Nancying in the Powder Room. Bathhouse Ballads
A Bathhouse Ballad
In this particular bathhouse (목욕탕) you can sit in the ebente-tang (이벤트탕) and watch the men and boys nancying about in the little ‘powder room’ that are provided in all bathing establishments. This particular ebente-tang doesn’t have any added aromas or coloured water and you might be forgiven for wondering why indeed it is even called an ‘ebente-tang,’ until the pool starts frothing and chomping quite crazily. The jets of water from inside the pool, should you be unfortunate enough to be sat over one as it starts and you fart, are powerful enough to administer a surprise enema. As I’m being buffeted by the jacuzzi jets, I’m busily watching three middle-aged men in the ‘powder room.’ All are stood, independent of each other and two are in straddle stances, or in what martial artists would recognise as a ‘horse stance.’
A 'wushu' version of the 'horse stance'
Traditionally, this stance is used to strengthen the legs and as a position from which to practice various blocks and strikes. As a combat stance it is redundant as it renders a male a potential gelding should a strike to the groin be forthcoming. Don’t forget, the men in the ‘powder room’ are totally naked. Rather than blocking and striking, feet rigidly anchored to the ground, both men are drying their sack and crack with hairdryers. I’m thinking they must have studied at the same school because despite all the variations of horse stance, both are in identical style, technique and positions. Most likely it’s a taekwondo derived stance as it is much higher than in the Chinese version above yet not as high as the one featuring Bruce Lee (이소룡), below. This version is in-between.
이소룡 (Bruce Lee) practicing the sack 'n' crack stance.
The accompanying arm movements are identical: first the dryer is held pointing at the sack ‘n’ tackle before being swung between the legs to windy the crack area. The latest event in the tub, an eruption, has quelled and I’m chuckling to myself as a third man in the ‘powder room’ demonstrates his technique. Clearly, he has been trained in a totally different school. After fiddling with one of the big fans on the long dressing table, angling it into the required position, he turns, get into a straddle and bends over, parking his exposed butt in the fan’s stream. The technique is very different but the stance is identical to that of the other two men and with head almost touching the floor, the fan is probably capable of drying his sack ‘n’ crack all at the same time.
Jeez, Korean men are such ponces! That’s why I like them. Back in the UK, a room such as this would terrify most westerners not just because you nancy about in it naked, but because the purpose of the room involves preening oneself. Actually, I much prefer the safety of the ebente-tang to watch how different men occupy themselves in this task. I never stay long in the ‘powder room,’ not because I don’t like being naked in front of other men, but because I don’t like being naked in front of myself, and like most ‘powder rooms,’ the walls are covered in mirrors.
All the flaws of being western are magnified in the array of mirrors and bright lights. Our skin tone tends to be more varied; my face is slightly ruddy, my buttocks lily white, my forearms as tanned as any Koreans and my neck brown. The rest of my body is whitey- pink, like a giant maggot. Then there’s the hair; back hair, chest hair, arm hair and leg hair and it’s all different in colour, texture and shape. My arm hair is smooth, my chest hair a little coarser and the hair on my back is somewhat like the hair on the backs of my arms, long and straggly and the sort of hair a neanderthal might have. I can’t stand looking at myself in those mirrors and always find the ‘powder room’ a little stressful.
All that hair. Yuk!
I touched on the subject of body hair several months ago, in relation to living in an environment free of carpets. It’s only in this type of environment that you realise just how much hair we shed. I am not especially hairy and I sweep my floor everyday with one of those magical wipes to which hair and fluff adhere. Despite this, I find hair everywhere. I’ve found them in the fridge, freezer and only a few days ago I was eating a slice of water melon when what I thought was a little crack on my plate, was in fact a pubic hair. I’m 54 and have a full head of hair non of which I see anywhere, but pubic hair, chest hair and those unsightly, straggly back of arm and back hairs, get everywhere. Korean bodies are so much nicer, more alike in proportions, colour and apart from having pubes that are long enough to perm and which often seemed to be straight rather than curly, are usually pretty hairless. Hair, its antediluvian and barbaric! As I get older I notice my eyebrows becoming wilder and if I don’t trim them I start to develop antennae. Nasal hair is a bugger but is kept at bay with regular burst from a cigarette lighter. And I dread getting ear hair as that looks especially alien.
No hairs in his fridge!
In the ‘powder room’ a couple of men and a boy are preening; an old man is methodically combing his hair with a brush from the selection of brushes and combs which are always available. I’ve never seen any hairs on brushes and assume they are cleaned regularly and in many ‘power rooms’ are small steam boxes similar to those used in doctors surgeries and dentist, to sanitize such items. A boy is cleaning out his ears with cotton buds (q-tips), an item as standard as towels and soap. On the long dressing tables, there is always a collection of face creams, hair gel and skin brace. As with everything in bathhouse and jjimjilbang culture, no two places are exactly alike.
Monday Market Ban Ch'an (반찬)
Basically, ban ch’an (반찬) is the collective term for the extensive number of side dishes which can accompany a Korean meal. This most noted of these being kimchi (김치) but of course, there are many different types of kimchi. I used to buy my ban ch’an in E-Marte but have discovered it is much cheaper to buy in street markets, or even cheaper if you make it yourself.
A small selection of what is available
Sesame Spinach (시금치 나물)
Delicious and simple to make
Vegetables! Boring! But there are a number of vegetables that can be prepared in the same way as sesame-spinach, one of my favourite Korean side dishes (반찬) which is both incredibly easy to make and tasty enough to ‘pig out’ on. I will often raid the fridge at night to snack on this. Koreans use the entire baby spinach plant which I’ve not seen in the UK but I’m sure you could probably make it with other types of spinach and indeed substitute spinach for other types of leaf.
The biggest bind to making this side dish is removing the yellowed leaves and trimming off the stalks. I recently watched the guru of Korean cooking, Maangchi performing a similar process with young radish shoots (열무) and her skills with a knife are formidable. In a flash she cut out yellowed leaves, trimmed off roots and scrapped their shafts clean. To be honest, I can’t be bothered, all that work for a couple of munches! What takes the wonderful Maangchi ten seconds takes me a minute and besides, she’s younger and not prone to backache standing over the sink. I only cook for me and once any chemicals and dust are washed off, I’m happy to eat any bits of root and yellowed leaf though I will pick them out if not too much bother.
In Korea, you usually buy spinach in bundles and it is best to put these straight in water and let them soak. Withered looking bunches will quickly revive. I recently bought a bundle and then went for a walk leaving them on the back seat of a car on a hot afternoon. On my return they had totally wilted and at home I noticed some plants were beginning to decompose . Subsequently, the water I washed them in was tainted green and smelt a little like a dirty goldfish bowl.
Baby spinach plants
Way too much work removing the few bad bits, so after thoroughly swishing them in water, they were blanched for a about a minute . Usually, I keep the stock and add it to bean paste soup which I eat for breakfast. This panful, I chucked straight down the sink.! The leaves are then washed in cold water and when properly drained, tossed in chopped red chilli, garlic, sesame seeds, a good splash of soy sauce and sesame seed oil. I’m on a diet, so I use the sesame oil sparingly but it is this which gives this side dish such a sexy aroma and compliments and transforms the spinach into something you can easily alone.
Maangchi's version, superior!
I can report, that I at no time noticed anything unpleasant about the decomposed state of some of the spinach leaves, washing, blanching and rinsing removed most of them. It still tasted delicious.
The Queen of Korean cooking, Maangchi, would be appalled at my cooking technique so if you want a first class tutorial, in various formats, on how to make this simple side dish, please click the photo below to activate. The site also contain many comments from readers who have tried various other vegetables to make a similar side dish.
I have used the same recipe using:
Baby radish sprouts (옇무).
Mung bean shoots (숙주 나물)
Make sesame spinach side dish with the Queen of Korean Cooking: Maangchi
Have Stick Will User It
Discipline Korean style
Has anyone teaching in high schools noticed that if a student is rude or disrespectful, they are generally the ones who have had a sojourn studying in the west – usually in the USA and much less frequently the UK? Now, before I get started, I am not saying that all Korean students who have studied outside Korea are tainted or that Koreans who have never studied abroad are never rude or disrespectful. With considerable experience teaching in the UK as well as experience in Korea, I am making comparisons based on my own experiences in addition to an awareness of the general standards of behaviour both in the UK and Korea.
First of all, I have never been fouled mouthed or insulted by Korean students. No Korean student has ever sworn or shouted at me and the only time I can recall when I was shown disrespect was on an isolated incident when a student addressed me in intimate level speech (반말). As my Korean is rudimentary, students may have been taking the piss and insulting all along but I have never been led to believe they were and even if this were the case it pales into insignificance in comparison to my experiences in the UK.
Before getting defensive about Britain or the USA, there are numerous blogs, and indeed books written by teachers appalled at the conditions under which they have to teach. I too have an extensive blog dedicated to teaching in the UK. There is a small but significant number of professional teachers working in Korea, all who have abandoned teaching in their home countries because of poor discipline, low standards, anti-intellectualism, dumbing down, violence and so forth. So, while there might be bad apples in Korea, they are not likely to attack you or call you a ‘fucking wanker,’ or indeed a ‘cunt.’ These are my experiences but I know many other teachers have had similar experiences and worse. No Korean student has never attempted to hit or spit at me. Indeed, when I was spat at in the UK, the headteacher didn’t even bother asking to see the boy and simply asked to see my planner. That was in Southborough Boys School, in Hook, Surbiton, where I quickly deduced that it was acceptable for a student to spit at a teacher if the lesson wasn’t deemed enjoyable. If I had been a more seasoned teacher at the time, I would have used the attack to claim psychological or physical injury and earned myself several months paid sick leave. Clacton County High School (CCHS) is another school where I’ve had students call me a ‘cunt’ or ‘a ”wanker’ and they were never reprimanded by management. Given the abysmal examples of leadership and staff support, I am not surprised standards are so low in the UK. Outing shit schools and shit practice is something all citizens should do especially when management in those establishments prefer to pretend nothing is amiss.
Korean teacher with stick
In Korea, I carry a stick, affectionately called ‘Billy.’ And occasionally, perhaps once a week, I will use it. I have never hurt a student with it though if I wanted to, this would be acceptable. My boss actually encourages me to hit students and I’m sure she sees it as a weakness on my part that I don’t do so more often. When students are being naughty, I’ll call for the stick. ‘Billy? Billy? Where are you?’ Then, I’ll poke around in my draw. Within seconds there is silence. ‘Billy, come on out! Someone’s arse needs a clout!’ Then, like un-sheathing Excalibur, I draw Billy from his lair and brandish him. Even with older students, this pantomime elicits a sigh of awe as if I really have drawn a sword or sparked-up a light saber.
Billy is pretty pathetic! Thirteen inches of stick not much thicker than a pencil and not very springy. Being six-foot six and large, I find him the perfect companion and actually traded him for real stick designed for pointing and striking which I’d bought for 5000 Won (£2.50). We have now been together for two years and at Christmas I took him back to the UK in order to treat him to a lick of linseed oil that I keep in my garage, for use on my front room floor. Ironically, I traded my real stick, which resembled the narrower end of a snooker cue, and which many high school teachers posses, with that of the smallest female teacher in a boys high school. Both of us preferred each others tool. Despite a recent oiling, Billy’s arthritic state spares the kids a real whacking as I am conscious of not snapping him in two.
By now, whatever the problem was has vanished or, if it is an issue of homework, the offender will be awaiting punishment. I always make lack of homework punishments quick and will strike without any prior warning. Sometimes, the offender actually thinks they’ve been spared. I usually hit them on the head. Yes, I know I shouldn’t, but for the PC brigade, anywhere is liable to cause injury and the safest place, on the bum or back of legs demand a sort of procedure, like bending over, which almost serves to ritualise the punishment and which I personally find a little pervy. And of course, Billy is too much of a light weight to have much effect in that area without the risk of being broken. So, the head it is! One short snap, never very hard and certainly much less damaging than the game Korean boys play where they do ‘rock, scissor, paper’ and the winner gets to ‘flick’ a finger on his opponents forehead.
A Gurkha kukri, supposedly never sheathed without drawing blood
I usually treat Billy like a kukri, the Gurkha traditional knife, supposedly, never sheathed without first drawing blood. Last year, I threw a crazy with a class, probably the one and only crazy I’ve thrown in Korea. For a minute or so I shouted and screamed and smacked Billy on the desk. Two children started crying and the rest were terrified. That was a year ago, but one the odd occasion I need to call for Billy’s help, those students still in the class, and who remember that day, put their head in their hands in trepidation.
I actually find it difficult to hit a student and after striking them feel very bad if they start crying . As in the UK, if you are not careful kids make excuses for lack of homework on a weekly basis but Billy cures this problem instantly; no lectures, no debates, no pleading, no detentions or phoning parents, not wasting valuable time, just a thwack of Billy on the head and you can guarantee the issue will be resolved and a homework subsequently forth coming. Western teachers, fooled by the PC claptrap that corporeal punishment is barbaric, are misguided. If I make a joke and strike my stick on the head of a kid they will laugh but should I use the same force when angry, and the child’s ‘kibun’ is damaged, they will often have tears in their eyes. This should tell you how minuscule my punishment is! It is not the force of my stick hitting them that castigates and punishes them, but the loss of face within the class. Joking aside however, I witnessed some brutal punishments in my former High School.
In a Korean class, there is absolutely no mistaking who is the boss and this difference creates a chasm in standards between British and Korean schools. In Korea, the teacher is always boss and ultimately students know this. Korean kids will push their chances and intimidate you in their own Korean way but they know that they can be physically punished. British kids however, are equally aware that teachers can do nothing about bad behaviour. In many British schools, it is children who rule the class room and permit or hinder a lesson as they see fit. Bad management structures, of which students are unwittingly aware and will use to their advantage, have created schools where classroom teachers are powerless while managers can saunter into lesson and demand compliance because students know they have direct access to contacting their parents – a power usually denied non managers.
My stick, 'Billy.'
Ah, Korea. A different world where for most cases, even the most horrible student is an angel by comparison. And instead of being shunned like a leper when out shopping, Korean students want to introduce their parents to you or simply say hello. Today, a student’s mum bought me a large cake, last week I received a bag of six homemade soaps, and so forth. Anyone who has taught in Korea will have been presented gifts such as these. In the UK, I didn’t even get a fucking apple from the class creep! So, when I have been confronted by ‘disrespect’ from Korean students who have studied abroad, it’s more like ‘indifference’ and familiarity than lack of respect. I have frequently had to interview high school students and a substantial number of those who have studied abroad will slouch in front of you, talk to you in a familiar way and are the quickest to tut or talk back. On a few rare occasions, I’ve even heard them mutter expletives under their breath.
Experience of the west must have a profound effect on them as it exposes them to a range of experiences, not all of which are bad, which are denied them in Korea. Most will have been exposed to drugs, anti-intellectual attitudes, educational mores that encourage and prompt them to be sexually active, homosexuality, trans-gender, a society that empowers students well in advance of them being able to yield that power responsibly, and a system that often polarizes teachers and students and charges that relationship with antagonism and distrust most pertinent the notion that every adult is a potential perv. In the UK, Billy would have been assassinated! There is no doubt students would have sought him out when not in my company and snapped him in half. More disturbing, they would have done so with glee.
The Times Newspaper (UK), conducted a survey in 2008 which revealed a fifth of all teachers support the use of corporeal punishment. This week in New Zealand (May 15 2020), it was revealed half the population support the return of the cane especially in the light of figures highlighting the corresponding rise in crimes within school that has occurred since corporeal punishments was banned.
Ministry of Justice statistics for pre-teen violence released just last month also showed a disturbing trend. From 1998-2008, the number of police apprehensions for grievous/serious assaults by 10-13 year olds increased by more than 70%. For each of the most recent two years, there has been almost 1,000 apprehensions for 10-13 year olds for all violent offences, which include aggravated robbery, sexual violation, indecent assault, and serious assaults – an increase of a third since 1998. (link to NZNEWSUK)
High School discipline: harsh but less severe than two years compulsory military service!
If you care for the development of children, the occasional smack is absolutely necessary. If my son or daughter were caught sticking their fingers in the electric socket, I would administer them a good clout as failure to instill in them the danger of doing this, puts their lives at risk. It is widely believed in Korea, that corporeal punishment reflects caring for youngsters’ development and the stick is often referred to as the ‘stick of love’. Personally, reflecting on some of the hideous scum I have had the misfortune to teach in the UK, it is clear we neither respect them, ourselves or other members of society – most notably other students. Of course British teachers can’t say they ‘love kids,’ not without having to spout a diatribe to explain themselves, which is just as well as judging by the scum we have allowed to pollute wider society, we clearly don’t. You will hear the phrase ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ far more in Korea than you do in Britain. The politically correct lobby has compelled us to obsess about the rights of bad children and generally bad people in a plethora of contexts, has helped facilitate a society where all of us, including children, in one way or another, are now victims of, or held ransom by, the very scum we molly-coddled and subsequently empowered.
Postscripts
This is true, a few weeks ago my boss gave her class a vocabulary test. One of the words requiring translation into English was, ‘몽둥이.’ (stick). Two students answered, ‘Billy.’
I don’t know how long this link will remain on Daum, but here is a brief recording of a very disturbing, and brutal corporeal punishment.
http://tvpot.daum.net/clip/ClipView.do?clipid=13660273&lu=m_rc_main_recentcommentlist_10
Fat is Here
A Bathhouse Ballad
In the ebente-tang, the aroma of the day is lavender (라벤더). I’m wallowing while I see some guy stood in the cold pool snot-up into his hand and casually just wash it off – into the pool water. Filthy twat! I occasionally take in a mouthful of that water, I guess most people do and, I open my eyes underwater! Pissing in the baths is one thing, at least you are unaware of people doing it, but if you’re going to snot up, be discrete! The snotting incident made me wonder if the water is filtered. It is certainly changed on a regular basis and probably filtered. Neither is it chlorinated but as most people shower before entering the baths this doesn’t bother me. I can remember seeing a few turds in British swimming pools but despite the chlorinated water, I wasn’t going to swim anywhere near them! Often I notice children, usually unaccompanied, get straight into a bath without showering. Last Thursday, which was the eve of Buddha’s birthday, and a public holiday, there were about 10 teenagers running around. Usually, adults get irritated by raucous behaviour but the atmosphere was jovial and I noticed several men lounging in surrounding pools watching them and smiling. There was a definite holiday spirit; they held the door shut to the ice room door trapping friends inside and threw bowls of freezing cold water at each other. For almost an hour the bathhouse, the noisiest I have ever heard it, despite it not being very busy, resonated with their laughter. Then a fat guy walked in and I started thinking…
At one time, when there were few other wayguks around, I used to be the fattest man in Song-So and one of my companions, a woman from Australia, was probably the fattest woman. Though she was excellent company, I hated walking around with her. A fat person, especially one who is 1.95 cm tall, attracts attention but two fat people together, well, the assumption is they are a couple and that all western wayguks are fat. Two fat wayguks together loose their identity in the conflation that reduces them to, ‘they’ and ‘fat.’ If you’re sweating, unable to buy clothes that fit, if you’re seen eating, if you don’t like walking up four floors to your place of work, well, it’s all because you’re fat! And eating an ice-cream in public! No wonder you’re fat! I happen to take size 14 (UK) shoes. You can’t buy them in Korea, apart from perhaps in Seoul. And the reason my feet are so big, despite being the leanest parts of my body? I’m fat, of course! When Koreans see a fatty or a fatty couple, this is how they probably think, and I assume this, as in the west, it is how we think. Even if I see a fat person eating an ice cream on a hot summer’s day, even if I am eating one myself, my immediate thought is, ‘go on a diet, fat arse!’ Two fat people with backsides like hippopotami, holding hands on the beach front promenade, and wobbling like jelly… ‘gross! The contradictory nature of my thought, doesn’t even sully the flavour of my ice-cream.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but when my fat female friend and I took a taxi, along with two petit Koreans, and her and I ended up sitting on the same side of the cab, it was clear what caused the problem, and it wasn’t paranoia! The window on our side of the taxi looked directly onto the tarmac while the opposite window framed the full moon. After a hundred meters and a few grating sounds from some part of the vehicle now in contact with the road, the taxi driver evicted us.
In 2000, and probably until fairly recently, I was the fattest person I ever saw in a bathhouse. Even proportionately, no Korean ever came close to my dimensions. This isn’t because I have the girth of Jabba the Hutte, but because Koreans were, and to some extent still are, smaller than westerners. My diary pages from that period provide several references to there being a distinct lack of fat people. In the school at which I taught there was one fat boy, I even remember his name, Jack; a photo of him hangs in my bedroom bathroom, back in the UK. In my taekwondo school was another chubby. Neither boys were particularly fat and today, just ten years later, would be classified as fairly normal.
I need no helpers for this size portion!
In the last few months, I have noticed that on almost every visit to a bathhouse there are one or two Koreans proportionately the same size and sometimes fatter than I. Very often, other fatties are kiddies. Burger bars, fried chicken, Baskin Robbins, Dunkin Donut and plenty of other western style fast food outlets have proliferated, and the price Korea is paying, especially their youth, is the bulging waistline. Ten years ago I went into a Baskin Robbins in downtown Daegu. I was with a Korean friend and her daughter and when I arrived at their table with a tray containing three, what I considered ‘normal’ size ice creams, they starred in amazement. One tub, they told me, would have been enough for all three of us but to me, they were the sort of size you would buy yourself back home. In the ten years interim, I now have two Baskin Robbins within a 7 minutes walk of my home and occasionally I will treat myself to an 11.000Won (£5.50), pot of ice cream. I think it holds about 5 scoops. I can easily eat this and could also finish off one of their larger buckets. Even if I buy the smaller pot, smaller than a Macdonald milkshake cup, staff will ask how many spoons I want. Shame prevents me from replying’ ‘one’ so, pondering in thought for a moment, as if counting the number of people back home waiting for me to deliver, I reply, ‘four.’
Along with the western fast food diet, fat has finally arrived in Korea
Korean proportions are always piddly and I’m not really into the act of sharing my food, especially ice cream. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a Korean meal, even at a buffet restaurant, and left feeling properly stuffed, stuffed western style where you can’t breathe properly and feel you’ve mutated into an enormous maggot. In the west, there are countless times I’ve gone for a meal and reached the point where Mr Creosote, in Monty Python’s, The Meaning of Life, cannot eat another chocolate wafer. But in the midst of a Korean public, usually much skinnier than I, being a fatty fills me with guilt and curbs my glutenous instincts. The fatties I now see around me at the bathhouse, and who attract more attention than I because, they are Korean and fat, which is novel, and not wayguk western and fat, which is common, certainly know what it feels to be ‘stuffed’ and all I am left pondering, as I wallow in my scented bath, feeling more like a warthog than large bottomed hippopotamus, is how do you pig out on Korean food? Fat has finally arrived and the blubberier it becomes, the slimmer I feel.
Link to Crazy Fat Korean Video
Laura (1) Korean Teenagers
Not suitable for pumpkin people
If there’s one thing I love about Korean teenage girls, it’s that you rarely meet one who is a slag. No doubt slags exist in Korea and no doubt there are examples of Korean 15-year-old girls who trowel on make-up, wear Satan’s panties and are promiscuous, but I haven’t met any. In the UK, unless you teach in a top girls school, and I was fortunate enough to have taught stints in two of the top schools, notably Colchester Royal Grammar School (a boys school) and Colchester Girls’ High School, a large percentage of the girls are strumpets. Many of them were good students and decent kids but they still dressed and behaved in a way I didn’t think appropriate: obsessed with their bodies, with looking sexy, obsessed with sex, with behaving in a sexual manner and in flaunting their undeveloped bodies all of which comprised to denude them of personality. From childhood recollections to my more recent experiences as a teacher, being a slapper, in the UK at least, drastically improves a girls popularity among both other girls, and naturally, among the boys. My sister is convinced that had she been in those elite ranks, she’d have had a more interesting life. Amusing though this comment is, I’m glad she wasn’t.
High school students in the 2nd grade. ( aged around 16-17) Absolutely no make-up at all was permitted in this particular school.
Laura, one of my Korean students, is 15 and totally adorable and like many Korean teenagers, a country with the lowest rate of teen pregnancy in the world, she is, in the cute Korean way, ‘innocent.’ Laura definitely has an interest in boys and one of our regular conversation topics centers on which boy band she is currently into and which boys she finds attractive. Recently, she has started using perfume which I would imagine she applies after leaving her school and before she comes to the haggwon in which I teach. The ‘safest’ place for her to do this is probably on the elevator up to the third floor, where the school is located. Her perfume predilection started about 2 months ago and in the initial stages of pioneering application, I think she doused herself in it. The smell was ‘in your face’ and strong enough to remain in class and around the school, long after she had left.
To compliment the perfume, she has also started wearing the faintest traces of make-up, basically lipstick and some mascara. The make up isn’t applied in the manner many English strumpet’s apply it, which is by slapping it on in the manner a plasterer might plaster a wall. I’ve seen plenty of young teenage girls with such thick mascara it looks more like cladding and usually little pebbles of it will be stuck to their eyelashes or face and will occasionally flake off like little pieces of a crusty, albino scab. The art of teenage make-up, like their interest in sex, is uniquely British, which is to say, is an overstatement and hence pots of mascara and eyeliner and all the other accouterments of teen tartery are used with as much subtlety as that of a circus clown. For the most part, Korean teenage girls, certainly under the age of 18, are discouraged and often forbidden from make-up and so when a little is used, forced into subtlety of application, it often enhances their features. You probably wouldn’t notice Laura’s make-up if it weren’t for the fact that when applied, she’s incredibly sheepish and self-conscious. As for her lipstick, it is so faint I imagine it’s simply lip balm with the slightest trace of added colour.
One particularly common style of British teen make-up
Discerning how much make up Korean girls do wear, is difficult as girls, like children everywhere, will ‘push the limits’ and hence I hear stories of girls wearing ‘short’ skirts to school or who wear make up but in Korea a ‘lot’ of make-up is actually very little and a ‘short’ skirt doesn’t mean you can see their knickers.
In British schools, I often saw tell-tale signs that girls were wearing a pair of Satan’s panties and it wasn’t unusual to see that flimsy bit of ‘string’ riding above a girl’s waistband. This is a sight I’ve never seen in Korea and Korean adults are often mortified to know that western girls, often not yet teenagers, are permitted to wear, or even want to wear, such sexualised clothing. Indeed, in Korea, I’ve never caught glimpse of a girls knickers. While it is solely an opinion based on my observations, and which doesn’t include routing through the children’s underwear section in my local E-Marte, I would imagine that Laura’s knickers, like those of her friends, are void of the translucent panels, little bows and lacy frill edges that are used to sexualise the bodies of little kids. Her knickers probably reach to her navel and are styled like the baggy blue things, British girls were compelled to wear for PE in the 60’s and 70’s.
I mention knickers, panties and thongs, not for any perverse reason but to highlight the divergence of social values between Korean and western societies. How children ‘choose’ to adorn their bodies, the extent to which this adornment is encouraged or tolerated, how it is subsequently received by societies both at home and abroad, expresses and exposes important attitudes and values. In Britain at least, there is a difference between ‘knickers’ and ‘panties;’ ‘knickers’ are functional whereas the purpose of ‘panties’ is two-fold, to induce arousal in the observer and a sense of sexiness in the wearer. Satin’s panties take this to a totally different level. In Britain, many girls, will tart up their twat with ‘sexy’ panties or a thong while still children and often before using make up. In Korea, while a little experimentation with make-up might occur whilst still at school, the transition from knickers to panties, from innocence to awareness, probably occurs at about the same time a girl becomes an adult.
Over the duration of a week or so, Laura’s perfume gradually mellowed until it was actually quite pleasant and on a few occasions, when it hung faintly in the air, I was reminded of my mother who always wore floral type perfume. It has become a regular habit of hers to hold her wrist under my nose and ask for my opinion on her latest scent. I then discovered, from her brother, that the various perfumes she parades, are her mother’s and are sneaked on when no one is at home.
Ben. Korean Teenagers (1)
Ben is one of my students. He is 15 or 16 and in his final year of middle school. Tomorrow he is off on his class trip, in this case to Sorak Mountain. He is in school early in the afternoon as his class has been let out and so he calls in for a few hours study, prior to buying ‘snacks,’ at the nearby E-Mart. The snacks he tells me, will include ramyon (Korean pot noodle), choco-pie, (Korean chocolate cake-biscuit things), crisps (what American refer to as ‘chips’) and drink.
It’s the first time I’ve seen him in uniform; gray trousers and jacket with matching gray waistcoat, and a white shirt with the typical burbery-type pattern on the inside of the collar and inner cuffs. On his breast pocket a green flash carries his Korean name, stitched in gold. He’s a skinny boy who in class we often refer to as ‘chopstick boy.’ Today he is incredibly happy, his ‘kibun’ repaired after his post exam despair, last Friday. He’s not just a little happy, he’s ecstatic and he keeps telling me he wishes he was going now.
Next, he starts to tell me about how he fell over in football at school today and had to go to the school ‘hospital.’ He pulls up his shirt cuff to reveal a scratch the length of his forearm. It bled so much he tells me; ‘there was blood everywhere.’ He understands the difference between a cut and a scratch but insists it bled a lot. Then I considered how skinny he is and thought the loss of a little blood for him might be catastrophic and won’t to tease him but am cautious. Koreans do not like being teased as we in the west do and a bit of fun can very quickly upset someone and then you’ll have to wait for another day to clear the air. However, as a rule, Ben doesn’t mind a joke. That reminded me of last year when I jokingly asked a student, Mark, to close his eyes and then, from about a foot from his ear, I pulled the rip cord of a firecracker. Mark almost jumped out of his chair and didn’t find it at all amusing. He sat crying for almost half an hour and there was nothing I could do to console him. The firecracker had made one big bang, not like other ones I’d set off and Mark claimed a bit of powder had hit his ear. Well, if I’d been teaching in the UK I would probably have lost my job. Next day I gave him a box of choco-pies. In the nest lesson we discovered the firecracker had been made in China and that they are notorious for being loud and unpredictable.
Monday Market: Ot. 옻. Rhus Verniviflua
Ot (옻) costing 2000W (£1)
I’ve had some difficulty trying to find information on this ‘food.’ I’m not even sure how categorise it. The closest relative ‘food’ I can relate it to is cinnamon, which is a bark and a spice but Ot (옻), Rhus Verniviflua (Toxicodendron vernicifluum), is chunk of log and isn’t spicy. It is related to the poison ivy family and can cause skin irritation. When I first ate chicken and ot soup, I was warned it might upset my stomach but suffered no ill effects. It is a regular ingredient in chicken-ginseng soup (삼게탕).
Most information on Ot seems related to its use as a lacquer that is traditionally used in Korea and Japan to coat wooden chopsticks but also a range of other items, including fountain pens. The lacquer technique takes great care to apply and is extremely durable and beautiful and in this context the plant is referred to as the ‘lacquer tree.’
Ot can be seen in street markets where it is sold in a variety of sizes. It is boiled in soups and obviously removed before eating though smaller pieces of wood may be left in situ to be discarded at the table. It is also used to make a particular type of both bean and red pepper paste. In chicken-ginseng soup it provides the slightly bitter background taste.
Nothing beats a log in your soup
Ot bean paste (된장)
ot barbecued pork (옻 삼겹살)
Ot as an integral ingredient in chicken ginseng soup. (삼게탕)
Ot as used to make a highly beautiful lacquer
ot as it grows
Ot is also used as an oriental medicine but extensive information is difficult to find in English. If making chicken-ginseng soup, ot is one of the dried ingredients available in packets costing around 4000Won (£2) and available widely.
dried ingredients for chicken ginseng soup (삼게탕)
'Psychedelic' Exercises (이벤트탕) E-Bente-Tang
A Bathhouse Ballad
The e-bente-tang (이벤트탕) today was scented with ginseng (인삼). For some reason the bathhouse has been incredibly busy this week . The steam room has varied between 51-54 degrees and I made my first venture into the ice room (어름굴) since last summer. The ice room is simply a large freezer with some chairs around the edges and as the weather becomes hotter and more humid, it is usually a good place to finish off a session as it both dries your body and stops you sweating.
I have thought about several things this week as I wallowed: I am interested to know whether people dry themselves in a random fashion in which one might use a towel just a moment before used to dry their arse, on their face, or whether, in a sequence such as, head to toe. Yes, there’s so much going on in the world that I consider this pointless trivia! I don’t particularly care! In the west I was always moaning and ranting about the nastier aspects of life but in Korea I don’t even bother reading about world news and I’m a lot happier. Ignorance is quite a pleasant state of mind especially as the more I have studied, the more exams I have taken, the un-happier it has made me. It seems that once the clutter of mans’ inhumanity to man is removed, which is usually the contents of most world and national news, and the tools encouraged to analyze that world decommissioned or at least limited, pondering the sound of one hand clapping, or the manner in which a towel is used, is wonderfully liberating. Thinking has never done me any favours and often quite the contrary. Thinking can actually be harmful to your health and in retrospect has probably ruined my life, it certainly hasn’t made me happier. I would say an insect has more propensity to happiness than a human with a working brain especially if that brain is influenced by ethical issues. Despite what we are told, thinking is both anti-social and disliked and most bosses, even in education, dislike either thinkers or those who are ‘educated.’ Most of the thoughts I have had in the last twenty years, basically since going to university, have set me in opposition against other people.
I think a lot wallowing in the e-bente tang but have to cast much of it aside as people don’t like to be remind of their impotency especially within a democracy. But what you do with your bath towel, where you put it and in what order, apart from being a totally inane topic, is vastly more original in concept than the impending destruction of our environment and is far less likely to raise any hackles. Pondering the pointless is a new therapeutic philosophy I am pursuing. At the moment, my concerns about how towels are used is a subject in a state of infancy. Moving on…
Have you ever noticed that when Koreans do little exercise routines, especially in the bathhouses, they look like they have mad cow disease? Privates on Parade, a British black comedy movie (1982), contains a hilarious scene where John Cleese, a mad army officer, performs a very strange exercise routine. So complex and awkward is this routine that mastering it entails highly developed muscle coordination. Being a taekwondo instructor at the time I first watched this movie, I bought the video and set about learning the routine in the privacy of my bedroom. It was far too ridiculous to practice in a gym. At the same time as instructing taekwondo, I was also a military musician and my musical skills were beneficial in analyzing the rhythmical structures that were used. Basically, the legs started off in a wide ‘lunge’ position, in many martial arts known as a ‘front stance’ and this stance changed from right to left, at approx 1-2 changes per second.
A typical, left front stance
Independent of the legs (moving in musical terminology of 2/4 or 4/4 time), the arms performed a routine in 3/4 time but with each arm separated by one beat. The left arm began the sequence which consisted three parts, each synchronised with the changing stance of the legs: (1) slapping the thigh, (2) ‘pointing’ to the ceiling, (3) ‘pointing’ horizontally to the left. As the left arm ‘pointed’ to the ceiling, the right arm slapped the right thigh and so at all times the right arm was one movement behind the left arm Now, I describe the arm movement as slapping and ‘pointing’ except the pointing was limp-wristed and the elbows never straightened. The arms were more thrown out as if casting something unpleasant off the hand or waving something away. What makes the routine so amusing is the rhythmic asymmetry caused by the lower half of the body moving in 2/4 time and the top half of the body, both in 3/4 but with a displacement between the right and left arms. I never really persevered with the sequence to perfect it and to have done so would have been a small accomplishment requiring considerable focus. Apart from its merits as an exercise it was also highly comical, even more so performed by John Cleese and for me, it is the most memorable part of the film, even more so than the fact the entertainment troop Cleese commands, all get killed.
John Cleese and the famous Ministry of Silly Walks
If you performed this sequence in a British gym, you would undoubtedly attract some attention but in Korea psychedelic exercise routines are quite common. indeed, if you were to walk around the pools in a Ministry of Silly Walks fashion, I don’t think anyone would pay much attention.
This week, I have seen several people performing exercises that at first suggested some mental incapacity. I have seen two men standing in a corner performing an exercise in which alternating arms are shaken as if flicking a turd off of the fingers. In this exercises, after approximately 10 flicks, the cheeks are vigorously slapped. Standing in the cold pool, holding onto the side and water jogging is also a common sight. Stretching is also very common especially in a steam room or sauna though this form of exercise is identical to those practiced in the west. Laying supine and raising the knees to the chest or swinging the legs over the head until your knees are by yours ears isn’t unusual, unless of course, your naked. However, more amusing, is laying on ones back, pointing the knees to the ceiling with a 90 degree angle between the back of the calf and thigh and in this position doing small rapid steps in the air with the feet while concurrently tapping the scalp and face with the hands. Perhaps the most common psychedelic exercise, more common around apartment complexes and in fitness centers, but which may be seen in bathhouse with treadmills in rest areas, is walking in a brisk manner, palms open, and hands raised to face level pictured below. Even though I know it provides a better workout than conventional western style walking/jogging, I find adopting this custom as alien as wearing a face mask.
The typical Korean walking style
What Character is That? Hanja Resource. 한자
Hanja
A useful resource
Whilst not a book on hanja, What Character is that? An Easy-Access Dictionary of 5000 Chinese Characters, is certainly useful to fill in the all too frequent gaps that occur studying hanja on your own. I have found this book illuminating for background information on Chinese characters as well as useful for little interesting snippets it provides on individual characters all of which can be vital as an aide to remembering them. Although the book is supposed to be easy to use, I’ve never quite mastered it, but as my needs are different to someone studying Pinyin Chinese, I haven’t found this a problem. I tend to delve in and out of the book and most useful is the section on radicals. Though the book is solely in English, I have still found it useful in the small array of tools necessary to study and clarify the meaning of hanja characters.
Counting the strokes
Identification by radical
Sorry for the poor quality photos.
Written by – Ping-gam Go
Simplex Publications. 1995
ISBN – 0-9623113-5-9-
Simplex Publications http://www.simplexpublications.com
Elwood 5566 
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