Authenticism (Korea, Beginning Week 3)
I realized a long time ago that no matter where you are from, you have probably lived in a single, small part of the world for at least some extended period in your life. Even if that place is considered cosmopolitan you will likely have a provincial viewpoint. It's inevitable that a singular experience will limit how you understand the world. Traveling and living in new places challenges these "beliefs" about life. The more you can immerse yourself in an experience that is further from what you already know, the more you'll begin to see new perspectives.
Before traveling anywhere, I often look at all manner of sources - books, maps, websites, TV travel shows, etc - to try to get an idea of where I'm going to be before I'm there. Personally, I'm looking both for what to photograph and what not to photograph. It's an effort that usually goes for naught. No amount of research has ever prepared me for life on the ground in a new place. The trouble is that all the material you find on "travel" will highlight only a few aspects of the place, no matter how in-depth or off-the-grid it tries to be. There's just no way to be filled to the periphery like you are when you're really in some unfamiliar part of the world. I love exploring the theory of distant lands, but it leads to a heightened expectation of an extreme experience, like a different planet. As I've said before, the real differences are mostly subtle, or lie only on the surface. And the research material will never be able to stay current enough to be truly relevant.
Still, its reassuring to know these other places I've read about for so long actually do exist. People live there, food is eaten, the sun shines much the same as it always does. There's no replacing the vital and deep understanding that traveling provides.
Since the differences are really so minor, the challenge to the traveler today seems to be the chance to find what is AUTHENTIC about the country or culture. I'm beginning to feel less and less like I know what that word means. Sometimes it means traditional. Other times it means doing as the locals do (food, drink, music, etc.). It could also just broadly be an opposite philosophy. Whatever it means to the individual, every society seems to have someone looking to make a buck (or won) off the appeal it holds to the visitor. No part of the world is without a steady supply of tchotchkes on offer for the intrepid tourist to purchase as hard proof of an AUTHENTIC experience to take with them. The objects may be unique in your own corner of the world, but they hardly signify a knowledge of a foreign culture. But it's hard to resist wanting to take some part of that world home. No doubt some of you reading this now will be getting gifts we've bought here.
The ideal of AUTHENTIC is not just in mementos and souvenirs though. People can also walk through traditional, old-style villages and palaces all over world. The concept is to give the visitor a view into the culture of the past, presumably to give a sense of how things became as they are now. It's really just so much diorama though. Restored structures and props from times gone by have little relevant life to offer. Immersion into secluded, static environments offer only the fantasy of a true understanding.
What is the harm of the tchotchkes, dioramas, and research materials? Beyond being an inadequate replication of the experience, they lead one towards a perception of life that isn't really there. Seoul is an old city that has been through many wars. It's been flattened and rebuilt time and again. It has an extremely well-built public transportation network and almost all the buildings are modern. Then again, the Korean culture is over 5000 years old, but unlike Western civilization, those of the East have never really had a dark age. It's hard to fully comprehend such an old culture in comparison to such an up-to-the-minute city. The trap of the books and TV shows is that they suggest a status quo of some kind. There are traditions of cuisine and aesthetic here, and they are in some cases ancient. But that does not mean dead. Korean life is not a museum of relics fit for analysis.
The photos presented here are what started me thinking about this subject. The one at the top was taken at the entrance to Namsan Hanok Folk Village, an outdoor museum of traditional style houses and streets. The ones below were taken in Insadong, a neighborhood known for art galleries, street food, and what basically amounts to Korean souvenir shops. Not all of what for sale though has much of a unique Korean feel to it. Both these places offer the kind of thing you could get anywhere. For instance, if you've ever been to Genesee Country Museum or Niagara Falls, you've been to these two places already.
Okay, this turned out to be much longer than I expected. I'm off to eat some kimchi and do more research on where H, K, and I will be going for week 7. We're trying to get into the countryside to experience some of the less-Westernized Korean life.
I haven't traveled internationally, so that's going to be a whole new thing for me someday, but just having traveled a lot through the US this past year, I've thought about this issue of authenticity quite a bit. I think the problem is that so much of daily life is just kind of ordinary, wherever you are. The reality of much of my life, for instance, is work. My days are filled with gainful employment, certainly, but much of the rest of my time is spent cooking, cleaning, writing, procuring food, stuff like that. If I lived elsewhere, I'd be eating different things (and when I travel, I LOVE going to grocery stores and farmers markets--that's always interesting), and I'd be reading and seeing different things, but those rhythms of work and responsibility would be the same. It seems to me that the big difference between me as a traveler and someone who lives somewhere is that when I'm traveling, I don't have a home to care for or my social network to keep up with or my job to go to. I find I have the most authentic-feeling experiences when I stay with people who live wherever I am. Last year, when I went on the Midwestern Extravaganza, I did this Mennonite Your Way thing and stayed in four different families' homes en route. That was authentic experience. One family fed us leftovers from their dinner, another family stayed up late playing Scrabble with us, we went to church with another family. They were ordinary experiences that were extraordinary on some level because they gave insight into what another person's home is like, how they live on a daily basis.
That said, I like the big and flashy stuff, too. I like looking at beautiful things, like the Pacific Ocean and mountains. I like art. I like to take the time to look at those extraordinary things the locals are generally too busy living life to stop and notice.
I dunno. Complex issues, I guess. I think there are travelers who never learn a darned thing when they travel, but, honestly, I think they're the same people who don't learn a darned thing when they're home, either. It's easy to walk around in a bubble, if that's what you want to do.
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I am really surprised by how ordinary life has been here. I think you are spot on that once you get into the normal things you'd be doing anyway, life just settles in again. This is the first time I've spent any significant time abroad in a way that would allow for a normal schedule to be set up. Usually it's a lot of hard core traveling from one place to another to try to see as much as possible. It would be nice to live with some real people and not in a hotel too. In our own space, we get to make it conform to our wants and needs. While we have to do that because of K, it would probably be more challenging and rewarding to live in a situation where we had much less control.
I'm not really against any of the things I wrote about because lord knows I go to all the tourist sites. But I know from living in NYC that these places often have little to do with, and little impact on, the daily lives of the people living around them. I was in NYC for over 8 years before going to the Statue of Liberty, and even then it was only because I had family in town. Not that I don't ever notice it, but if it weren't there, I'd carry on much the same as before.
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Well, K looks happy in the pics you post, so you all are doing something right there. She'll get a kick out of looking at those someday, I'm sure, imagining herself on this great adventure.
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OMG I want a Buddah!!!!
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I enjoy reading about your life in Korea and looking at all of the pictures. Some of the pictures remind me of Bali, Indonesia with all of the street vendors selling anything and everything. Can you barter there? That is what made Indonesia so cool, you can walk away from a vendor and they would chase you down to offer a lower price. How is the cost of living? It looks like you get to go out for dinner and experiment with the food there, Marc also loves Kimche which he still eats all the time. Saipan had good Korean food, I miss that. Enjoy your time there and keep up with the pictures! I love looking at K and she is getting to look more like a little girl and less like a baby every day.
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I'm guessing a lot of Asia looks like this. My only theory is that it has a lot to do with the fact that long ago, there was no demarcation between street and sidewalk. As such, you set your stall up to sell things where-ever it was most convenient. Since the culture is so old here, the introduction of space set aside for walking versus driving didn't really change how people used it. They just carried on much like they always have.
You can barter, I'm told, but I never do. I can't stand negotiating. Just let me know the price and I'll pay it. I don't like shopping enough to put extra effort into paying slightly less for something. Plus it feels dishonest. Set a price that you think is fair and that will allow you to make some money. I see nothing wrong with that. Setting a price that attempt to gouge me or see if I'm stupid enough to pay it, I'm not so with that.
The cost of living seems much higher than I thought it would be. Probably about 10% less than the average US city, although it somewhat depends on what you are buying and where. I shamefully go to emart to buy most things because it's more like shopping in the west, although I'm sure I'm paying a premium for it and could probably find the same products elsewhere for much less. Emart just has it all in one spot. I'd rather just buy it there than having to search through the 8 billion street vendors for the same thing.
Actually, we don't get to experience as much of the food as I was hoping. It's not too expensive to eat out, but it takes way more time than we have. Between ordinary life things and K's schedule, I only eat out maybe a few times a week. K's not the most patient meal companion and doesn't partake in the cuisine. Plus if I've not brought food for her, then we pretty much have to eat at home. Sometimes a deli or a slice of pizza is much more helpful than a hot ceramic bowl of rice and vegetables. H gets to do it a lot more than me, since everyone goes out for meal breaks at her job.
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I think it's like how given enough time anything can become a valuable antique. Like, say, a Walmart receipt. What could be more mundane right now? But in 300 years, that receipt would provide valuable insight into an ordinary day of an ordinary person. I remember spending an afternoon reading the ledger from Aunt Doris' Father's lumber yard. Just a list of who bought what and how much it cost. Totally mundane, but fascinating 100 years later.
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True enough, but would you be as interested in the information by itself? The value of the experience lies in touching the actual object and reading what someone wrote by hand. If those entries were transferred to an excel spreadsheet, would it hold the same allure? Or for that matter if the ledger were blank, would it be of any appeal? Or, most importantly, if someone had reproduced and "aged" a new ledger and then wrote entries into it, would it give you the same physical sense of time past?
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Absolutely. The object has to have been the actual thing, something someone touched.
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