When my
alarm rang at 7:00 I turned it off carelessly. In fifteen minutes the next
alarm would wake me for good, as it always does, usually.
When I
next woke I was ominously refreshed. Sure enough, I checked the time on my
phone and saw it was 8:05. The bus to Nonsan was scheduled to depart at 8:30.
“Shoot,” I grumbled as I jumped up and went to the stairs, doing some quick
estimates. If I could leave my apartment by 8:20 I could get to the bus with a
couple minutes to spare. Fifteen minutes to shower, dress, and brush my teeth?
Possible, but I hadn’t a moment to spare.
It was
the fastest I’d gotten ready in years, and even with the stroke of good luck of
a taxi waiting directly in front of my building, I was running to the bus and
boarded a few minutes after 8:30. Fortunately it was a charter bus, and the
tour leaders were waiting on a few more people; we didn’t start moving until
around 8:40, by which time I’d found a seat near Sarah, Rufus, and Lucy at the
back of the bus. We were in for a cold and rainy day according to the
forecasts, but, as I learned on our ski trip to Muju, those three are such
great travel companions that I didn’t much mind the prospect of bad weather.
We had
somewhere between an hour and a half to three hours of bus ride between us and
Nonsan. All I really knew was that it was somewhere north of Gwangju. Once
Sarah had mentioned the trip I was sold immediately by the prospect of getting
out of Gwangju for the first time since the trip to Muju and I didn’t do any
more research. Nonsan is not Gwangju, and it has strawberries; that was more
than enough for me. I could figure out the details whenever I woke up and we
were there, so I put up the hood of my coat and leaned back in to the softly
jittering rumble of the bus.
We were
about half an hour nearer our destination when the tour leader got on the
microphone to end our naps and give us slightly more information about what
we’d be doing that day. It would be cold, yes, but when we arrived at the
strawberry farm we would be able to pick strawberries inside. For 10,000 won we
could eat all the berries we wanted, and then either fill a small box with some
to take home or take a jar of jam.
And
now, please tell us, what is your name, where are you from (which state if
you’re from the states, please), and what is your job? I remembered doing a few
of this sort of introduction from my first months here. In most circumstances,
being in a place for eight months leaves you in a situation where you’re still
very new. If this were school, I’d still be a freshman, after all. But in
Korea, most of us work on one-year contracts, putting me closer to the end than
I am to the beginning, with more farewells before me here than hellos. It’s not
a great attitude to take up, I admit, but it’s basically the sense I had as I
casually stated, “I’m Trevor, from Illinois, and I’m a hagwon teacher,” into a
microphone for a bus full of strangers whose faces I couldn’t see. And then I
heard a string of names with no faces and states and countries. It was a
strange exercise. Our tour leader would have done better to just ask each of us
conversationally as he collected our money.
The
next time I woke up I looked out the window as we crossed a bridge. On the
banks of the placid grey river below, next to the expansive parking lot, sat a
few figures encased in well-fluffed jackets. They huddled over their reels,
watching the lines reaching beneath the surface.
From a
lightpole on the bridge a sign with one corner untethered flapped violently in
the wind, with brief respites that were just long enough that my
gradually-improving Korean-reading skills were able to make out the words “논산 딸기 축제” Nonsan Ddalgi Chukje.
Nonsan Strawberry Festival. 논산 (Nonsan) is the name of the
city. 딸기 –ddalgi – strawberry: I learned
this word when I grabbed an appetizingly pink bottle from the cooler at 7-11 on
my way to work one particularly bleary early afternoon last fall. When I sat
down at my desk and unscrewed the cap, I slowly read the label: 딸기 라떼 – ddalgi latte – strawberry latte. 축제 –chukje – festival: I picked this
one up during January intensives, when I was giving my class of middle
schoolers a quiz of twenty vocabulary words every weekday morning at 10:10
a.m., and grading the quizzes over lunch. This was when I made most of my
progress in reading Korean. Some of the words were given in Korean, and they’d
write the English word, and some were the other way around. Festival was the
other way around, so after reading over 13 quizzes to make sure 축제 was written correctly it stuck with me.
The
sign, with its crisp picture of a strawberry halved so that its white interior
outlines the shape of a heart, suggested we were near our destination, though
according to the clock we’d only been on the road for an hour and a half. The
low estimate gladly proved to be accurate; we took the next right and came to a
stop in the parking lot near the chilled fishermen.
Alright,
we’re here. Come back to the bus at 3 and we’ll go pick strawberries.
Got it.
3 o’clock. So we have…5 hours. I forgot to bring an umbrella.
We
stepped off the bus and into the rain, and looked out toward the festival to
see what the next five hours might have in store for us. I think we were all a
bit underwhelmed. Somehow I’d imagined a sunny afternoon spent in some hilly
fields among rows and rows of strawberry vines. Even when people warned me the
weather wasn’t going to cooperate that weekend, the scene still played in my
imagination as an afternoon of squinting in the bright sun while surveying vast
stretches of rich green with luscious red blotches hanging out over the columns
of recently-plowed soil, gently reflecting some of the warmth it had taken in
from the intense sun.
The
bridge we’d crossed on the bus provided some relief from the rain, and we
stopped underneath it for a few minutes to get a closer look of the setup.
Beyond the concert stage set up near the edge of the river in front of the
paved parking lot ran three columns of white tents, waiting for us to come
peruse their contents while we strolled past in the rain, our feet pushing down
the mesh the organizers had stretched over the ground so we wouldn’t sink into
the mud but only into shallow puddles of murky grey water that formed around the soles of our feet at each step.
 |
| At the entrance to the festival |
Some of
the vendors we passed called out to us with exhortations to come sample their
wares, warming themselves up for a day of hard selling to try to mitigate the
damage done to their business by the grey skies and cold winds. I did try a bit
of jam, though I passed up the kimchi and some other concoctions I didn’t go close enough to identify. Most of the vendors paid us no special attention,
watching us pass while saving their efforts for those who could understand what
they would say and possibly buy what they sold. I spent enough hours standing
damp and chilled in the pit of Harvard Square shouting to potential tour-takers
to understand their resignation. I also gave enough hour-long tours to groups
of Chinese tourists with minimal English skills to have some idea of the
self-consciousness and futility one can feel while giving a pitch that’s doomed
to incomprehensibility. I could empathize with the vendors’ reticence.
We then
came to a tent whose contents I hadn’t expected. We first noticed the snakes,
mostly motionless in their bare, barely secured glass cases. Not far away a
group of children leaned excitedly over plastic crates containing baby bunnies,
mice, chicks, and hedgehogs. They hummed gleefully as they held the furry
creatures or watched the tiny mice crawl over the sleeves of their coats, and I
like to imagine the animals were thankful for the warmth offered them against
the unseasonable chill by those miniature hands. We looked on from a distance
for a few moments to discern what animals were there before moving along to the
bigger cages.
A
larger enclosure surrounded a group of branches on which various tropical birds
perched, including a parrot patiently enduring the persistent efforts of a
young couple to teach it to say “Annyeong”. I listened intently, hoping they
would succeed. Until then I hadn’t realized how much I’d like to hear a parrot
mimic a language other than English. This parrot, however, seemed to content to
show off only its listening skills, and we walked to the other side of the
birdcage, deeper into the miniature zoo.
Pressing
against the far side of its cage was a skunk, stripped, we assumed, of its
noxious potential. About a meter away was a brown raccoon, pacing back and
forth, dipping its snout into the corner each time, involved completely in the
business of looking busy checking for a way out.
The
porcupine in the next pen seemed to be making more progress. His pen was really
more a loose affiliation of short wire fences without a covering on top. He
repeatedly reared up and dove into the lower portion of the back side, sliding
the fence back a few centimeters before he immediately commenced scraping away
at the ground at its base. If the ground hadn’t been paved over with
landscaping bricks he may have had some chance of escape that way. As it was we
hoped he’d figure out that a strong pounce above the short fence’s center of
gravity might tip it enough for him to make his way over it, and then perhaps
under the loose back of the tent undulating slightly in the wind, and safely
across the road and sidewalks, and maybe on to some semblance of a natural
habitat somewhere, though I hadn’t had a good look at our surroundings on the
drive in to know where that might be. I didn’t think that far ahead at the
time. I just wanted for him to get out of that enclosure in what I was
beginning to recognize was a bleak and likely miserable existence.
The
furry creature we saw in the next cage rushed frantically from the front to the
back of its few square feet, ramming its head into the bars, its rapid
breathing audible from a couple of meters away. I was beginning to feel guilty
for looking, yet I kept a grin affixed to my face. ‘Who am I to frown?’ I
thought. ‘I’m looking at this of my own volition, after all. And what good
would it do to reflect the misery of these creatures back at them, only to walk
away, having done nothing?’
Near
the end of the line was a monkey, sprawled out on his back on the floor of his
cage, two of his long limbs reaching up and out, gripping the bars. He’d roll
his head around from time to time to glance at his audience. I watched him in
amusement, taking some comfort in the carefree and bored expression on his
face. Among the rattle of skulls against metal bars coming from other parts of
the tent, the monkey existed calmly in his miniscule space, patiently waiting
for the end of the day when he’d be taken back to wherever they came from, warm
and fed (I hope) before setting out for wherever was next.
A
moment later he sat up and reached outside the cage for a piece of straw, which
he raised to his mouth and chewed a couple of times, then dropped it to the
ground. With his expression unchanged he hopped up and down a few times,
grabbing the bars and spinning himself around a bit in an effort to amuse
himself.
From
the cage at the end of the line a domesticated cat looked on in complete
stillness as though it were stationed on a living room windowsill looking out
on the senseless commotion of the world outside. I’m not sure what the owners
felt they were lacking to round out their collection of caged wildlife with a
housecat. Goodness knows asking them would bring about no understanding. Not
that I’d know who to ask, anyway. The whole exhibit seemed to be devoid of
caretakers, of anyone to look upon with a disapproving glare.
We made
our way through mud puddles to the opposite row of tents, looking for a place
to conquer our appetites. The line of open-air restaurants stretched out for a
couple hundred meters, presenting us with no shortage of options. We briefly
surveyed the whole length of it before deciding to return to the most enticing
option we’d passed, which presented an animal in a much more palatable form
than any we’d seen that day: a pig roasting on a spit in front of the tent. A
labored perusal of their hanging menu suggested we could get a platter of roast
pork for 25,000 won. We asked for that and sat down at a table, finally out of
the rain.
In my
rush to get to the bus that morning I’d failed to eat anything. It was around
11 when we sat down to eat, around the time I’m finally getting out of bed on
many mornings. Thus, while I wasn’t uncomfortably hungry, I eagerly scooped up
some of the kimchi and other panjan once it was placed on the table. Even with
the chilling effect of our ceasing to move around, having a dry place to sit
out of the wind with a bit of kimchi in my stomach provided some sense of
warmth.
This
cold! Shouldn’t it be warm here by now? It seemed like it was going to stay
nice after the good weather we had during the week. Of course on the weekend it
would decide to create a disturbance.
I began
to notice the disproportionate number of foreigners in the clumps of passers-by
contemplating the array of lunch options. This wasn’t surprising; there were
likely many foreigner-oriented groups like ours that had planned outings to the
festival for that day. Since we’d already transferred funds to book seats on
the bus we were much less likely to be dissuaded by the less-than-ideal
conditions than Korean families who may have been considering a drive out to
Nonsan to check out the festival. For most of them there’d be next year,
anyway. It tends to be easy to spot foreigners in Korea, and several more
groups of them sat down at tables near ours while we waited, perhaps having
been drawn in by the presence of other foreigners and, of course, the pig on a
spit. To ourselves, we commended the proprietor for her keen advertising.
How
nice it will be when it finally warms up for good. I’d like to try to visit
Haeundae at some point in the small window I imagine exists between the first
warm weekends and the rush of immense crowds that will pour over the sand when
beach season begins. Doing so may cause me to miss out on the real spirit of
Haeundae, however. But this cold! The warmth seems a remote dream that comes
more slowly the more we ache for it.
The
pork was served over fresh onions and garlic on an iron skillet, heated so that
we could hear that appetizing hiss and sizzle as we stirred up the contents,
pushing the pork down against the bottom to heat it up for optimal enjoyment.
I swear
the temperature’s dropped since we sat down. It was cool this morning, but it’s
getting downright cold now. I thought we were done with this. This should have
been done weeks ago. What happened to global warming?
The
proprietor filled another platter with pork for another table of foreigners.
Another worker was stripping meet from the mostly-emptied animal with gloved
hands, her hair wrapped in a bandana and her mouth and nose covered by a
surgical mask. Behind her sat two children, one a teenager and the other
younger than ten, both visibly bored and impatient. The older one fidgeted on a
phone while the other glanced frantically about with a frown. I assumed all the
people working the food tent were family, and the kids had to come along for a
cold day watching the adults run the business.
As much
as some of the kids I teach can drive me up a wall at times, you can’t help but
develop some sympathy for them. Kids spend a lot of time in school and academy
here, and I remember very clearly the strong desire to please and impress
parents and teachers. For many of these kids, that task involves a huge time
commitment, much greater than it ever did for me. So I did feel bad for these
kids, sitting under a tent in the rain and cold –on a Saturday – and maybe Sunday
as well, before going back to their routine of regular school in the morning
and afternoon, and academy for a couple hours in the evening, and a few hours
for homework. There are many challenging moments for me in teaching, but
whenever I stop doing it I’ll miss those occasions when I know the kids are
learning something, and they know it too, and smile.
On the
other side of the entrance another worker - an aunt, perhaps - had begun frying
up some pajeon. On display next to her were some deep fried goodies we thought
might be squid, so we ordered a plate. Once it reached our table we saw that it
might actually be deep-fried ginger root. I grabbed one a took a bite,
confirming this suspicion, to the chagrin of the lot of us. We worked on it for
a while in order not to seem rude. Really, it wasn’t too bad, though it was not
nearly as delicious as fried squid would have been. Still, it helps to have an
affinity for fried ginger to work through such a large amount of it in the
absence of considerable hunger, and we were already quite sated from the pork
and the vegetable side dishes. That’s when the pajeon arrived.
Pajeon
is the first Korean food I remember trying. My neighbor made some using
vegetables from her garden. Alexander ate it enthusiastically, having much more
knowledge at the time of Korean cuisine than I did. Actually, at that time I
knew nothing about Korean food, so I tried a bit with no real expectations,
though I did find the idea of a vegetable pancake exotic. I loved it, and I try
not to go too long over here without enjoying some variety of pajeon.
In
fact, I’ve been indulging even more frequently in the past couple of months in
anticipation of the relative scarcity of Korean food that will confront me when
I return to the states. But the plentitude of our meal at the food tent had
pushed beyond our limits with a couple of ginger roots and a third of a pajeon
left on the table. I continued to pick at the pajeon, breaking off sections of
it with my chopsticks and lifting them to my mouth out of nostalgia and a
desire to delay the hunger I’d begin to feel in a few hours, perhaps out of
habit.
I hate
to harp on the cold. I’ve often heard others point out that the weather makes
for dull conversation. But it’s there, and we can all feel it, and if it makes
us uncomfortable or annoyed, isn’t it natural to commiserate with each other
over that? Particularly since this cold seems so stubbornly persistent, so
determined to get us to talk about it, to shiver in its wake, whereas if it had
shown up in the dead of winter we’d have shrugged it off.
One of
the adults must have given the younger girl some money, because when I looked
back up toward the spit she was standing in front of it with a grin on her
face, presumably brought about by the cookie-like snack in her hands. A group
of the workers went to the back of the tent. A few minutes later, the lumbered
through the aisle alongside our table, hauling between the four of them a pig
that must have been five feet long, wrapped loosely in a clear plastic bag. I
was tickled to witness this, accepting the spectacle as an enhancement of the
dining experience. I was also quite glad it was occurring after we’d finished
eating, sa what I watched wasn’t exactly appetizing.
They
roughly lowered the carcass onto the surface of a table diagonally across from
ours. Two of them lifted one end of the pig high enough for the others to slip
off the plastic bag, so we could see the deep slit across the entire length of
the animal’s underside, through which the organs had been removed. The first
pig was little more than a well-cooked spine and ribcage now, so this new
specimen was being prepared to draw in and feed more customers as the lunchtime
rush continued. I wondered how many more they had waiting out of sight behind
the tent to replace this one once it too had served its purpose. I imagined a
truck bed covered with decapitated pig carcasses waiting to be paraded out to
command the attention of the busloads of foreigners wandering by.
 |
| Pig being readied for the spit; pajeon in the foreground |
The
four adults struggled to maintain solid grips as they hoisted up the pig and
hauled it to the second spit. Three of them supported the weight as they
lowered it, blocking the view of those passing by while they prepared the
display. After a few moments, the pig was in place and spinning, and we rose to
pay and return to the cold and rain.
The
level of activity had risen dramatically during our two-hour lunch. While we
had grown colder, the festival had marched on. Plush strawberry mascots trudged
through the muck with ecstatic smiles stitched onto their faces. Families
crowded under the tarp overhangs sheltering strawberry rice cake vendors.
Couples queued up to purchase pairs of fresh berries skewered and dipped in
melted chocolate with a rainbow of sprinkles drizzled on top, one or the other
holding two in his or her hand while turning around to pass off half of the
sweet, juicy burden. Parents edged up beside their children as the little ones
leaned heavily over large rounded pots, their gloved hands mashing masses of
the blood red berries into jam, soaking up the warmth of the gooey pulp
engulfing their fingers.
With
about an hour to kill before the departure of our bus for the strawberry fields,
we came upon the tent of a couple of caricature artists. On display were some
interpretations of Korean celebrities. Sarah suggested we sit for a caricature
of our group, and we quickly agreed. It seemed a good way to pass the time out
of the rain while we waited for the greatly-anticipated strawberry picking.
The
artist welcomed us when he had finished drawing a trio ahead of us, and we
relaxed into the four chairs facing the back of his easel. I began to unzip my
coat, the one I’d worn for our ski trip, the same one I’d bought last year to
wear on the Mt. Washington hike, the one that had gotten me through the winter
here and continued to ward off some of the cold still confronting me. I zipped
it back up to the neck, figuring he wouldn’t draw our clothing anyway, and
later realizing that if he did, I would want to be drawn in it anyway.
I tried
not to move too much when the artist signaled to me that he was beginning my
caricature. He spoke a few words in Korean and studied me briefly but seriously.
I bounced my legs up and down on my toes to generate some heat. Although I
tried to keep my eyes open and facing in his general direction, I wasn’t
comfortable looking at him for however long it might take, which wasn’t clear
to me. He seemed hard at work and deep in concentration, his gaze moving
carefully from me to his canvas, his pen or brush moving rapidly and smoothly. It
was interesting to watch for a bit, but I almost felt as though I might disturb
him if I seemed to be making eye contact, so my focus drifted across the
activity outside the tent.
Another
Korean tour leader with an excellent American accent shepherded his foreigners
around the grass between the rows of tents, taking pictures with some in front
of a strawberry sculpture. Some schoolkids with backpacks, perhaps enjoying the
outdoors after Saturday academy classes, stared at us in curiosity while
walking by. The strawberry mascots approached the tent next to the artists’,
pulling off their oversized heads as they entered, eager to be rid of them at
the end of their shift.
A young
couple with a young child maybe three or four years old and a baby came up to
the side of our artist, watching him work. The familiar beat of “Gangnam Style”
found its way into the tent from the loudspeakers in the parking lot,
introducing an adorably muted version of the horse dance from the couple’s
older child, who bounced slightly up and down as though it were an involuntary
reaction she was either fighting to suppress or struggling to develop. She and her
father sat for the neighboring artist a few minutes later while the mother and
baby watched. We sat mostly in stillness and silence, waiting patiently to
discover what it was he and the more curious of the passers-by found notable,
or at least noticeable, about us. Here's the result:
 |
| I think we look warm |
We scurried to get to the bus at
the scheduled meeting time once the caricature was complete, and I sank into my
seat with a full stomach and a deep appreciation of the heater. At the
strawberry farm about half an hour later we went into a greenhouse and had half
an hour to eat berries straight from the vines and fill up a small container to
take home with us. They were delicious and provided a sweet end to a refreshing
day away from the city.
 |
| Inside the greenhouse |
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