farce is being enacted on both aides of cultural activists. On the one hand, the poor readers of the Korean version, whenever they were faced with translators' uncommunicative ramblings which were symptomatic of misinterpretations, they know it's time they had to be tolerant of the interpreters' linguistic faults, saying "Translation is called another creation," giggling away. On the other hand, the so-called translators, whenever they were faced with head-turning discourses of top-notch difficulty rating, they keep scribbling mantras of the wonderland, praying to the wizard of words "May the readers of the Korean version be infatuated with the incomprehensibility of the magical wording."
Translation, an embodiment of civilization activities, isn't another creation. It can't be. Impotent translators shouldn't have to make such crafty and groundless excuses as a shield against their own ludicrous misinterpretations. In the similar context, the readers shouldn't have to be tolerant of the interpreters' failings. We're sure to get to the objective of complete interpretation with perfect semantic understanding. The interpreters should seek out perfection through the sophisticate works of notes and subnotes and lastly through email efforts with the author.
The key to seek out perfect understanding and communication lies in your ability to paraphrase and rewrite the original scripts. and the key to paraphrasing and rewriting lies in how much you are expertly trained at synonymic expressions. In a larger context, the English language is construed as a synonym structure. I adore [The Synonym Finder] by J.I.Rodale and its peers.
I think the criticism of ragtag translations should have to be distinguished from a mere triviality of finding fault with interpretational errors or gossip- mongering about rambling translators, much less from a sheer act of vilification. My principle is that there should lie responsibility where there are bucks, huge bucks, that is. In other words, you should take responsibility to the degree for what you have made money.
A small responsibility for small bucks, and a great responsibility for huge bucks. An intermediate conclusion: The publishers and translators, who have sold millions or tens of millions of copies, should not have to sleep on the huge amount of money they've earned from the error-ridden Korean versions. Why not post corrections or erratums on the appendices of every additional publication just like the venerable New York Times have been doing.
I still ask myself this moment whether I am civilized enough, "Ain't I roughing it up no more?" I am not squatting on a dirt room floor reeking of kid urine anymore. I live in a modest apartment house in Seoul City, which is being listed on hourly news- and weather forecasts of CNN.
Granted that the global human society has pursued the comforts and conveniences of its members, a proper attention and energy should also be paid to the commitment to the constant ideals of loyalty to the sovereignty, the fidelity to the family virtues and the integrity to the local community at large. As a mean-spirited coward, I had given up on Mom, opting to dine with Grand Mom on her dining table, leaving poor Mom to eat on the corner of the room floor. Mom, punish your nasty son for his unforgivable crime that he had opted to ignore your plights.
Granted that the United States has turned out to be the nation of immigrants, it's been a deplorable trend for them to take advantage of their newly acquired American citizenships for the sake of their individual comforts and conveniences, forgetful of their allegiance to the great country of America. The main proposition: The citizens of the United States should have to be loyal to the adoptive nation above all the other nations. Otherwise, the great country of the United States would not be able to play the pivotal role any more as the citadel of the free democratic countries, with the great rampart destroyed.
It might have been very preposterous of me to confess now at this stage that this writer is at a loss how to define or categorize this humble work of his. Could this be a novel? Though Author Jane Smiley, through her book entitled Thirteen Ways of Looking at Novels this writer had come by at Bandi and Luni's Bookstore at COEX Mall, Seoul, had given me an encouraging patting on the shoulder (ibid, p.11, p.15, p.21,p.22), he's still at sea how to name it. So if you readers were patient enough to go further with the humble book pages of mine, I'd rather settle on a fresh new publicational format. which could be designated as an autobiographical novel, or novel essay, that is, a non-fiction made by borrowing a fictional mode.
This is a modest record of primitiveness to civilization. I say modest because I am too common a grassroots guy to be recorded even in the local Who's Who. But I have long been tempted to put in writing what I have witnessed. Though the experiences might have turned out to be trite and trivial, I thought then and there and I think just now that if global citizens were to get intrigued to what I am now about to relate, it will be worthy of a try.
This is a sober record of things past in which a rustic rough life had unveiled its uncultured features in the raw. For example, the country women then had gone out with their breasts bare at which no guys had thrown dirty sidelong stares. So casual. What is meant by primitive? To what extent had the South Korean rustic folks been primitive excepting for what the women folks had had the custom of revealing their breasts?
I had my ears bombarded as a kid with my grandma nagging my mom for fire preservation efforts. "Keep fire seed alive!" she had warned. And when my mom had made a mistake, against her persistent warning, of killing the seed of fire, my grandma had blurted out all kinds of bad words toward my mom. My poor mom had sobbed so often, for which she had been cursed.
This is also a record of my gratitude, enormous gratitude, that is. Could there be any thanks more meaningful and more profound than the benefaction of my birth into this bright world? My father had kept his son and family safe and sound through all his life and through all his efforts, as a poor citizen of the ruined country and as a coal miner of the Imperial Japan.
What an idiot of me not to have known about my father's grueling job of crawling in the coal pit with his hands and feet for quite a few years before the Liberation of 1945. He had vaguely mentioned his previous job as a miner in a district of Japan by the name of Nagasaki but he had not specified what category of a mining work he had been engaged in. Nor had I pursued further as a kid and as years passed by, my otherwise serious inquiry got it lost somewhere along the route.
I find the road to civilization from uncivilization lined with all the gamut of contrasts, contradictions and conflicts. The excitement, which my family had had when Dad had bought home a box of stick matches from a local bazaar, not just gave us convenience but the fear of a fire accident. The older family members had seen to it that my toddling brothers do not touch it.
I discovered that early literacy had often found itself into the chill of fear. Just like the kids, who, playing with fire during the day hours, will probably have "to wet the pajama while sleeping," the joy of reading The Story of Three Kingdoms, which had been serialized then in the Dong A Ilbo newspaper, had more often than not given me a chill and/or a nightmare.
Hardly had night fallen and the scattered cottages been shrouded in darkness when the lights of kerosene lamps glimmered like glares of wandering ghosts, I was wondering then that village dogs might have been so scared of darkness or that they had witnessed so many rampaging ghosts they were barking furiously. I was also wondering from time to time with cold chill running in my spine whether Tsao Tsao's army troops were invading the village, butchering and vandalizing with impunity.
Grandma had been a lily. Like a mountain lily, she had been long and tall. She had been so long in her lonely widowhood she was strict and harsh toward my Mom. She had been long in herbal medicine which had been used in treating her weak grandchild. She had been long in gourmet cooking which had been used in nourishing her dear family.
Grandma had been a paragon of familial civilization and culture. She had been so versed in letter writing that she had done the toiling of long letter- writing between family clans. The lengthy epistles had been written on paper scrolls and sent from the one patriarch or matriarch of a family clan to that of the counter family clan which had eventually been, or would be, connected each other with marriage...and delivered by a family servant on behalf of or for the sake of the illiterate senior family members of the clan for herself so often.
Grandma had been a power, a formidable power, that is. She had been domineering especially over her captive daughter-in-law, my poor mom, that is. One unfavorable condition for Mom was that her husband had opted to keep mum about the whole situation and the other aggravating condition was that her dear grandchild had opted to side with the power, opting to ignore his poor mom. Why? Because by doing that he had been able to dine with his grandma on the same dining table, such as it had been, on which meat and fish had been put, infrequently as they had been, though.
I had been such an easy prey for all kinds of illnesses, say, malaria, against which Grandma had turned out a family doctor, that is, a doctor of the alternative medicine. I had had lots of falls to each occurrence of which my grandma had raced with helping hands with comforting words. Which had been one of major reasons I had not been able to face up to Grandma to protect Mom, for which I have harbored the guilty feeling for Mom for the whole life of mine. Grandma had also done the trouble of waiting every night by herself, holding a kerosene lamp, for the late- coming grandchild for a long while on the top of the pine hill.
This book or novel or something is designed to record every conceivable gamut of fear, ranging from Grandma's nagging to startling nightmares to persistent bullying I had once gone through and to provide the ways and means by which I had at least had to alleviate and further to eliminate it.
Time heals. Grandma is long gone and Mom is 93 years old as of July, 2009. In her later years Grandma had been remorseful, and after she had gone to her oldest son's house to prepare for her last days, she had been very nice to her hitherto patient sermonee, a tolerant listener, a tearful nagee and a subservient daughter-in-law. But the days of her belated niceties had been too short: She had been confined in captivity in a small patio because of her severe senile dementia, or Alzheimer's disease.
I find myself a double sinner both to my grand mother and my mother. I should have earlier expressed my sincere gratitude for Grandma for her endless love of her grandchild who had needed protection and endorsement. In the same context, I should have been more considerate of her. So I should have been nicer to her with grateful words and hilarious anecdotes which could have made her laugh. When I found myself hugely indebted and I'd have to pay even for one thousandth of the debt I had owed her the debtor is gone forever.
On the other hand, the coward in me had made my lonely mother lonelier than ever. My mother had actually been robbed of the affection for her son, which he should have realized. That is, her mother-in-law had expropriated the parental love by her daughter-in-law. As a result, my mom had found no opportunity to express her love to her son, which had been deemed improper of her to do so.
Civilization was thought to be a whole process in which "marginal actions are disrupted and brand actions are created." The marginal actions, which could be profiled as clinical or categorized as superstitious, had been disrupted by science. For example, Grandma's knife- throwing and spirit-cursing was replaced by the medication of quinine. The canine consumption of human feces was no more in sight since the mean treat around the year 1949 in which the distant aunt of the family clan had let her husband slyly consume rice meal while she had served the coarse barley meal to their inviting young nephew.
"Figuratively speaking, civilization could be defined as a pollination process, that is, a human pollination process," I myself thought aloud. The Western thought, technologies and languages are bees and butterflies which are deemed essential for the social and cultural pollination. Suppose civilization was to be defined as a sophisticate interactive process, which could be compared to the pollination made by the external medium, and the bully nation of DPRK should deserve the designation of an incestuous sovereign entity.
The English language, which had been transmitted to the North America by the Puritans and which had undertaken a great metamorphosis that could deserve a fresh linguistic identity as the American language, was a major mechanism needed for the process of the civilization or the Westernization of South Korea. The foreign language had been very strange at first, very awkward to get started with, and has been very difficult to get familiarized with, like we go often through intricacies of the Western table manners.
The veneer, or facade seemed to take its precedence at every inception of civilizational activities. Hardly had I said a few hellos to the personage of the American language when I found the addresser impersonating himself as her best friend. A bizarre footage was that I, or the impersonator of the American language, was carrying the TIME magazine wherever I went.
It was since 1959 when I had run into her at my freshman year of Andong Normal School. I had just turned 17. She was sitting daintily at The School Book Store. She was a real beauty. She made her presence especially felt by her beautiful red borderline. I remember I had a crush on her from the very moment of "our encounter."
But the impersonation was a behavior of pretension at best, and one of a hoax or scam at worst. I didn't know her actually well but I kept posing as her best friend. I hadn't actually had a semblance of her knowledge. Nevertheless folks around me had taken me for her boyfriend, or a real wizard of the English language. I enjoyed hearing the folks talking behind me, saying among themselves in subdued whispers, "There goes English!"
“Vociferous are beginners!" so goes an old wisecrack. A just-married couple are conspicuously active. The religious beginners, say, especially Korean believers in Christianity, are cantankerously ubiquitous in various areas of human activity. They more often than not will stop your progression and hand out religious leaflets.
"Believe in Jesus," they whisper to your otherwise restful ears. "Or, you'll plunge into the labyrinth of Hell," they publicly threaten you in a bloodshot voice with bloodshot eyes. You know you have to be obliging, pretending to be eager and accepting their fanatic leaflets. Cornering the street and making sure you are not being seen, you must decide to keep, or dump them on a garbage can along the way.
Thing is that some people are easy to deal with, and the others are difficult to handle, in this whole wide world. On the one hand, there had been clay cottages in which I had been given a barley treat, while a mutt had been consuming human dung. and there should be high rises in which a vintage treat will be available. There is easy English, that is, easy American, and difficult English, that is, difficult American, of course. I used to be stunned finding myself shrinking at the level of difficulty ratings, say, in TIME articles. Some marveled at me seeing me holding the TIME magazine, saying "Are you a TIME reader yourself?" "Yes?" I replied in an unconvincing voice, inwardly startled.
I have not been a TIME reader these quite a few years but when I had taught the TIME articles, 20-some years ago, to a group of college students during their summer and winter recesses, I had professed from time to time ignorance about some specific passages or paragraphs, or about the whole exposition. Then and there a disappointing audience of mine had thrown a disapproving stare toward me, protesting "How dare you not know it as TIME instructor?"
Profession of ignorance is better than the false veneer of knowledge. I think that you shouldn't be ashamed of yourself, admitting your ignorance to a specific private citizen or to non-specific groups. It's your privilege to do so. No. The linguistic pretension is not a mere bad habit but a cultural chicanery or a crime.
I am hard of hearing a little bit. And I so often feel dizzy at the speed of a bullet with which the dialogues between the respectful Hollywood actors and actresses are done. I do not wear a hearing aid yet, which is considered a show of an old dad's vanity.
I won't forsake the privilege of a skeptic. I'll keep asking until my linguistic doubts will have been solved. I'll always prepare some notepads and Staedtler ball point pens for my linguistic search, tormenting interviewer. If these humble and coarse works of mine were to see a bright sunny day of a global publication, it would be mainly thanks to the great help of the esteemed Google Corporation, especially through Google's image searches. (www.google.com/images)
I think a national delegate sitting for a trade negotiation should not have to pretend to know everything, that is, every prose document. So a vainglorious nodding by an ignorant negotiator or two in a false recognition of the confusedly complicated exposition, which should have taken its place on a topmost level of the difficulty rating, would definitely result in perfidious national harm.
National snobs, please get out, who have been used to approvingly nodding something they actually were ignorant. Get in the ignorant, who are armed with courage who can honestly say they don't know. South Korea should have to crush its infamy as “a nation of misinterpreters or mistranslators.”In short, the so-called translators' prevarication by equivocation should not have to be tolerated any more.
A social farce is being enacted on both aides of cultural activists. On the one hand, the poor readers of the Korean version, whenever they were faced with translators' uncommunicative ramblings which were symptomatic of misinterpretations, they know it's time they had to be tolerant of the interpreters' linguistic faults, saying "Translation is called another creation," giggling away. On the other hand, the so-called translators, whenever they were faced with head-turning discourses of top-notch difficulty rating, they keep scribbling mantras of the wonderland, praying to the wizard of words "May the readers of the Korean version be infatuated with the incomprehensibility of the magical wording."
Translation, an embodiment of civilization activities, isn't another creation. It can't be. Impotent translators shouldn't have to make such crafty and groundless excuses as a shield against their own ludicrous misinterpretations. In the similar context, the readers shouldn't have to be tolerant of the interpreters' failings. We're sure to get to the objective of complete interpretation with perfect semantic understanding. The interpreters should seek out perfection through the sophisticate works of notes and subnotes and lastly through email efforts with the author.
The key to seek out perfect understanding and communication lies in your ability to paraphrase and rewrite the original scripts. and the key to paraphrasing and rewriting lies in how much you are expertly trained at synonymic expressions. In a larger context, the English language is construed as a synonym structure. I adore [The Synonym Finder] by J.I.Rodale and its peers.
I think the criticism of ragtag translations should have to be distinguished from a mere triviality of finding fault with interpretational errors or gossip- mongering about rambling translators, much less from a sheer act of vilification. My principle is that there should lie responsibility where there are bucks, huge bucks, that is. In other words, you should take responsibility to the degree for what you have made money.
A small responsibility for small bucks, and a great responsibility for huge bucks. An intermediate conclusion: The publishers and translators, who have sold millions or tens of millions of copies, should not have to sleep on the huge amount of money they've earned from the error-ridden Korean versions. Why not post corrections or erratums on the appendices of every additional publication just like the venerable New York Times have been doing.
I still ask myself this moment whether I am civilized enough, "Ain't I roughing it up no more?" I am not squatting on a dirt room floor reeking of kid urine anymore. I live in a modest apartment house in Seoul City, which is being listed on hourly news- and weather forecasts of CNN.
Granted that the global human society has pursued the comforts and conveniences of its members, a proper attention and energy should also be paid to the commitment to the constant ideals of loyalty to the sovereignty, the fidelity to the family virtues and the integrity to the local community at large. As a mean-spirited coward, I had given up on Mom, opting to dine with Grand Mom on her dining table, leaving poor Mom to eat on the corner of the room floor. Mom, punish your nasty son for his unforgivable crime that he had opted to ignore your plights.
Granted that the United States has turned out to be the nation of immigrants, it's been a deplorable trend for them to take advantage of their newly acquired American citizenships for the sake of their individual comforts and conveniences, forgetful of their allegiance to the great country of America. The main proposition: The citizens of the United States should have to be loyal to the adoptive nation above all the other nations. Otherwise, the great country of the United States would not be able to play the pivotal role any more as the citadel of the free democratic countries, with the great rampart destroyed.
It might have been very preposterous of me to confess now at this stage that this writer is at a loss how to define or categorize this humble work of his. Could this be a novel? Though Author Jane Smiley, through her book entitled Thirteen Ways of Looking at Novels this writer had come by at Bandi and Luni's Bookstore at COEX Mall, Seoul, had given me an encouraging patting on the shoulder (ibid, p.11, p.15, p.21,p.22), he's still at sea how to name it. So if you readers were patient enough to go further with the humble book pages of mine, I'd rather settle on a fresh new publicational format. which could be designated as an autobiographical novel, or novel essay, that is, a non-fiction made by borrowing a fictional mode.
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