Читать книгу South Korea - Mark Dake - Страница 9

Heju and I were fine in the morning. We didn’t stay mad at each other long. She did, however, continue to sporadically upbraid me in the weeks after, accusing me unflatteringly of being a slave driver and a drill sergeant, and continuing to insinuate that this wasn’t a trip, but a boot camp.

In decidedly un-boot-camp style, we began our fourth day on Ganghwa by treating the exceptionally kind Yun-ja, the Ganghwa tourism employee — who had been phoning us regularly to ask if there was anything she could assist us with — to lunch at a little restaurant in town.

Seated at the table, Yun-ja remarked admiringly, “You’ve stayed on Ganghwa for four days. Most Koreans just visit for one day then leave.”

“But there’s so much to see here,” I said, which was the honest-to-goodness truth.

After lunch, Heju and I drove along the town’s main road, and, on a whim, stopped in front of the utilitarian Incheon Ganghwa Police Station. I wanted to ask about a tragic drowning of four young students that I had read about, which happened on the island.

Behind the station desk were two officers, Jang Bu-gun and Choi Kyung-ju. They recalled the sad event. “They were on a church outing to Dongmak Beach on the south shore catching shellfish out on the mudflats. The tide comes in very fast there. The water’s very dangerous. No one’s allowed to swim there. The girls panicked and got stuck in the mud. After the tide went out, people found their bodies. Locals don’t go out to where the girls went. They use boards to catch shellfish on the mudflats.”

I had seen on a TV program about how Korean coastal villagers collecting shellfish in particularly deep and soft mud flats must lean their weight on a boogie-board-size plank they thrust in front of them so as not to sink down into the muck. When Heju and I had been out on the tidal mud flats along the west coast in the city of Gunsan, in North Jeolla Province, I had sunk up to my shins in the soft goo, and it took me ten minutes to pry my legs out of the vacuum seal. Heju had thought it was hilarious.

“How do you get out of the mud if you’re stuck?” I asked the officers.

“If you panic, your legs sink deeper,” one said. “If you try to stand straight, it’s easy to sink. Lie down, and when the tide comes in, let the water float you out.”

Easier said than done, I thought.

After fifteen minutes, an officer entered the station accompanied by two gentlemen: a slight man and a much larger fellow, both with grim countenances. The smaller one as it turned out was a taxi driver, and the other had been his passenger the night before. They had been involved in a bit of a punch-up.

“They’re here to work it out,” the officer informed us, though they didn’t appear overly conciliatory to each other. “The drinking culture’s widespread here,” he added. “When people get drunk, they become very emotional. It’s easy to get in a fight.” Drunken fights, minor thefts, and traffic accidents were the three most common issues on the island, he said.

Before fists started flying again we took our leave and drove up the quiet adjacent back street. In an unassuming little residential area we came to Goryeogungji (Goryeo Palace Site). Goryeo was the royal dynasty that ruled from 918 to 1392. The original Goryeo Palace was constructed somewhere near here in 1232 as a refuge for the royal court to rule from during the Mongol siege of Korea. That palace, though, was totally destroyed by the Mongols in 1259.

In 1636, the royal family again moved to the grounds, this time to escape the Manchu invasion. Several buildings were erected to accommodate them. But the next year, the Manchus captured Ganghwa town and took temporary occupancy of the palace. Since then, the buildings remained basically unused by the royal family and were later converted for government use.

In 1782, a royal library, Oegyujanggak, which roughly translates as “The Outside Building for Writings by Important People,” was constructed on the site where we now stood. This structure held a surfeit of official royal Joseon books referred to as Uigwe (Royal Protocols). Uigwe recorded the annals of Joseon history, with hand-drawn illustrations of royal weddings and funerals, the construction and repair of palaces, court performances, costumes, musical instruments, and decoration. The approximately four thousand Uigwe volumes were stored at Changdeok Palace library in Seoul. In 1782, close to three hundred volumes were transferred to the Ganghwa library for safekeeping.

The French navy invaded Ganghwa in October 1866 to mete out punitive measures in response to the executions of French priests in Seoul the same year. The French set fire to the fort walls surrounding Ganghwa town as well as to the Goryeo Palace government buildings, including Oegyujanggak, burning them to the ground. The French reportedly carted off flags, cannons, eight thousand muskets, twenty-three boxes of silver ingots and several of gold, as well as lacquer ware, jade, and paintings in addition to the 297 Uigwe volumes. They stored the latter at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. The collection was largely forgotten until a Korean discovered it in 1975. Then, after decades of negotiations between the two countries, in 2010, presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Lee Myung-bak signed an agreement that saw all the books returned to Korea between April and June the following year.

Goryeo Palace really has no connection to the actual Goryeo period, except for being on or near the same grounds where the large former palace once sat. Of the original palace, only a few foundation stones remain, and they are adjacent to this location. What was before us had been constructed much more recently, in 1977. A modest stone wall enclosing the interior, and a traditional but small front gate — two heavy vertical wood columns supporting a heavy arched tiled roof. We entered to find a small field of grass, and I was delighted, because grass is a rare sight in Korea. Almost every viable acre across the peninsula was long ago converted into agricultural farmland, and finding a natural grass meadow can be like spotting a rare bird.

Off to the side were several one-storey government buildings that had been rebuilt in 1977. The new incarnation of the library, Oegyujanggok, was erected in 2002. The wood comprising the low, modest buildings was so dry, its paint so worn and faded, their appearances and feel could have passed for hundreds of years old. One building was L-shaped, built on a foundation of several layers of flat cut granite, the black, shale-tiled arched roof extending far over the front walls. In front, a row of square wooden beams supported the roof, creating a protected porch underneath. The walls appeared to have a series of shutter-like doors painted green, though this colour, too, was badly faded. The courtyard was of dry earth.

Our guidebook said that Yongheun Palace (Palace of the Rising Dragon) was just a little way along the street. The name was misleading. It wasn’t a palace either, but rather, a compound with a traditional home that had been renamed a “palace” to honour a Ganghwa lad who had grown up in it in the 1830s. The young man had been crowned King Cheoljong at the age of nineteen in 1849, after the heirless reigning king died. Cheoljong was a distant relative of a past king, and he was chosen to reign as the twenty-fifth monarch, more because he could be easily manipulated by a power-hungry court faction than for his sense of acumen.

Cheoljong’s grandparents had been exiled to Ganghwa, due to their affinity for Catholicism, and his parents had farmed on the island. Apparently, little Cheoljong wasn’t terribly studious, and the guidebook Moon Handbooks: South Korea politely referred to him as “uneducated and somewhat of a country bumpkin; he was definitely unprepared for his role as head of the nation.” It was said he was living in terrible poverty and unable to read when he was chosen to be king — precisely the type of man needed to lead a country to prosperity. Heju recalled that during her school years, Cheoljong was one Joseon king that her teachers did not expand on. I suspect he was rather like poor old Chester A. Arthur or Benjamin Harrison — American presidents who sadly are consigned to presidential oblivion for eternity. Cheoljong died in 1863 at age thirty-two, reportedly a victim of foul play. His home, “Yongheun Palace,” was reconstructed in 1974.

Heju and I drove from Goryeo Palace to a clearing nearby where there was a row of foundation rocks. Officials believe that these belonged to the original palace site.

And up a slight hill from the site of this place is the Ganghwa Anglican Church, built in 1900 under the direction of Charles John Corfe, the Church of England’s first bishop to Korea (1889–1905). In an effort to try to integrate the Anglican Church into Korean culture, its missionaries, who began arriving in the late nineteenth century, built several churches in the traditional Korean architectural style. This was the first constructed.

Bishop Corfe apparently wasn’t terribly enamoured with his posting in Korea. He was educated at Oxford and served twenty years as a chaplain in the Royal Navy before being sent to Korea at the age of forty-six. He spent sixteen years in the country, and recounted his experiences in his book The Anglican Church in Corea.

The one-storey building was a mix of Western and Korean architecture with Buddhist elements. Rust-coloured brick covered the lower walls, and above this was a narrow row of wooden shuttered windows, painted turquoise. Vertical wood beams painted deep red were inlaid in the walls. The roof was massive, constructed in the traditional Korean style, double-tiered with grey tile shingles and wooden rafters painted a light greenish-blue. The church had been refurbished in 1984, and it was indeed a beautiful work of architecture.

Along one end of the church were four faded turquoise wooden doors. We noticed one of them was ajar, so we popped our heads in. A woman was sweeping the floor. “Are you open?” we asked.

“No, only on Sundays,” she answered.

It was Friday. “Is it okay if we come in and look around?”

“Yes, come in.”

We took off our shoes and entered. Inside we discovered an architectural treasure. I felt as if I had been transported back to Victorian England. The basilica-like interior featured sumptuous polished dark red wood on the floor, ceiling, and rafters. The interior was bathed in a soft golden glow. Nine floor-to-ceiling vertical beams more than a foot thick ran along each side of the church, shouldering the weight of a second-floor wooden walkway and the heavy-looking roof. Across the high ceiling ran nine large beams. The walls were of white clay framed in wood. Above the walkway on each side was a row of windows, and several chandeliers, each with a set of six small delicate white ceramic shades, hung from the ceiling.

The aisle was flanked by ten rows of redwood chairs. We sat down and soaked up the ambiance. It really was an exquisite building, peaceful and calm. The artisans who refurbished it had obviously been master craftsmen.

“It’s beautiful,” said Heju, in a state of ecclesiastical bliss. “I love it here; I could stay all day.”

Even I was imbued by a temporary wave of serenity.

Three women were cleaning the interior, so we asked one of them whether they had to polish the wooden floors, which would be quite an undertaking.

“We polish them twice a year,” she told us, “but we don’t wax them anymore. Our parishioners are old and they slip if we do.”

I had a brief vision of Sunday morning worship service, with elderly churchgoers taking long runs in stocking feet, sliding briskly over the smooth surface, whooping and hollering in delight, then tumbling like bowling pins.

Noticing two portable gas heaters in the corner, we asked if it got cold in the winter.

“Yes, the church isn’t insulated. We need to use heaters,” she said.

Two men then entered the church and sat down. We exchanged pleasantries. One had a German accent, and when I inquired, he told me his name and that he taught choir composition at a university in Seoul. Like Heju, he preferred that I didn’t talk, and was content to sit in a trance-like state and soak up the ethereal ambiance. Later, I discovered he had been the music director at the Spandau School of Church Music in Berlin, and was a composer too.

Heju and I stayed in the church for about an hour in order to properly receive blessings of good fortune from above. Finally, I suggested to Heju that we should get going.

* * *

Driving west from Ganghwa town along the north part of the island, Heju and I had stops at a roadside insect museum, a hillside crematorium, a millennium-old dolmen, and a “five-storey” pagoda — the latter, in actual fact, a five-rock pagoda the height of a small child. Back on the blacktop after a few hours, with evening settling in, we swung south along the west coast, though unfortunately a range of low wooded hills blocked our view to the sea. A short way south, in an area called Mangwol, we turned off the main road and headed onto a muddy and rutted side road that led to the coast. I turned on the headlights and illuminated a vast bleak stretch of muddy paddies. We soon reached the sea; it was desolate and grey. As we emerged from the car, we were met by a cold salty wind blowing off the water. About a mile out, a twinkle of yellow lights shimmered in the darkness from a small village on Seongmo Island. The tide was out, exposing a deep morass of brown goo and deep, wide, muddy moats and trenches that led from the shore to the sea and looked large enough to swallow a small house. I had never seen such treacherous mud flats before.

“No wonder people drown here!” I exclaimed.

We wandered along the shore to nearby Mangwol Dondae, a low sentry post constructed of small rocks. It had been built in 1679, and I found it exhilarating to imagine that more than three centuries earlier soldiers would have manned this now-crumbling structure and gazed out to sea, on the lookout for foreign vessels.

Back in the car, Heju and I continued south along the island road, and soon rolled into the small coastal village of Oepo, located about halfway down Ganghwa. We puttered through its “downtown” area, a short, narrow section of road with no sidewalks, lined with brightly lit restaurants with long aquariums full of fish on display outside. It was Friday night, but the restaurants were empty; the crowds from Seoul would arrive by the carload the next day.

We stopped at five different modern-looking motels within a stone’s throw of downtown and Heju went into each one to check the room rates. She was informed by each one that they charged between 40,000 and 50,000 won, which sounded reasonable in comparison to Western prices, but was far more than the usual room rate of 25,000 to 30,000 won. “This is an Oepo Motel Cartel!” I charged in vexation.

The rates were unacceptable, of course, and having passed a castle-like five-storey motel along the road leading into town, we backtracked and pulled into the lot; Ganghwa Haesoo Sauna was quiet and dark.

Although there was no motel or hotel in the title of this establishment, it was indeed a motel that included a sauna (hot tubs, cold tubs, and a steam room) for customer use. In Korea, a sauna has tubs and steam rooms, and is typically used by Koreans for daytime use. But some saunas, also known as jimjilbangs (a Korean word meaning “hot pack” or “hot things room”) are equipped for overnight stays with one or two floor areas available for customers to plonk down a mat to slumber on. Saunas evolved from pubic bathhouses, or mokyok (meaning “take a wash”). Up until the 1970s, before many homes had access to hot water, mokyoks were common, often being the only places where people could properly bathe.

“It looks closed,” Heju said.

“Let’s try it anyway,” I said hopefully.

We entered the motel’s substantial but utilitarian and dimly lit lobby, hoping a clerk might appear.

“Annyeonghaseyo yeogi nugugyeseyo!” (“Hello. Is anyone here?”) Heju called out.

Moments later, a woman appeared behind the window. She was friendly and engaging and informed us that rooms were only 25,000 won, which greatly pleased me — Oepo’s Motel Mafia hadn’t gotten to her yet.

The basement sauna and hot tubs, she said, opened at ten o’clock in the morning. Heju was happy — she loved saunas. When Heju is home in Daejeon, on most Saturdays or Sundays she’ll head with her mother to her local sauna, where they’ll spend many hours. When not making multiple forays into the sauna and hot tubs to shrivel and burn, she’ll rest, relax, and read in the common area. I suppose it’s a bit like Westerners spending all day at the local tennis or country club.

Carrying our bags, we trudged upstairs to our fifth-floor room. There was no elevator. At each floor we paused and peered down a long, spooky hallway, high-ceilinged and in shadows with musty red carpeted floors. “This place reminds me of the haunted hotel in The Shining,” I said. Had Jack Nicholson, as the crazed Jack Torrance, stuck his face, hideous, contorted and bug-eyed, out of a door and chortled evilly “Hereeeeeeee’s Johnnnnnyyyyyy!” it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least.

Our room was, let’s just say, worth the 25,000 won … well, maybe 15,000 … or even 10,000. It wasn’t that it was dirty or that there were stains on the walls. It simply felt very, very old, as if ten thousand people had slept in it before us. It was like one of those old rooming houses featured in a 1950s Hollywood movie, about a down-on-his-luck detective living in a seedy part of Los Angeles.