Chinese Food, Part Three: Northern Food

(This is part of a series of posts on our recent trip to China. We'll be posting throughout the summer as we bum around at or near home.)

On our recent trip to China, Nana and I ate mainly two types of regional Chinese cuisine: Northeastern and Western. As described in detail in a previous post, neither of these varieties is commonly available in the US, though a few signature dishes from Beijing (see Peking duck, below) are well-known throughout the world. So sit back, relax, and enjoy (reading about) a brief sampling of Dongbei cuisine--which is not quite like anything most Westerners have ever had.

First, a short mention: though we weren't served this delightful treat until we were in Xian, Nana tells me the candied potatoes above are actually a Northeastern dish. Also, they're apparently extremely difficult to cook. The timing needed to create their hard candy coating is precise: plate them too early, and they're just a pile of searing-hot goo, but plate them too late, and they're like rock. These ones were just right, though--and so good I might have licked the plate, if it hadn't been so darned jagged. I'm not kidding: that candy coating is hard!

Mongolian Hotpot

Mongolian hotpot, like Korean BBQ, is one expression of the platonic ideal of steppe-horde cuisine: bring raw meat and veggies into contact with a heated piece of military equipment, then serve. With Korean BBQ, it's the overturned shield that does the trick, but with Mongolian hotpot, it's the helmet--fortunately, bereft of any remaining Mongol hair, thank you very much.

You can see part of our spread below. I'll also note now that this was one of several meals Shasha, Nana's roommate from Harbin arranged--if it weren't for her, we probably would have eaten cheap tourist grub for the entire trip!
Here's how hotpot works: first, you dump a bunch of herbs, veggies, spices, etc., into a plain , oily white broth. You can add hot pepper oil to taste--as you can see below, we had one pot spicy and one pot mild. Then, you heat the broth to a slow boil and dump the goodies in. Our goodies included thin-shaved beef, lamb meatballs, thick-cut seaweed, bamboo shoots, spinach--etc.

You can see the hotpot in action below.



Then, after taking your cooked goodies out of the broth, you can cool it off with some peanut sauce (center) or some seasoned broth (left). Then, enjoy!Your meal isn't over once all the goodies are devoured, though--there's a final course of noodles for you to add to the broth. (Japanophiles/Koreaphiles might be noticing some similarities to shabu shabu right about now. The dishes all have the same origin.)

At the place we went, which is apparently the hot spot for hotpot in Beijing, the noodles were hand-pulled, as you can see below. Dinner and a show, anyone?



Finally, then, a shot of Nana and me gloating over the hotpot we have just slain. (Little did we know, the battle had just begun . . .)Verdict: Tasty, but we definitely over-ordered, and I definitely over-ate. Also, that spicy broth is HOT, HOT, HOT.

Recognizable Beijing Cuisine

We had two duck dinners during our time in Beijing--one mediocre duck at a cheap-ish restaurant on our first day, when we weren't terribly hungry, and one superb meal at one of the places to eat Peking duck in Peking. (Note to self: exercise caution when typing "duck" over and over again.)

As mentioned, our first duck experience was ho-hum, though you can get a good shot of the pancakes below.
Despite the lackluster duck, however, the other dishes on the table were actually quite tasty: at right above you can see the classic cashew chicken, and at the top left another simple chicken dish.

Our real Peking duck experience came at a well-known establishment off Wangfujing Street, one of the main shopping districts in Beijing's downtown. According to a plaque by the entrance, this was where Kissinger ate when he came to Beijing. I can believe it--the duck was spectacularly crisp, served (by request) with plum sauce and a strong mustard for dipping. They also carve the duck at your table, which is a nice touch, and also guarantees you're getting your money's worth, which can be a problem elsewhere in Beijing.

Traditional Northern Lunch

During one of our free days in Beijing, after a tour of one of Beijing's historic hutong (more on that later), Shasha took Nana and me to a "snack street" establishment, where we could sample a bunch of traditional food stalls gathered under one roof. Below, you can see some approximations of good-old-fashioned grandma's cooking, Beijing-style.
Clockwise from the upper-left:

Fried dough with sugar
Fried spiced buckwheat/ground beef cakes
Stir-fried wheat pasta in soy sauce with veggies and wood ear mushrooms
Beef potsticker dumplings, each built like a brick
Skewered spiced mutton
Plain yoghurt

Below, you can also see the adventure-dining highlight of the meal: steamed beef trip (ie, intestine), which is a terrible thing to behold.

What does it taste like, you ask?Not bad, actually. The peanut dipping sauce was a stronger flavor than the tripe. Unpleasantly chewy, though, and with a bit of a strong smell. Not something I'd eat again, probably, but hey, it's fun to try.

That's all for now. Next up: the flavors of the Silk Road, represented by Western Chinese cuisine.

Panda!!!

Overall, I didn't think much of the Beijing Zoo. I remember thinking that the great cat exhibit, in particular, was pretty tragic. Concrete floors and bar windows on enclosures not much bigger than a bedroom - it looked like an underfunded city animal shelter.

But the pandas!


In the US, you will never see eight pandas in a single enclosure. First, the "rent" to bring pandas over from China is one million dollars, and second, I don't think China would send so many even if the price could be met. They don't ordinarily display this many in China: these are the Olympic Pandas, chosen by internet vote to come to Beijing for the Olympics. Shasha - my host roommate from my exchanges student days at CET Harbin - said (in disturbingly excellent English) that these pandas are also 2, much younger than the normal age of display. However, they came from the Wolong Panda Research Center, which was severely hit by the Sichuan Earthquake. One panda there died. So who's to say that at least now, they're not better off in Beijing? The Olympic panda enclosure is particularly nice, nicer than the Asian Games panda enclosure next door (bringing the total of Beijing Zoo pandas to somewhere around 14 - an embarrassment of panda riches!).

Justin and I admire pandas:


Did I mention that it was at least 35 celcius (one bajillion Fahrenheit) in Beijing that day? Perhaps that is the explanation for this panda. We all just decided that he was drunk.


And lest you think that this panda post will have no food connection, behold! I spent too much time in the panda enclosure and temporarily imprinted on a panda. Bonus: You can see Shasha and Justin reflected in my sunglasses if you click to enlarge.

A lovely anniversary present from the United Nations

Justin and I have a hobby: we like to visit UNESCO World Heritage Sites. We have done a pretty shabby job in Korea thus far - we've only visited Jongmyo Shrine (link to blog post), but we did much better on our trip to China, which I promise you'll see posts on. Someday.

In any case, today is big news in UNESCO nerddom: twenty-seven new sites have been added! And to make this just kick-butt for us, one of them is not three hours from where we are currently hiding out from the tax man in Halifax, Nova Scotia: Joggins Fossil Cliffs! I sense a road trip!

PS. Thanks for the many anniversary good wishes we've gotten in e-mail, blog comments, Facebook, etc. As anybody following this blog could tell, we've had ups and downs this year, but the important part is that we had them together.

Justin's mother's parents spent their first married year abroad in France, where Justin's grandfather was serving in JAG. Same situation with us and Korea: neither of them spoke the language, they were newlyweds, and they ended up with a strange-smelling little co-resident whose name started with A. (We love you, Aunt Anne!) And they're getting along pretty darn well. So I venture to suggest the foreign first-year to all married couples. If you can make it over there, you can make it anywhere!

Chinese Food, Part Two: Dumplings

(This is part of a series of posts on our recent trip to China. We'll be posting throughout the summer as we bum around at or near home.)

It's our one-year anniversary today (that's right, 7/7/07), and aside from the nice seafood dinner planned for tonight, I'd like to celebrate with a paean to the humble dumpling, Dongbei staple and midnight savior of hungry college students everywhere.

The Dumple
Also known as the "dumpling" to normal, non-Homestar-Runner-obsessed folks, the dumple can be found in nearly every corner of China, with some important regional variations. In the US, you're most likely to find "potstickers," which are the northern jiaozi, though outside northern China (i.e., in the rest of China, or in Korea, Japan, or the US) they're more often served pan-fried (guotie), whereas from Beijing north they're almost always boiled or steamed.

Thick-skinned boiled dumplings are very popular in northern Chinese cooking for a number of reasons. First, the wheat used to make the dumplings is actually more plentiful in the region than rice, which makes a thick dumpling a good way to stretch more-expensive "goodies" like pork, beef, and vegetables. Second, boiled dumplings also conserve oil, which historically doubled as a winter heating fuel in the coldest parts of northern China. Third, the standard pork-and-chive dumpling is an excellent match for the mild pickled veggies, tofu, and soy vinegar that dominate most northern meals. And finally, dumplings can be wrapped long before cooking and then served up in a flash, making them very easy to fit into a busy lifestyle--and into a busy retail setting.

As a result, dumplings have assumed the same position in northern Chinese cuisine that pizza has in most of North America: Chinese people, especially families and students, turn to dumplings for a quick, cheap, and satisfying meal--and in this case, at least passably healthy, too.
In other parts of the country, though, dumplings take on a slightly more sophisticated veneer, influenced by the dim sum tradition of southern China. In Xian, we ate at a dinner theater (skipped the show--looked pretty tourist-trappy) whose set menu consisted entirely of dumplings, dim-sum-style, some of whose ingredients and presentations were rather creative. For example, one dish included cabbage dumplings that looked like bok choi and pork dumplings that looked like pig's snouts (below, top and middle), while another included fish dumplings that looked like stylized koi (below, bottom).The big hit of the night, however, was a baked-then-fried ground beef dumpling with Xinjiang-style spices (no photo--it didn't last that long) that was a dead-ringer for any number of Middle Eastern meat pies. Yum!

Next up: Some colorful examples of Dongbei/Beijing cuisine, including the famous Peking Duck.

Chinese Food, Part One: Introduction

(This is part of a series of posts on our recent trip to China. We'll be posting throughout the summer as we bum around at or near home.)

Well, Nana and I are back in North American and slowly overcoming 12 time zones worth of jet lag, which means it's time to start tackling our enormous backlog of China posts. We'll start with the food, for no other reason than the fact that I need more time to work on the other photos. (And, um, I really love food.)

Chinese Regional Cuisine

In case you haven't noticed, China is huge, and local cuisine varies dramatically by region, from Korean food in parts of Manchuria, to Thai-style food in the south and southwest, to Persian- or Central-Asian-style food in the West, all Chinafied, of course.

In the US, most Chinese food is of the Hunan or Szechuan varieties--the first spicy-sweet (think General Tso's Chicken), the second spicy--with liberal doses of Cantonese in major cities and on the coasts--seafood, white sauce, dim sum, and sweet-and-sour pork. This is because most Chinese immigrants to the US come from these regions, bringing their home cooking along with them.

During our trip, we visited two regions whose cuisines aren't generally known in the US. In the northeast, we ate Dongbei (literally "northeastern") food, characterized by an abundance of pickled and fresh vegetables, milder hot sauces (with stronger pepper flavors), grain-based noodles and potatoes (rather than rice-based noodles or rice), game meats, and lots of green onion, ginger, and vinegar. Dongbei cuisine, and especially the Beijing subset, which draws flavors from a wider variety of regional Chinese cuisines, also includes a lot of Mongolian and traditional Manchurian foods, such as hotpot and, yes, Mongolian/Korean BBQ.

In Beijing and in Xian, we also ate Western Chinese food, which is heavily influenced by the Muslim populations along the Silk Road. Xian cuisine features a heavily Chinafied version of far-Western Xinjiang fare, characterized by lamb kebabs, spicy wheat noodles and stews, and a kind of sesame flatbread a lot like Indian naan.

We'll show you samples of all of these foods, plus a few other oddities, though we'll start with the humble dumpling . . . stay tuned!

Back In Seoul

Nana and I staggered back to our new apartment in Wolgye-dong, Nowon-gu, Seoul in the wee hours of this morning--look for Nana's second installment of "Landing at Incheon Is Harder Than You Think" sometime later today.

Safely in Xian

After a whirlwind few days in Beijing (and after Nana weathered an inexplicable 24-hour fever), we're safely in Xian. We'll post again once we get back to Seoul.

Behind the Great Firewall?

Can't tell if any of these posts are getting through the filters--though it looks like they aren't, because I didn't get a notification for the last one. In any case, if you can read this, know that we're safely in Beijing and having a great time (though the weather is incredibly hot). More details after we get back, plus (hopefully) an arrival post from Xian.

Fiction Post! (Not Korea-Related)

Opium Magazine Online, a web-based outlet for short-short fiction, is running a tiny little story of mine called "National Road." It's on the landing page now, will be on the sidebar for most of the day, and will be archived this evening. Short-short fiction is a fun challenge--it's really hard to tell a story in so few words, and you often end up with a lot of sharp angles and jarring shifts. I'm really grateful that Opium is putting one of my efforts up. Check out the story if you have a moment; you can leave comments here or at Opium.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

A philosophical question:

At what point does kimchi become rotten kimchi, and cease being just kimchi? Seeing as the main ingredient of kimchi is rotten (okay, "fermented") cabbage to begin with.

I say it's sometime between the moment it falls into the food trap in the kitchen sink, and three weeks later, when the new tenants of your apartment find it (and promptly drown it with bleach).

In other news, starting tomorrow, Nana and I will be in China through the 28th, when you can expect a few rushed China posts before we hie on to Halifax.

Moving Right Along

Here I am reporting to you LIVE from our new apartment in Wolgye-dong (our former dong was Jungye-dong. And now I have "A Whole New Dong" from Aladdin stuck in my head. Thanks a lot).

Our moving odyssey commenced last week, as we received the prized new keys on Friday.

Saturday's highlights:

After finishing up at the school, Dr. Kim took us to a used furniture store to buy a new couch for this place. Our last one felt kind of like sitting on a faux-leather wrapped concrete stoop. We got a really nice squishy floral print jobby and Dr. Kim, ever generous, also threw in a cherry-red leather chaise that Justin can stretch his knee out on after a long day on his feet. Dr. Kim did all the haggling for us and then lent us his truck for some schlepping. Plus, the school picked up the tab, since the furniture will stay in the APIS family after we go. Dr. Kim is a hero.

I had to stick around here while the air conditioning man installed the AC unit (wrongly, we suspect) and the used-furniture people delivered the couches and our new wardrobes (no closets here, unlike Brownstone). I passed time by scraping scum out of the kitchen cabinets with a pie server and spraying down the mildewy bathroom. Don't get me wrong - I like this new apartment. The neighborhood is much closer to the school and the layout is cozier. But I do not have a particularly high opinion of whoever lived here last, nor of the cleaning ladies who did the place on Friday. Sweeping is good, but it's not cleaning. I've set out trays of baking soda in two of the cupboards and two trays in the bathroom alone, which today I've also sprayed down with bleach (hence any incoherence in this post).

While I was here, Justin was off nearly getting arrested. In Dr. Kim's truck. In our boss's truck. Attaboy, Justin!

As Justin tried to leave the parking garage, the garage ajeoshi ("aa-juh-shee," means "old guy") started yelling at him in Korean and gesturing in a way that seemed to indicate that Justin was not allowed to have parked there. This is clearly not the case, as we've parked there in a different borrowed car before - it's a pay garage. He kept shouting and gesturing and called over somebody in a police-style uniform (could also have been some form of building security) to back him up, so Justin called Paul, our trusty Korean-speaking school administrator. Then, an ajeoshi from upstairs who recognized Justin from our regular comings and goings of the past year, came down and started yelling at Garage Ajeoshi, which was apparently a good thing because it culminated in Justin being released.

What we suspect happened based on info from Paul was that the ajeoshi, upon seeing a whitey in an American truck, spotted the chance for a shakedown. Unfortunately, he did not bank on Justin being a dumb whitey who did not understand that he was being shaken down. Instead of producing extra money, Justin attempted to clarify the situation. The presence of the uniform, perhaps intended to turn up the heat, instead made attempted bribery about the last thing Justin wanted to do. Silly whitey!

After that misadventure, we returned the car and spent yesterday working our backsides off moving via Korean taxis, which, fortunately, are dirt-cheap over short distances. The five-minute ride from our old digs to our new ones usually costs between $2 and $3. We worked all day and took four loads back and forth, unpacking and repacking the roller bags at each end, leaving our old Brownstone apartment covered in unused cardboard boxes and plastic packaging which you can't throw away here but you also can't recycle until recycling day, which is Saturday. So we were looking stuck.

Every week, in addition to Recycling Saturday, Brownstone celebrates what we call "Random Recycling Day," a day other than Saturday in which the recycling ajeoshis (that's your new vocab word for today, in case you haven't noticed) show up with the truck and you can bring things down. Random Recycling Day occurs on no perceptible pattern - perhaps it is a lunar calendar? - and is just as likely to happen on Wednesday, Thursday, Tuesday, or Friday as the Monday we desperately needed it to be.

But lo, the gods were with us! We cracked the curtain this morning and the recycling team was there. Perhaps this was some form of cosmic repentance for the whole parking-shakedown thing.

Then the professional movers arrived, and let me tell you, these guys are PROFESSIONAL. First of all, they looked genuinely distressed that we had packed our own possessions into cardboard boxes. We thought we might have to unpack it all for insurance reasons (they can't insure anything we packed) but since it was all nonbreakable, they were willing to move as-is.

These two guys went through our apartment like the Red Army through Berlin. You name it, they packed it. They dismantled the bed and boxed the bed linen. They took down all four sets of curtains for us, including un-drilling (word?) the curtain rod and manually unhooking the curtain from its rings. One guy managed to carry out the bookcase all by himself by standing against the skinny tall side and tilting the bookcase over onto his back. It was unreal.

And then came the even MORE amazing part. It's not inconceivable that movers would dismantle the bed, and it's logical (although not guaranteed) that they'd reassemble it at the new apartment. But have you ever heard of movers making the bed? And those curtains that they took down for us? Well, they re-hung them for us over here. Seriously. Part movers, part interior decorators.

And the funniest thing was how they seemed to think that I, as a girl, shouldn't be doing anything. When they saw me pick up a bookcase and start to move it across the kitchen, they both lunged at it, horrified, and tried to take it away from me. I'm twenty-four and five-six, and although I'm no linebacker, they're not that big, either. I just kept wondering what they would have thought if they'd seen the stuff I moved yesterday. Like, you know, the thirty-five inch computer monitor. Or the refrigerator. Stuff like that.

Well, I didn't argue with them. I respect people's culture, and if people's culture tells me to sit on my butt while other people move heavy objects, well, that's the culture for me! Also, after yesterday's refrigerator extravaganza, I feel like my whole body has been worked over by a meat tenderizer. So maybe they have a point.

Anyway, Korean movers = success, especially because we didn't have to pay for them. Dr. Kim got Brownstone to pay for the movers because technically they broke our lease - we had to move because they wanted to sell our apartment. Have I mentioned that Dr. Kim is a hero?

You know what else is a success? KT internet! We blogged about our early internet woes (here, for instance, or here) last fall, which was on a different provider, Qrix (or something like that). We switched to KT last year and had excellent service with no disruptions all spring. Unfortunately, we were unable to communicate to the installer that we wanted all of the room ethernet ports turned on, so we were forced to snake fifty-foot cables through the apartment, duct-taping them to the floor, to have service in the offices.

Today, internet timetable is as follows:

11:00 AM: Service in Brownstone apartment.
11:00 AM-12:00 PM: Computers in transit to Benest apartment in Wolgye
12:30 PM: Installer arrives at Benest apartment.
12:45 PM: Service in main room of Benest apartment. Installer requested to activate other ports. Server leaves to find assistant.
1:10 PM: Assistant arrives and tinkers.
1:30 PM: Internet service in all rooms.

Coming from the US East Coast, which is under the fascist jackboot of Comcast (caution, link has music), this is as mindboggling to me as movers who hang curtains. Way to go, the Korea!

SURVIVED: First Year of Teaching

As of 3PM today, Nana and I are no longer first-year teachers. What's more, we made it through with our health (mostly) and what was left of our sanity when we began. It's been a year of quick learning and even quicker growth, and it's hard to believe that it's over. But for the immediate future, there may not be much time to reflect: we move Monday, fly to China Wednesday, then come back to Seoul for about 48 hours before schlepping ourselves to the other side of the world. After a few nights in Halifax, though, I can promise you the cogent and extremely insightful reflections of a pair of well-rested adventurers. For now, I can only offer another repetitive excuse.

Also, keep your fingers crossed: the air conditioner for our new apartment hasn't arrived, and if today was any indication, moving day is going to be a cooker.

Korean Beef Crisis: Hoist by their Own Petard

{Dork alert: Current events post.}

If you've been following international news lately, you may have heard about the massive (and that's not really an overstatement) upheaval over the new Korean president's plan to lift South Korea's ban on US beef. Over the last week-plus, downtown Seoul has seen several major protests, mostly in the vicinity of the Blue House (the South Korean President's residence) and outside the US Embassy. (Further evidence that God cares for fools: we were supposed to go down to the embassy for a function on Saturday, but flaked out--and managed to avoid some heated protests.)

You can find details from the NYT here. (And yes, as far as I can tell, it's accurate.)

Though the protests so far have been fairly well-contained, the situation as a whole is a complete farce, and entirely the product of longstanding (but short-sighted) South Korean policy. The underlying problem is the current economic slump in the ROK. Traditionally, the ROK has treated economic slumps with heavy doses of protectionism, which had the added benefit for government officials of providing massive kickbacks and monopolies to powerful friends. In doing so, the ROK developed an arsenal of PR weapons that used protectionism and outright xenophobia to blast any attempts at free trade--and first and foremost among these weapons was mass hysteria over the threat of foreign (and specifically American) beef, based in part on the hypothesis that Koreans, having larger-than-average brains, were especially susceptible to mad cow disease. Fast forward to 2008, when the government tries to do an about-face on decades of protectionism: by now, the protectionist panacea for economic troubles, spearheaded by mad cow hysteria, have become so firmly rooted in the public mind that the mere announcement of plans to lift a ban on US beef--months after the World Organization for Animal Health finally branded US beef safe for export--has touched off protests large enough to topple Lee Myung-bak's ruling coalition. (Though it looks like he'll emerge from the storm with a slightly different supporting cast.)

Now--why should we care (aside from the fact that this illustrates the continuing influence of xenophobia and anti-American sentiment in the ROK)? Lee Myung-bak was the golden hope for reformers in the Korean education system, a conservative who wanted to increase school autonomy and student choice. Hopefully this current crisis doesn't mean that education reform has been completely derailed, because let me tell you, the Korean is in dire need of reform.

Something told the wild geese...

The New York Times has an interesting article describing a phenomenon we first heard about from our boss, Dr. Kim, on ski trip last fall: mothers taking their children overseas to attend school in New Zealand, Canada, the USA, or Australia to get them into an Anglophone environment and, not coincidentally, out of Korean schools. "Wild Geese" refers to the "migratory" flight two or three times a year of the fathers to visit the mothers overseas ("Penguin fathers" are, you guessed it, the flightless ones who can't afford to ever travel overseas and visit their families). We do, in fact, have some of these families at APIS, where siblings are currently at school overseas, and we have a couple of kids leaving APIS for U.S. boarding schools next year.

Anyway, you can see why, even as the clock winds down and we lose our minds trying to do everything at once (move apartments! foster the dog! arrange summer travel! finish grades! keep lesson planning! more more more!), we still have a basic belief that APIS is trying to do something important. Some people will always choose boarding schools, and there's nothing wrong with that, but the idea that families feel compelled to make this sort of choice at the risk of destroying their childrens' futures... well, it's flat-out depressing.

Although I'm jealous of the mother in the article who said her kids were speaking English together and actually losing some Korean language fluency. Even after months of crackdown, we still have the opposite problem. Kids who spoke English perfectly on arrival start devolving into Konglish ("I am genius!," or addressing teachers as "teacher," not by name) and some ESL students are still trying to get by on as little English as possible. You just have to try to remember how far they've come.

Harajuku (via Boing Boing)

Link to an interesting photo gallery recently posted on Boing Boing. I was in Harajuku in Tokyo with a school trip a few weeks ago. Wacky place.

In other news, sorry for the continued scarcity of posts. Much time has been spent lately preparing for the end of the year, preparing to move to a new apartment, preparing to go to China (woot!), and preparing to say goodbye to some departing friends. We'll post as we can.

Google #1 result . . . (!!!!)

. . . if you search for "Peanutsburg Nutters:"

School of ROK!

For some reason, I feel like a celebrity. A really lame celebrity, like the guy in your church group who is mildly famous for making a better-than-average rhubarb pie . . . but a celebrity nonetheless.

In the meantime, Nana and I are slogging through the end of the year and gearing up to move into our new apartment. Busy couple weeks--we'll post when we can.

Here we go, Nutters, here we go!

On our way to the bus stop Friday morning, Nana and I discovered what was perhaps the crowning achievement of Engrish culture: a cheap white t-shirt with a Steelers helmet on it that read, no joke, "Peanutsburg Nutters, Football Champions." Also, instead of the tiny "Steelers" stencil next to the hypocycloids was scrawled "Amonde" (Konglish for "almond").

Looks to me like someone here hired a Browns fan with a strange sense of humor.

Note: Did you know that the humor website Engrish.com is apparently blocked here in Korea? Very strange what gets blocked around here.

Dust in the wind, dude

From the "Things you don't want to see when you've left the windows open and the apartment is twenty minutes away and you have three rough drafts to grade and four lessons to plan by lunchtime" file:


First time all year we've gone over 200, actually.

PS. This post was funnier before I noticed that Justin scooped me. But mine has a picture!

PPS. So we disconnected the boiler to prevent the floor from... well, boiling, only to come home and find that the dog, for reasons of her own, has decided for the first time all year to pee on the bed. Now we have no clean sheets and no hot water for laundry. Doesn't trouble come in threes? I think I'll go to bed early tonight.

Yellow Dust

Seriously, sometimes I think we're living in some sick farce, like the Truman Show meets the Three Stooges. Our lives would make great TV.

For example: last night, our ondol went haywire and heated one room of the house to near 30 degrees celsius. Today, for the first time all year, we left the windows open when we went to work, and right on cue, in rolls the worst yellow dust storm of the season. Poor Nana is scrambling home to close up as we speak.

Annie Pupdate the Nth

Nana and I have had some questions lately about Annie, the goofy little dog we're fostering from a shelter in Daejeon that's being forced to close. (Previous posts, possibly out of order: 1 2 3 4 5 6.) Ask and ye shall receive.

First of all, Annie's in pretty good health. She recently had her follow-up heartworm test, which came back negative, and as a result she's starting her course of shots. Also, she's nearly housebroken, though she has gotten into the habit of devouring the unspoilt sections of her pee pad, which is a pretty big accomplishment, considering how she came to us going on everything in sight. So if all else fails, we've nursed a sweet (though stupid) little dog to health and gotten her ready for a family.

Which leads us to the next question: What happens to Annie this summer? It was always out intention to foster Annie, not to adopt--especially with the possibility of grad school in the UK looming on the horizon (the UK's regulations on importing dogs are downright inhumane). That said, she's going to spend the summer at a rescue clinic in town, where she'll be put up for adoption. If she doesn't find a permanent home this summer, we'll take her back in August, but if she does, we'll find another pup to foster (trust me, there are plenty).

In the meantime, we're enjoying her company while we can.

Here is Annie looking camera-shy:
And here is Annie guarding her hoard of socks, which she collects from the floor almost the moment we drop them:Notice the eye lasers, ready to strike at a moment's notice.

Mattress World!

Brandy, I don't know if you read the blog, but let me tell you, it was kind of weird seeing you on our TV (via our Tivo and Slingbox) here in Seoul.




(FYI: Brandy is my brother's girlfriend and a family friend.)

Movin' On Up

Reader Mark asks in a comment on yesterday's post whether the upcoming move will be an improvement; I figure now is as good a time as any for more details.

The good: The new place will have an oven and a bathtub, two luxuries we lack at our current abode. Also, the new place is in a building much closer to the school (take 15 minutes off the daily commute each way) where a handful of other teachers live, and right across the street from a subway station on a much more useful line than ours (you can get downtown from there with no transfers).

The bad: The new neighborhood will have fewer options for dining and shopping, especially for grocery shopping, so we'll have to take a weekly trip back to the old neighborhood for groceries. Also, the crowded, narrow streets there will make it a bit harder to walk the dog.

The ugly: Though we asked to move a while ago, so we don't really mind, we no longer have a choice--our landlords are planning to sell our apartment. Apparently, prices in our neighborhood have gone up. Also, the timing of the move will be rough: we've got 2 days between the end of school and our departure for China, and then another 2-3 days before our return from China and our departure for Canada. So June will be a bit wild.

Buddha's Birthday Tour, Part 2: The Temples

(Note: Much of the information below is owed to our RAS tour guide and the very detailed info packet he provided us all. If you're interested in any of Prof. David Mason's work, you can find more information on his website.)

Bomunsa and Mitasa

Our Buddha's Birthday temple tour started in our neck of the woods, at Bomunsa and neighboring Mitasa, in the Bomun neighborhood northeast of the city center. Bomunsa is the home temple of the Bomun order of Buddhist nuns and is the largest convent in the Seoul metropolitan area.


In keeping with traditional Korean geomancy, Bomunsa occupies an auspicious site at the steep head of a small, narrow valley, though the lower reaches of the valley (and the crown of the hill above) have since been consumed by high-rises and busy streets. Still, behind Bomunsa's walls is a quiet oasis, growing and green, where it's easy to forget that you're in one of the biggest cities in the world. (Traveler's note: The grounds of the old Buddhist temples are some of the best photo spots in Korea. Those old monks sure knew their real estate!)

During our visit, the lower levels of the temple were crowded with visitors watching the holiday performance, but the upper levels were much quieter and more serene
And as is common in the busier temples, there were statues everywhere, including some adorable little Buddhist nun figurines.
Bomunsa is also home to a huge a modern-era pagoda, seen below, and a modern-era "cave shrine" modeled after a Shilla-era shrine in Kyeongju.
And as a final note on Bomunsa, here is a roll of members of the Bomun order. Notice all the Kims! (Actually rarer than you might expect on this roll, since the Kim clan is generally fairly wealthy; most members of the Buddhist orders come from the lower classes.)
Next door to Bomunsa is the Mitasa hermitage, a small convent affiliated with the Jogye sect, which is Korea's dominant Buddhist sect.
The hermitage includes a very old (but small) Koryo-era pagoda next to a "sanshingak" or "mountain-spirit shrine" (with the mountain spirit represented here as a white tiger; elsewhere as an old man with a white tiger) a prime example of how Korean Buddhism has adpoted elements of the old shamanistic religions. In fact, the whole mountain-worship element is part of the reason why Buddhist temples tend to be found at the heads of mountain valleys or, as is the case with Shilleuksa in Yeoju, at the tail ends of important mountain ranges.

Unfortunately, lighting made it difficult to shoot either of these items. As a consolation, here's a shot of Nana with a new friend.
Side note: Mitasa is also home to the famous mural depicting Buddha's birth that appeared in our previous post on Buddha's Birtdhay.

Gaeunsa and Potasa

Potasa, a small seminary convent affiliated with Daegu's famous Haeinsa temple, featured the first of two White Buddha carvings of the day.

The White Buddha represents a later development in the history of Buddhism: it used to be believed that one could only achieve salvation through enlightenment, but later beliefs included the possibility of salvation through Buddha's mercy, embodied by the White Buddha--also known as the Goddess of Mercy, despite the moustache.


Gaeunsa is the larger temple down the street from Potasa. It is a seminary temple with modern facilities for about 160 monks plus several older structures. The highlight here was a giant paper lantern of the three-tusked white elephant who, according to the story of Buddha's birth, impregnated Buddha's mother in a dream.
Gaeunsa is also notable because it does not actually sit at the head of a valley, but atop a small, round hill.


Segom-dong

On our way to dinner, we stopped at a small shrine in Segom-dong, along a mountain stream just northwest of the city center. (Geographical note: There's a low but very rugged mountain range that runs down into the Seoul city center, which effectively splits the part of the city north of the Han River in half. The reason for this is that Gyeongbokgung, the main Joseon palace in Seoul was, surprise surprise, built at the tail end of that mountain range.)

The shrine featured the second White Buddha of the day.
Bongwonsa

Bongwonsa, our last stop of the day, is the main temple of the Taego sect, which is an unusual sect in that its monks and priests can marry. They're also filthy rich, sitting as they do on some prime real-estate; seriously, some of the monks drive Lotuses, and not just for the obvious pun.

Situated just north of Yonsei University, Bongwonsa is the closest of Seoul's traditional temples to the city center, and for that reason is the epicenter of Buddha's Birthday celebrations in Seoul. (Though I'm told the modern Jogyesa, in downtown Seoul, also had a big Buddha's Birthday bash.) The long path up to Bongwonsa is very developed and commercialized, including a 24-hour restaurant and "sauna" (bath house), plus several smaller eateries lining the road.

The hike was worth it, though, as the temple itself featured the best Lotus Lantern display in town.
Also worth the hike were the Candle Hall, the Hall of 1000 Buddhas, and a some really great examples of Buddhist statuary carving.

Well, that's it for the Buddha's Birthday tour. Expect slim pickins as far as posts go for the next couple weeks--we're into the final push at school AND we'll be moving to a new apartment partway through June. Of course, if anything ludicrous happens, you'll be the first to know.

Huh.

If anyone has any ideas why the font size on that last post was twice as big as usual, I'm all ears.