sigh...

Things my kindergarten students are learning:

"What's he like? He's handsome and smart."

"What's she like? She's quiet and shy."

Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 5

Our latest question comes from Dave in Ontario, who is impressed at the news of the Waeguk's Korean lessons, and wonders whether they include the alphabet, and the Waeguk's thoughts thereon.

As always, the Waeguk responds:

I'm learning both written and spoken Korean, which is a bit of a challenge, but also something I'm quite enjoying. The Korean is relatively straightforward to learn, and in fact is something I had a decent understanding of even before beginning the lessons, insofar as being able to sound out words, though not necesssarily to understand them.

One of the interesting things about Korean is how poorly it's transliterated into the Roman alphabet. For example, I live in the city of Busan, but until quite recently I would have been living in the city of Pusan. There is no real distinction in Korean between the English p and b, l and r,and j and z. My students are wont to talk about the "Jewkeeper" rather than the "zookeeper," which is not a mistake that will serve them well in most parts of the English-speaking world.

Traditionally, Korean has been transliterated into the Roman alphabet using the McCune-Reischauer system, but over the past decade or so this has been phased out in favour of the Revised Romanization system, and this is the reason for the Pusan/Busan switch. Essentially, this means that there are easier and simpler ways of having one sound in Korean correspond to its partner sound in English, and showing this on paper.

Learning to read Korean has also helped me sympathize somewhat with some of the difficulties facing any learner of a new alphabet. Most frustrating? Fonts! I can read the Korean equivalent of Times New Roman fairly easily, but anything artsy or stylized throws me off immediately. Writing is also a challenge given that my handwriting isn't exemplary at the best of times and in my native tongue, but at least under those circumstances I can extrapolate from my notes with confidence. In Korean? Not so much.

On the other hand, three tenses total does make for one happy language student...

Got a question for the Waeguk? Ask him here.

Kansas, Toto, etc. Part Two

A few more thoughts on how I know I'm not in Canada...

A student brought a fairly realistic toy gun to class the other day, with a working laser sight on it. Rather than call the police or at least send him to the office, I told him to put it away, but not before I went to the class next door and pointed it at one of my colleagues through the window. In a similar twist, many of my students carry x-acto knives with them to sharpen their pencils. We haven't had any stabbings yet.

In Korean class, tonight we played "two truths and a lie." One of my truths was the following: I've met Wayne Gretzky. My teacher had never heard of him.

Cellphones work even in the subways here. Not only that, but I have a cellphone. This may be the most shocking development of all.

Kansas, Toto, and all that

After a while, life begins to consist of routines, patterns and habits. Every day in Korea is no longer to the filled to the brim with glorious epiphanies, touching moments of intercultural understanding, and moments of intense revelation. This is not to say that these do not occur, merely that the quotidian living is, perhaps, less exotic than some might imagine it to be.

Having said that, I do often experience many things which remind me, subtly or overtly, that I am no longer living in the shadow of the CN Tower...

On Saturday, one of the secretaries at our school got married, and all the teachers were invited to the wedding.

As I waited for my coworkers before heading over to the wedding, a group of boys aged 12 or 13 passed by. Despite my wearing sunglasses, they were somehow able to deduce my anglophone nature, and called out to me, "very handsome!" with thumbs raised to underline their approval. On the one hand, it's simply a case of kids seizing the chance to practice their English outside of class, but on the other, it's an instance of young males commenting favourably (and without sarcasm, I assure you), on the appearance of another male. It must be said, of course, that I do look damn good in a tie.

Korea is a very conservative and homophobic country- there are very, very few openly out people here, and paradoxically, it may be for this reason that men are much more affectionate towards one another than they would be in Canada. It's not at all uncommon to see teenage boys sitting on each other's laps in the subway, or holding hands as they walk down the street. Being gay is so unheard of that one is able to engage in such affectionate activities without the fear of being called gay because being gay isn't even an option...but back to the wedding.

In many respects, it was a fairly Western affair: the bride wore a white dress, the groom wore a tux, and it was held in a wedding hall not hugely dissimilar from ones one might find in Mississauga or Don Mills. A major difference, though, was evident before the wedding, as the bride sat in a small room off the lobby and guests were invited in to pose for pictures beside her. During the actual ceremony, the parents of the bride and groom sat in big chairs on either side of the happy couple, who bowed to each set of progenitors (I do love me some big words every so often) at the conclusion of the nuptials.

I had my first Korean lesson today. It's mightily exciting, after four months in the country, to be finally learning the language in a formal, organized manner. It was even more exciting to learn that Korean verbs have only three tenses, and that there is no conjugation as such- the ending is the same for each person- I am, you am, he am, we am, and so on. Furthermore, Korean is largely a contextual language, so "are you going to Seoul" is written the same way as "you are going to Seoul" would be, with the only difference being the inflection at the end of the sentence to indicate a question.

Apart from the obvious advantages of speaking the language of the country in which I live, I think that learning will also be give me a better grasp of the perspective of my students, a from the general sense of learning a new language, but also of the differences between English and Korean specifically. I look forward to learning more.

As you may be aware, the leaders of North and South Korea have just completed another summit- the second since the end of the Korean War. Unfortunately, my grasp of Korean politics is not much stronger than my grasp of the Korean language. It isn't something which my coworkers discuss at all at work, or at least not in language, and I'm perhaps too careful when asking about it, because the relationship between the Koreas does fascinate me so.

As I touched upon at the beginning of this post, Koreans and non-Koreans may be distinguished from one another by purely physical characteristics, at least 99 times out of one hundred. There is a not inconsiderable number of Westerners in Busan, but I would venture to guess that at least 90% of them are English teachers. This is interesting because, a) it means that almost all white people (and the vast majority of English teachers here are white) in Busan are between the ages of 22 and 3o, and b) there isn't the same level of integration or assimilation as would occur under more conventional immigration patterns. It's not at all rare to be stared on the subway or the street, especially by children. This puzzled me for a little while because the number of Westerners, while only a tiny fraction of the overall population, is still substantial enough that I generally see another waeguk or two every time I go downtown.

But while a small town in Northern Ontario, for example, may be (and here we'll pick some numbers out of a hat), 10% Native Canadian, with the rest of the town being Canadian of European descent except for "that one Chinese family," the point is that even in that small town, the Chinese family is a family. There will be Chinese-Canadian kids in that family, and they will go to school with the other kids, and hang out with them, and so on. There may be racism and suspicion and so on, but there is also a level of interaction that is unusual here. The Western teachers and the Korean teachers may and do hang out, but there are no family picnics or family softball games, for the simple fact that there are almost no Western children here. It isn't rare to see white people (as mentioned, almost always between the ages of 22 and 30), but it's almost unheard of to see white children. A few months ago I was at the beach and hanging with a couple from Oregon who had their two small, blonde children with them. The kids fell asleep under a beach umbrella, and more than one Korean came up and asked to take their photo.

We are migrant workers, though more by choice than by necessity. Most teachers here will leave after a year. Some will stay on for a little while, but the vast majority will return within 3 years to Canada, the U.S., or whatever other corner of Anglophonia from whence they came.

And those are my thoughts for the day.

The waeguk is wondering if he's already answered all the possible questions you could have. If no, feel free to ask.

also worth a quick glance...

...is this.

Attention, Comrades

Warning: This entry may be a bit of a ramble.

How to describe the Beijing trip?

The easiest way might be by comparison. Today (Monday), I spent the day teaching English to children.

Last Monday, I climbed the Great Wall of China.

Of course, the comparison isn't fair, since vacation time outranks non-vacation by definition alone.

To evaluate the trip, then, we need to break it down into its base components:
the tour and the city.

Let's start with the tour.

As most people who are reading this probably know, I am not entirely bereft of experience in the group travel industry. Most of that experience, however, has come from the tour guide perspective, rather than that of the customer.

Anyhow, the tour was good. Not great, but very good. The essence of group tours, though, is such that to a large degree very good is the best you can hope for, in the sense that there will always be questions of time allocation and sights to see, etc, so you aim to please as many of the people as often as you can. Had I been on my own, I wouldn't have gone to the tea shop or the jade factory, but then neither would I have been staying in a 5 star hotel out in the suburbs of Beijing. I've always been happy with hostels- they're cheap, centrally located, though they don't have the swimming pools and bowling alleys our hotel did.

It was fun meeting new people and making some friends, but I've decided to prefer make my own through a new place, exploring at my leisure and at my own pace. While it's convenient simply to be told to be back at the bus at a certain time, it also removes a considerable of the chunk of the free-spirited wanderer mythos with which I strive to imbue myself at all times.

Beijing, then. The Forbidden City (home of the Chinese Royal Family for countless years) reminded me a lot of Versailles simply because of the sheer size and arrogance of the operation. "L'état, c'est moi," indeed. The thing that has often amazed me about monarchies is not so much the fact that people throughout history have proclaimed themselves definely superior to the masses, but that the masses have acquiesced and agreed with them. And while I realize that a large part of this was determined by which hand was holding the sword, let's face it- there was (generally) only one Emperor at a time, but he (and on occasion, she) controlled a hell of a lot of sword-holders.

But yeah. Setting aside the political thoughts (I've always maintained that standing in front of Versailles is the easiest way to understand the reasons for the French Revolution), the Forbidden City is fascinating because of its size...and here I was going to offer some thoughts of dubious originality and interest, but I've just come to the decision that even if it is possible to eliminate politics and social philosophy from the picture, to do so would be absurd and/or irresponsible. The entire palace complex (all 720,000 square metres) was constructed to hold the source of absolute power, and if you fail to acknowledge that when beholding, you are missing out on human history at its most basic.

The Great Wall of China can be viewed through much the same lens, but offers more panoramic and astoundingly scenic photos. Lots of stairs, and a definite highlight of the trip. For me, at least, the Wall was symbolic of an empire with all the positive and negative connotations therein, while I found the Forbidden City to offer more food for thought on human hierarchy and our willingness to subjugate ourselves to others, or have them do so to us. But what do I know.

The Great Wall of China goes on forever, if not in the literal sense then in the figurative. We didn't climb it for very long, but it was enough to get the slightest glimpse of the immense time and effort that went into its building.

From a tourist point of view, the Great Wall and the Forbidden City are the two structures that will remain at the forefront of my memories, but a conversation I had on the last night definitely bears mentioning.

A few of us tourists were making our way to the hotel bar when we noticed our tour guide at the front desk, and so we invited her to have a beer with us. It wasn't a particularly long discussion, but it meandered well, as all great discussions do. We were asking her for her thoughts on the present and the future of China, and in a nutshell this is what she said:

"when you look at China, you see a lot of problems. We don't have free speech, and people are thrown into jail for criticizing the government. But for us, we see that this is the best it's been in a thousand years."

It's an interesting way of looking at the situation. Not to look at it history in terms of years or decades or even centuries, but millennia. It's a slow, gradual, process. That day we had taken a rickshaw tour of a hutong, a traditional Beijing neighbourhood, and we had met a septuagenarian who lived there. I asked what was the greatest change she had seen since she was a child, and she replied that now food is plentiful and affordable.

Is this Mao's doing? Would China have better evolved under free-market capitalism? I have no idea.

I've picked up a biography of Mao, though, and hopefully that will give me some clues.

I'll try to come back to this and add more thoughts and commments over the next couple of days, so if you come back to reread this don't be surprised if it's been changed in some way.