Centum City, Busan, South Korea.
Tag Archives: featured
Wednesday March 28
Eel | 뱀장어 | Fish markets | Yeonsan | Busan.
Patterns and colors (I)
Busan Cinema Center
E-Mart
Game Room
Busan Cinema Center.
Little Korean Treasure Hunters
The envelope’s wax seal is ripped apart and the kids start shaking.
The kids got all clammy and nervous. They were excited in a very strange, unpredictable way which was unsettling. The bell rang and they fled down the hallway of the school screaming about mysterious codes and blood stains. I went pale and chased them. Before I could get them to shut up, the Korean director of the school where I work approached me and very seriously told me “The children are very shocked, they say blood on a treasure map. Very very shocked.”
“It’s not blood. It’s red wax. It’s just a story I invented… for teaching”.
She smiled gracefully but I couldn’t tell if I would eventually get in trouble.
It was a sunny afternoon many many many many many weeks ago when I didn’t know how to kill 5 minutes of Kinder class. I was fairly new to teaching and the children could smell my fear like a pack of roaming dingos. Kids know how to exploit the little awkward silences when an unprepared teacher falters.
I told my students I was from Colorado and that there were treasures in Colorado. Which is true. Sort of. When I notice I had secured most of their attention, I started improvising a story “Many many many many many many many years ago…” and pieced together details from a collection of old treasure tales I had heard and read. The classroom had been wild at first but as I continued the story, it grew quiet.
Map Elements: page with the “Dead Tree Treasure” story, the code key, burned pictures of some of the locations near the treasure, a missing piece of the map.
Narratives are sometimes linked to survival. The old Persian king stayed the execution of the storyteller every night in One Thousand and One Nights because he wanted to hear the end of each story. I didn’t have experience telling oral stories and felt I was learning something special and important that day in the classroom.
“…And my uncle… no, my father has the treasure map. He lives in Chile. I’ll ask him to send the map and then I’ll make photocopies for everybody.”
When I finished the story, the Dear Leader of the class, six year-old Elizabeth, stood up and made a pronouncement: “and then, when we are older, we and you go to Colorado and find the treasure with you!” She had the presence of a little Korean Margaret Thatcher. The whole class seconded the motion by banging on their desks and letting out war cries “KO-RE-A! KO-RE-A! KO-RE-A!” I tried to quiet them down but I was laughing too hard.
From then on, every day, kids would come up to me and ask me “Where’s the map?!”. The map’s journey developed a story of its own. I told them it was coming and used an assortment of excuses… “My dad went to get the map at his grandmother’s abandoned, burnt out house where she had kept it buried in a box under the lemon tree… My dad mailed it but sent it by “sea mail” rather than “air mail” so it will take longer to arrive… because it was cheaper, that’s why, he’s cheap like that… Oh no! there was a typhoon and the mail ship sank off the coast of the Northern Mariana Islands… …the Taiwanese Coast Guard has found the missing cargo on a beach in Keelung and it’s being sent to Korea… it should be arriving at Inchon international airport any day now…”
The wait for the map had an important dramatic effect that I stretched for a while.
Little Miss Thatcher with the map
The map finally arrived. I was a little unsure about how the kids were going to respond to it. I thought they would immediately tell it was an hoax. Then I thought the opposite… I would get fired for scaring the kids because it would be too real. I imagined a sensitive parent complaining to the school that their child was being taught by “crazy teacher.” To make sure the kids wouldn’t run away and travel to Colorado by themselves Goonies-style, I stipulate that the treasure could not be recovered until the first full moon of the sixth month of 2027.
The kids used the map as a prop on their graduation play. I wrote the script based on a story about treasure hunters who seek riches but end up finding friendship.
I love the idea of treasure and I think most kids do, too. As a kid, I looked for treasure everywhere. I had a conviction that in the Andes existed treasure caches waiting for me inside caves filled with giant multi-colored quartz crystals. In my house, I combed the yard for anything that would lead me to the riches I knew the old owner had hid behind the adobe walls.
Perhaps the map I brought for the kids leads to no treasure. I don’t know if there’s a dead tree with an “X” mark on its trunk in Colorado. That doesn’t really matter. We search for treasure because we love adventure and a good story to tell our grandchildren. And one day, that story may save us from the sword of a king or the wrath of unruly children.
Three characters from the play: from right Dreaming Cloud The Storyteller, The Queen of Snow, and Luna Coyote. Missing: Cowboy John, Paco the treasure hunter, Old Miner Bill, and The King of the Wind.
Octopuses, the mafia and the climbing gym
Catsharks for din din
Finding the Busan Climbing Gym in Yeonsan presents a problem. Take the backstreets until you get to the alleyway that looks like a Korean mafia execution site.
It’s night. I’ve been walking back streets for a while looking for the gym. I find the right intersection. On the corner there’s a seafood restaurant with sad aquariums holding a few moribund octopuses. The octopuses’s heads expand and contract as they breath. Their tentacles are stiff implying they have given up all of their life ambitions. Next to the restaurant there’s a grain mill store that’s lit up but nobody’s around. Its emptiness suggesting suspicious work being done off-screen. Next to the mill is the gym’s alley, dark and crummy.
Over the alley a white “Busan Climbing Center” banner hangs. But the dilapidated surroundings makes it look like a ragged flag left behind by a vanquished people. I go up the concrete stairs under the banner and hear Korean voices very close by. There are double doors to my right from where a slit of green fluorescent light spills onto the stairs. On one of the steps I see two broken climbing holds and dry blood… or cat piss. Too dark to tell. The doors seem too small for their frame. I carefully push one of them open. I expect to find a so-happy-to-see-somebody kidnapped victim gagged and strapped to a chair. The chair has fallen on its side in the struggle for freedom. Your typical mafia safe house.
But not rearry.
Inside, the gym stretches away as a tunnel with walls speckled with multicolored climbing grips and fit Koreans crawling them like spiders. I look at the price chart and decipher the Konglish: Climbing Shoe Lentals are ₩2,000. A woman with callous hands and a green vest approaches me. She’s the ring leader. I start miming climbing, shoes, money. As I try communicating with her, I’m distracted by one of the spiders as it gracefully glides across a slanted wall behind her.
I leave satisfied. The gym is small but nice. I’m eager to return and climb. On my way out of the backroads, I stop by each seafood restaurant and look at the live octopuses and little catsharks they have for dinner. I feel the onset of a personal obsession with octopuses. I think about getting a little pet octopus and calling it Marshmallow.
Octopus with Michael Jackson Thriller eyes
As I walk past more aquariums lining a long cramped market, I start thinking about the Korean mafia again. According to Wikipedia (whose founder, btw, looks like a goodhearted roofer with puppy eyes) the K mafia in Busan is strong. I go into a fishy indoor market looking for a bathroom. The indoor market is mostly empty except for old Korean market ladies. Severed fish heads, blood and guts are scattered across the white tile floor. A sappy Korean singer wails from a radio somebody is using to keep loneliness at bay while cleaning their market stall. I look through a large window into an eating room where four overweight men with tacky suits, gold chains and tough faces finish their meals. One of them looks at me but pretends I don’t exists. He lazily brings a cigarette up to to his scarred face and squints pleasurably as he takes a drag.
Days later I keep daydreaming of eating little octopuses mixed in with Annie’s organic mac and cheese. I imagine the little octopuses tasting like big rubbery chicken-flavored gummies. Yum. Tough luck for Marshmallow and his friends.