Beauty is in the eye (or nose) of the beholder

It’s trite, I know. But if you ever need proof that the above statement is true, travel to Asia. You’ll meet standards of beauty that simply don’t make sense.

For example, take my nose. While it’s got slightly shnozz-ish tendencies, it is, at its core, a relatively unremarkable descendent of Eastern European Jews and beaky English peasants. Though I’ve never really considered plastic surgery because of my nose, I always assumed that if I were to get it, the result would be a reduction, rather like this:

When I came to Korea, though, that assumption was slowly but surely turned on its head. At first, I heard from my students, “Teacher! Nose too big!” and I assumed it was a rather clumsy insult, belonging to the school which birthed “Teacher, baby in belly?” and “Teacher! Hair. No. Like this–no.” It later dawned on me that “too” is actually a difficult word to translate into Korean. The most common translation, “neomu”, though technically implying excess, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing. In Korean, scenery is frequently described as “too beautiful”; great movies are often called “too fun.” My nose is apparently one of those things–though big, it is an excellent, awe-inspiring type of big. Or, more precisely, it is high.

Korean nose jobs, amusingly enough, are almost the exact reverse of their American counterparts. They’re designed to raise the height of the bridge of the nose.

This whole post was inspired by the fact that I bought glasses today. It was the first time in my life that my inquiries to the guy behind the counter at the store about whether they can make the nose pieces wider and wider still felt like a weird mixture of bragging and flirting. I can only picture myself fluttering my eyelashes as I lean in dramatically, the picture of a distressed heroine from the fifties or so. “Oh heavens! My nose is just so high! Whatever shall I do?”

In another strange Korean standard of beauty, I frequently get compliments for what is literally translated as a “double eyelid.” It took me an incredibly long time to figure that one out. Anyone care to guess?

Why must English be so suggestive?

I’ve come to the conclusion that English must be the most sexually suggestive language on the planet. Of course, being fluent in an impressive one language, my sample size isn’t very large and that statistic isn’t very reliable. Still, the incredible ability of English language learners to accidentally imply things that are rather naughty is… enormous. I’d like to share a few vignettes from my time in Korea thus far. (Apologies for those of you who have seen some of these on blog posts, twitters, or Facebook posts before.)

To begin with the obvious: Almost once a week, I break up little cat fights between middle school girls that go approximately, “Teacher! She touched me. There!” “No, teacher, she first.” “NO! She did me!” “Liar! She did me four times!” I try not to snort as I play responsible teacher and break it up.

An amusing theme and variation on this came up a week or so ago, when I came across one student tying a string just above her friend’s elbow, almost as if she was going to measure her blood pressure. When I asked what they were doing, she responded in all innocence, “Playing doctor.”

Another classic occurred several months ago. I was asking students about the differences between Korean and American Thanksgiving, and we were talking about what you normally do on each holiday. On American Thanksgiving, we watch parades and football and eat turkey, unless you’re a part of my family, in which case you eat walnut cheddar loaf. Korean Thanksgiving is significantly less fun, and involves an extended ceremony of ritually bowing first to an altar dedicated to various ancestors, then to all the elders in your family. When I prompted the students to tell me this, one responded immediately, “Go down!” I was heroically repressing the urge to giggle when another added helpfully, “Go down to grandma!” Thank god she didn’t change to the “to” to an “on”, or I definitely couldn’t have kept up my neutral teacher face. I dutifully wrote “Bow to grandma” on the board.

Perhaps my new favorite, though, came in a conversation with a Korean friend a few weeks ago. Her husband had just moved into their new house (he’d been living in another town for a while) the weekend before, and she’d consequently cancelled her plans with me. She swore up and down they’d been unpacking all afternoon, and I couldn’t help but tease her about it a little. She got a bit defensive and informed me, “You should see his package! It’s huge!” I burst out laughing, and she, being basically fluent in English and knowledgeable in slang, quickly realized her error. “Not that! I mean his junk! There’s so much of it!” That, of course, only made it worse, and she gave up and started laughing with me. When I’d finally recovered a semblance of calm, she asked me what she could possibly say that wouldn’t sound so damn sexual. We settled on “He has lots of luggage.” Though if anyone can make an innuendo out of that, I’d be interested to hear it.

Jeju, Home in Exile

This weekend, I learned that Jeju island was to mainland Korea approximately what Australia was to the British Empire: an island far enough away that it’s probably safe to send criminals there.

In defense of our island, most of our criminals were of the ideological type, with more in common with Thoreau and his unwillingness to pay taxes than, say, Jack the Ripper. And, democracy-lovers that we have become, all those ex-criminals who protested against monarchies are now excellent heroes and role models for young’uns. So, this being Korea, it is entirely unsurprising that museums should be made in their honor, especially for the ones who spent their exile on calligraphy and painting and Confucius and whatnot. And, this being Jeju, it is only slightly surprising that the PTBs decided to attach a walking trail to the one I visited this weekend.

Of course, I had no idea about any of this when I arrived at the site with some of the teachers from my school. As far as I had been informed, we were going for a walk. There had been no mention of exiles or museums or calligraphy. My complete ignorance was, unfortunately, no defense against journalists.

Korean journalists love interviewing foreigners. We lend an air of exoticism to the proceedings, and can always be relied upon to make an event appear to be of great international importance. Plus, we get a good laugh from the audience if we try to speak Korean and sometimes we even ask stupid questions that make all the better-informed Koreans feel excellent about themselves. Thus, I was only slightly surprised when a pair of them descended on me as soon as I arrived at the entrance tent. Before our group of teachers had even assembled, I’d been asked for two different interviews, one for TV and another for radio.

I dodged the TV offer like a champ–”Call me later! I’m too busy now!” (In the end, it reminded me of being picked up at a bar. I didn’t ever intend to answer my phone, and even considered giving a fake number, but I was nonetheless a bit put out when he never called.)–but the radio guy reeled me in like a pro.

He asked me what I knew about Chusa. “Chusa? Is that… What? I just got here, I don’t know anything yet!” He asked me what I knew about the calligraphy. “I’m sure it’s lovely, but since I just got here…” He asked me which of the new trails I was going to take. “There’s more than one?” Finally, he asked me about the weather. “It’s a beautiful day!” Phew, at least I got one right.

As it turns out, Chusa is this particular exile’s pen name. I learned this only a few minutes too late, when I was given a commemorative dish towel and a brochure. I learned more about an hour later (we had a break for cake before we could really get started) when we finally entered the museum. The calligraphy was beautiful indeed, and the reconstructed house next door made the little historian in my heart jump up and down in glee. That was followed by a wee bit of walking, a break for Korean-style sushi, called kimbap, and another wee bit of walking.

    

The exercise was minimal for a reason: We had about half a dozen little ones with us, children and nieces and nephews of the assorted teachers on our hike. They certainly made the hike more picturesque, interested as they were in poking bugs, climbing statues, and getting piggy back rides. Enjoy the photos!

    

Happy Birthday, Buddha!

I’m horrible at waking up. So when my friend Kyoung-mi called me this morning, as planned, so we could meet up and go to the temple with her family to celebrate Buddha’s birthday, I very nearly cancelled. Not because I didn’t want to go, but because it involved waking up. Luckily, I went anyway.

Being Buddhist, I have decided, is hard work. Maybe this is why Buddhism hasn’t really caught on in the states–we prefer our religion sans exercise. I believe I had willfully forgotten the one temple stay I did and the 108 prostrations involved in that when I walked into the small country temple in Kyoung-mi’s dad’s hometown. I was reminded very quickly, and I think my calves are going to be sore tomorrow from all the prostrations I did, and I couldn’t even begin to keep up with my friend’s 50-something year old mother–much less pull off the balancing act of standing up without moving your hands from the prayer position. I got a little better at that one, but I wobbled alarmingly, and Kyoung-mi’s sister actually had to catch my arm once to keep me from toppling the whole line of bowers. I couldn’t understand the litany (can you even call it that, if it isn’t Catholic?), except for one tiny part, during which I’m pretty sure we were saying prayers for individual people. The parts that caught my ear were the names of neighborhoods where they lived–”Kim Jun Mi, No-hyeong-dong, something something something become a teacher.”

After bowing came lunch, and the slow return of the men. Apparently, according to Confucian teachings, there’s no need for men to actually do the difficult bowing part. They can just hang out outside the temple and smoke, and because they’re higher up in the chain of being, they’ll just absorb enlightenment along with lung cancer.

After lunch came a visit to Kyoung-mi’s 90-year-old grandmother. I’ll never understand Korean family dynamics: even though this was her father’s mother, her dad stayed outside looking at the garden while all the women went inside to visit. Meantime, I discovered that it’s really difficult to speak to someone who’s hard-of-hearing in a language you’re not very good at; yelling all your grammatical errors just makes you that much more nervous about getting them wrong. On the bright side, we did eventually get Grandma into the modern spirit with a wild fit of picture taking, during which her granddaughters insisted that she do the super-Asian peace sign. “Grandma, you have to make a V! No, like this, grandma!”