Complete and Creative

I Think Korea Loves/Hates Me (2/2)

…continued from

After prying me out from between the train doors, we went to the little Chinatown outside Seoul (and I use “little” very literally; it was and still is the smallest Chinatown I have ever visited). You would think that a Chinese guy in Seoul’s Chinatown would have some sort of divine right to a warm welcome. Yeah, right. I tripped, fell, and scraped my hands so badly that the lady at the restaurant, who also thought I was Korean until I spoke to her in Mandarin, came running out with band-aids.

If a lake looks as if it’s barely frozen, don’t test it.

The next day, we went to the World Cup Stadium (Seoul hosted the World Cup in 2002). There was a frozen lake nearby. It wasn’t quite frozen, though. A few words of advice if I may: If it’s only December, not quite the heart of winter yet, and you see a frozen lake that you suspect isn’t quite frozen, don’t try to find out. Luckily, I didn’t have both feet on the ice.

Since one of my feet was soaked through, my friend and I decided to go back to the guest house to get me a spare pair of socks so I wouldn’t get frostbite. Even though it wasn’t snowing that day, there were still patches of ice here and there on many of the streets. The street leading from the main road to our guest house was one such street. I was looking straight ahead because what reason did I have to keep my eyes on the ground? I had only tripped more than once and almost fallen through a not-so-frozen lake. So one of those destined patches of ice rose to meet my unsuspecting feet, and I scraped and re-scraped my hands, bruising my knee in the process.

I tried to laugh it all off, but it didn’t really work until we met my friend’s family, who showed us around and treated us to lots of delicious meals. My friend’s aunt kept telling my friend, “He’s so good-looking.” When my friend told me later, I said, “Maybe she was just being polite.” Then my friend said, “But you don’t even understand Korean!” While drinking with my friend’s uncle (man, I love drinking with old Asian dudes), he was saying to me, “I like you. You and I should keep in touch.” My friend translated, subsequently saying to me in English and the uncle in Korean, “But you two don’t even speak a common language!” And my friend’s grandma practically showed me how to wash myself in the huge bucket she brought in just for me, since the little American boy didn’t quite know how to work the Korean-style bathroom.

One of those days, on one of Seoul’s many crowded trains, my friend and I were standing up, keeping our balance by grabbing hold of a pole or a handlebar. Sitting in the seat right in front of me was a middle-aged Korean lady, neatly dressed and well composed and looking through her cell phone. At least I thought she was just looking through her cell phone. At one stop, I heard a snapping noise, then the lady left the train. A few seconds later, my friend and I stared at each other, both wondering what that noise was. It was a shutter noise that both American and Asian youth are all too familiar with: a phone camera. “Did she just take a picture of you?” my friend asked. I shrugged, a little creeped out but also a little flattered.

When I went to get my haircut, the pretty hair stylist asked me two questions. One: “Is she your girlfriend?” Two: “Are you Korean? You look Korean.”

We, as human beings, always yearn for a sense of belonging, which doesn’t mix well with the urge to travel, which only a number of us are cursed with, myself included. So to those who travel, one of the greatest joys of all is to be mistaken for a local. I liked being thought of as a Korean when I was in Korea. It was quite an honor. That was some real love.

I’ll probably visit Korea again someday. But I probably won’t go in December. And I won’t care if that lake is really frozen or not.