山村訓長但知覓

Not just any old Joe

2008-08-14T14:05:00.006+09:00

☞ It's probably be obvious enough by the fact that there is some real content, but this little piece wasn't drafted but merely interpreted (fast and loose, of course) by the Sanchon Hunjang from one of the wonderful teenagers enlightening each other with questionable facts over there at Naver 지식. The style is a bit weak (the translated version undoubtedly more so), and it is clearly three or more independant originals slapped together, but the content is interesting.

The original can be found here.

Ancestral Temple Names

The "ancestral temple names 묘호" are names that were given to rulers who had died, together with a posthumous name, to be used in the ceremonies performed on their behalf at the ancestral temple 종묘. Ancestral temple names were already being used in Korea from the Three Kingdoms period (57 B.C. - 668 A.D.). Ancestral names were originally names that were given to Chinese emperors after their deaths with to note their accomplishments. "Joe 祖" and "jong 宗" were used as ancestral temple names. "Joe" was given to "Rulers who created and accomplished 創業之主," while "jong" was for "sovereigns who guarded and perfected 守成之君." However, generally, "joe" was used for kings who founded a dynasty or those who overcame crisis, while "jong" was for those who left behind cultural achievements or governed well. Thus King T'aejo (r. 1392 - 1408) was given this title because he founded a dynasty while King Sǒngjong (r. 1457 - 1494) was given this title because of the many cultural institutions that he instituted. King Sǒnjo of the mid-Chosǒn was first called "Sǒnjong," but later his ancestral temple name was changed to Sǒnjo on the basis of his achievement in surmounting the Japanese Invasion of 1592.

On the other hand, "goon 君" was an ancestral temple name that was given to kings who lacked kingly qualities. Kings Yǒnsan (r. 1494 - 1506) and Kwanghae (r. 1608 - 1623) are typical: King Yǒnsan is the Chosǒn period's most famous tyrant while King Kwanghae was judged by the neo-Confucian scholars of the time to have been morally depraved because he had Queen Dowager Inmok (1584 - 1632), widow of King Sǒnjo (r. 1567 - 1608), dethroned and he instigated the deaths of Prince Imhae (1574 - 1609) and Grand Prince Yǒngch'ang 1606 - 1614), both contenders for his throne.

"Joe" and "jong" could not be used in ancestral hall names at the end of the Koryǒ period (918 - 1392). Following the Mongol invasions at the end of the Koryǒ period, when the Mongol Yuan Dynasty was interfering in the Koryǒ court, they forbade the use of "joe" and "jong" in Koryǒ ancestral hall names. Since "joe" and "jong" were used by the emperors of the Yuan, Koryǒ would have to use titles more appropriate to their place as one of the "dukes" or "feudal princes" 諸侯. Therefore they used such ancestral hall names as King Ch'ungnyǒl (r. 1236 - 1308), King Ch'ungsǒn (r. 1298 and 1308 - 1313) and King Ch'ungsuk (r. 1313 - 1330). Generally, "ch'ung 忠 ["the Loyal"]" is not used for kings. Kings are the recipients of loyalty, not the ones who should be offering their loyalty. The word "ch'ung" is used for royal subjects such as Prince Ch'ungmu ["the Loyal and Martial," the posthumous name bestowed upon Admiral Yi Sun-sin in recognition of his accomplishments in driving the Japanese out of Korea during the 1592 invasions]. But the Yuan caused Koryǒ to use "ch'ung" because they wanted the Koryǒ court to remain loyal to the Yuan from generation to generation. Koryǒ kings such as King Kongmin (r. 1351 - 1374), King U (r. 1374 - 1388), King Ch'ang (r. 1388 - 1389) and King Kongyang (r. 1389 - 1392) did not use "ch'ung." These later kings did not continue to use "ch'ung" because, by that time, the power of the Yuan was waning and the Koryǒ kings had received acknowledgment of their dynasty from the Ming (1368 - 1644).

How Shall We Distinguish Between the Names, Posthumous Names, Ancestral Hall Names and the Syllables Joe and Jong in the Names of the Kings of the Chosǒn

In the Chosǒn period (1392 - 1910), when a king passed away, his life was judged. The outcome is the posthumous name and the ancestral temple name. A posthumous name is a title that is applied to applaud the merits and virtues exhibited by the king when he was alive. An ancestral temple name is also a name that is by appraising of the king's life and is the name that is used inside of the ancestral temple. T'aejo, Chǒngjong, T'aejong, Sejong and similar titles are all ancestral temple names.

The syllable "joe" or "jong" is attached at the end of ancestral temple names; generally "joe" is used in the case of kings with outstanding merits, and on the other hand, "jong" is used for kings with surpassing virtue. Thus those rulers who oversee a recovery from decline are second to those who create great things, and get the appellation "jong." As a rule, it may be said that kings who have such great accomplishments as the founding of a dynasty, or rescuing the people from a rebellion, or those kings who have given rise to great strife become the joes. Examples begin with T'aejo Yi Sǒng-gye and include such other kings as Sejo, Sǒnjo, Injo, Chǒngjo and Sunjo. Those Kings who expand upon the achievements of the previous monarch, ruling the nation with virtue, and create flourishing cultures are mostly called "jong." It is easy to memorize this as, "Creation and accomplishment: joe; guarding and perfecting: jong." This could be said to follow The Book of Rites, where it says, "Those with merit are 'joe' and those with virtue are 'jong.'"

Of the 27 kings of the Chosǒn, only the seven kings T'aejo, Sejo, Sǒnjo, Injo, Yǒngjo, Chǒngjo and Sunjo use the character "joe." Excluding Kwanghae and Yǒnsan, who were kings in life but were not treated as kings after their deaths, the other kings all use the character "jong." King T'aejo was called "joe" because he founded the dynasty. The other "joe" kings either overcame great national crises (Sǒnjo, Injo), or ascended the throne by coup (Sejo). Yǒngjo, Chǒngjo and Sunjo were called "jong" immediately after their deaths, but later their titles were changed to "joe."

The later in the Chosǒn we get, the less transparent that the reasons for giving a king the title of "joe" or "jong" become. Originally there was no differentiation in status between "joe" and "jong." But it appears that these changes in title happened because "joe" came to be perceived as better than "jong."

According to the historian [, professor at Pukyong National University and prolific author of popular books on things Chosǒn] Shin Myǒng-ho, whether a king would receive the name of "joe" or "jong" depended upon the evaluation of later generations. In extreme cases, an ancestral hall name that had already been set could be changed. For example, in the case of King Sǒnjo, his original ancestral temple name is said to have been "Sǒnjong." His virtue was assessed as having been greater than his merits. Later, however, upon the contentions of Hǒ Kyun (1569 - 1618) and Yi I-ch'ǒm (1560 - 1623), this was changed to Sǒnjo. The basis for this change was he had great merit because he drove the "dwarf bandits" out during the Japanese invasions of 1592. Further, in the case of King Chungjong, the contention was raised before the court that he had great merit because he drove out the tyrant King Yǒnsan and thus his title should be changed to Chungjo. However the court officials objected and it was decided to leave his title as "jong."

De-throned kings had the syllable "goon" [prince] attached to their titles. It was used for those monarchs whose immoral actions as king greatly crossed the Confucian order of the Chosǒn Dynasty. These were Kings Yǒnsan and Kwanghae. These monarchs were stripped of their royal status and so they have no name or title in the ancestral temple.

These names were given to kings and queens after their deaths to be used in the royal ancestral temple shrine that looked after their spirit tablets. These names are called "ancestral temple names." The use of the syllables "joe" and "jong" to refer to dead kings was used with Silla King Muyǒl (r. 602 - 661), of the Three Kingdoms period and use continued from Wang Kǒn, Koryǒ King T'aejo ( r. 918 - 943), up until it was no longer allowed due to the intervention of the Yuan. It was only in the Chosǒn Dynasty that this naming method was used from the beginning to the end.

Our author(s) don't mention it, but these titles of kings that are in common knowledge are abbreviated versions. The actual posthumous names given to kings, especially those of the later Chosǒn when ultra-formality was in full swing, can be really long-assed beasts. For example, the name that was posthumously bestowed on even such a lowly king as King Kwanghae runs a 50 syllables.

Curious?

It is 體天興運俊德弘功神聖英肅欽文仁武敍倫立紀明誠光烈隆奉顯保懋定重熙睿哲壯毅章憲順靖建義守正彰道崇業大王. Of the Chosǒn kings, the average tenure in office was 19 years. The longest stretch on the throne was King Yǒngjo, who sat there for an amazing 52 years. I'll bet it was difficult to summarize his contributions in a word or two. Thus he was given the 72-syllable mouthful
英祖莊順至行純德英謨毅烈章義洪倫光仁敦禧體天建極聖功神化大成廣運開泰基永堯明舜哲乾坤寧配命垂統景曆洪休中和隆道肅莊彰勳正文宣武熙敬顯孝大王 as a posthumous title.

No wonder those royal tombstones are so big!

King for a year?

2008-08-11T13:48:00.003+09:00

In most places you had to do something special to become king. Or your father. Or his father. Because of all that divine right, link to heaven stuff and all, not just anyone could become king. Only one with heaven's blessing.

It wasn't so easy to become king. Especially given the decided dearth of kings who were abdicating (although some of these mythical beasts did exist, even ask the author(s) of the Zhuangzi). And a glut of people who wanted to sit on that hard throne seat with just one little 방석 to cushion the tushy. So you had to wrest power from the guy in charge by...say...turning your army back at the Yalu River and taking over the capital, or you could drive out the current boy king and then have him offed to silence all naysayers. And there's always the option of locking the crown prince in a rice chest and leaving the whole package out in the heat to expire so he could be replaced by his son.

Of course the fact that one is able to become king is then taken as proof ex post facto that heaven smiled on you, which has got to help a bit. But then when natural disasters occur, it's all your fault for allowing your virtue to degrade to the point where the kingdom and the will of heaven to fall out of alignment. Talk about your heavy responsibilities. Who'd want that job?

Whatever the cause, these days those poor royalty don't wield much real power. Heck, a king can't even refer to himself as "짐 (朕)" anymore (but then neither does God (Guobiao Encoded), so maybe that's only fair).

And the process of becoming a king has been greatly simplified, too, over the years. This is especially true in the case of Paekche. They just have a little pageant and the winner is selected to be king. Look at the line up of handsome candidates:

Strangely, the king of Paekche was selected in Incheon last year. But then again, who'd want to live in 공주/부여 anyway?

Whence "Kim"?

2008-05-12T20:26:00.006+09:00

There is the four-character saying 去頭截尾 (거두절미), “to get rid of the head and slice off the tail.” It's usually used to mean “cut the fluff and get down to the meat of the discussion.”

But interestingly enough, it's the description of the old Chinese fanqie method of glossing pronunciation, only in reverse. The fanqie method has you slice off the tail (of the first character given) and then discard the head (of the second character), to give the pronunciation of the character in question. Of course you have to know how to pronounce the two characters glossed, but that and saying “A音B”, or “A is a homonym of B” is the best they came up with.

To see the whole thing in action, the mother of all 옥편, the Character Dictionary of the Kangxi Emperor glosses the word “金” as being pronounced 金...居音切...居吟切...音今, or“居 + 音 [= 금], 居 + 吟 [= 금], sounds like '今 [금]'” Then it gives many many definitions and ends it's page-long exposition on the various meanings of this word over time by giving a second and final pronunciation of “居 + 良 [= 강], a homonym of '彊 [강]'.”

On a side note, the Korean names for their consonants were also laid out in a similar manner. There is no hint as to how the individual letters were pronounced in the original 한글 proclamation, but in 1527, the Collection of Characters for the Instruction of the Young 訓蒙字會 the individual letters are presented along with pronunciation. And the pronunciation is glossed with Chinese characters in a format similar to that of the time-honored fanqie method, except it's in reverse: ㄱ is “其役 (기역),” ㄴis “尼隱 (니은)” and so on. So ㄱ is pronounced like the lead-in to “기” when it's an initial and like the end of “역” when it's a final.

Back to 金.

This word, pronounced as "Kim" represents the largest surname group in Korea, at 22% of the population, followed not particularly closely by Lee 李 (15%) and Park 朴 (8%). If you want to find the story of the founding of this sea of a clan called Kim, you've got to go all the way back to the Shilla days, as described in the Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms.

The fourth king of Shilla was a nice fellow (the Sanchon Hunjang supposes ^^) named “탈해이사금 脫解尼師今” (they had funny names back then and “이사금” appears to be some sort of title that was so popular that it ends the names of kings #3 through #18, when it is replaced by 마립간 麻立干). At any rate, according to Book 1 of the Fundamental Records of the Shilla, in the ninth year of T'alhaeisagum's reign:

春三月王夜聞金城西始林樹間有鷄鳴聲遲明遣瓠公視之有金色小櫃掛樹枝白鷄鳴於其下瓠公還告王使人取櫃開之有小男兒在其中姿容奇偉上喜謂左右曰 "此豈非天遺我以令胤乎" 乃收養之及長聰明多智略乃名閼智以其出於金櫃姓金氏

So, um...春三月 In the spring of the third month, 王 the king 夜 at night 聞 heard 金城西 to the west of Gold Fortress, 始林樹間 among the trees of the First Grove, 有 there was 鷄鳴聲 the sound of a cock crying. 遲明At next light, [he] 遣 dispatched 瓠公 Prince Ho to [go] 視之see it. 有 There was a 金色gold colored 小 small 櫃 box 掛hanging in the 樹 tree 枝 branches and a 白 white 鷄 cock 鳴 crowing 於其下 underneath it. 瓠公 Prince Ho 還 returned and 告reported. 王 The king 使 sent 人 someone 取 to take 櫃 the box and 開 open 之 it. 有 There was a 小 small 男man-兒child 在其中 inside of it. 姿容 [His] appearance was 奇 wonderful and 偉 great. 上 The king, 喜 delighted, 謂 addressed [the court officials] 左右 to the left and right, saying 曰: “此 This 豈非天遺 was surely left by the heavens 我 for me 以 as an 令 appointed 胤 heir.” 乃 Whereupon [the king] 收 took in and 養 raised 之 him. 及 And [he was] 長 strong in 聰明 brilliance and [had] 多 much 智略 wisdom and was 乃 thus 名 named 閼智 Alchi and, 以 because of 其 his 出 coming out 於 from a 金 golden 櫃 box, [he] was 姓 surnamed the 金 Gold 氏 clan.

Lessee here...so the first of the 金 clan was named because he was found in a gold box, from which his surname was taken. And “gold” is “금.” To make things even stranger, the Kangxi Dictionary, above, says that 金 is only “금” or rarely“강” but gives no mention of 김.

So whence the surname pronunciation “김?”

According to some sources, including the admittedly populist 엽기조선왕조실록, 金 was always pronounced “금,” whether as “gold” or as a surname down until the beginning of the Chosun Dynasty. When 이성계 founded the new dynasty, with the royal surname Yi (李), some geomantically inclined scholars at court are said to have pointed out that the major element in 李 is wood (木), which would be the one of the five elements to power the dynasty. But there is a chain by which the five elements overcome one another in the cycle of creation and destruction that is life. And the element which overcomes wood is gold/metal 金.

With this clear prophecy hanging out there for all to see, it certainly could not be safe to have a nation swarming with people surnamed “금,” any one of whom might sweep in to remove the new dynasty at the drop of at hat. And, with so many 금s out there, killing them all off to secure the dynasty's longevity was not a realistic approach. So it was proposed that a next-best solution would be to change the pronunciation of 金, when used as a surname, to “김.” This would eliminate all danger of metallic 금 overthrowing the Dynasty of Wood.

When we consider that the Choson Dynasty continued for some 520 years, this verbal slight of hand that feels so contrived seems to have worked like a charm!

The three levels of exceptions

2008-01-15T16:28:00.000+09:00

Someone was asking about which Chinese characters have more than one pronunciation the other day. The sad fact is that many, if not most, have multiple pronunciations. The happy side of the same coin is that most of the multiple pronunciations are rare dictionary or textual finds that your average 조조 doesn't have to worry about.

There are basically three classifications of multiple sound infused Chinese graphs, the Good (Enough), the Bad and the Sure They're Ugly But Who Cares:

The Good (Enough)

The situation with these words is not ideal, but there aren't that many of the common ones that one is likely to encounter, so you can just memorize the exceptions, just like students do with "i before e except after c and except when said 'ay' as in 'neighbor' and 'weigh.'"

For instance, there is the graph 말씀 설 說 "to explain." It has a secondary and much less common pronunciation 세. But in your standard Korean dictionary, it's only pronounced 세 in the following words: 강유호세, 세객, 세복, 유세 (1), 유세 (2), 치세, 유세객, 유세대, 유세문, and 유세장, more than half of which are variations on the theme of 유세, going around convincing people (i.e. electoral stumping).

There's also the graph 北, pronounced "북" when it means "north," and "배" in the more uncommon instances where it means "defeat." Memorize the word 패배 and you're pretty well covered.

To kill 죽일 살 殺 is also pronounced "쇄" when it is used to mean "decrease," "greatly" or "quickly," as in the words 쇄도, 상쇄, 살점제. 省 is "성" when it's a province in China, but it's "생" when it means to reduce or omit. 率 is usually seen as "rate, ratio" and is read "률," but it's also pronounced "솔" in words like 솔래,솔거 (1), 설거(2), 솔무, 식솔, 가솔, and a host of others.

So one memorizes a handful of words in each case and that's the end of the story. You couldn't ask for something more upfront.

The Bad

나무 목 木 is one of the first characters anybody learns, and one of those that is always trotted out to show how pictographic Chinese writing is. 'Cause it looks just like a tree! Plus, you put two of them together and suddenly you have a grove. Three makes a real forest! And, heck, the pronunciation of this graph is so simple that Naver's 옥편, or any other you'd care to use up to and including the monstrous 漢語大字典, only gives one pronunciation: "목." Ya got yer 목요일, yer 목성 and yer 목재. All pronounced "목." As Naver kindly indicates, we should never ever, even in the ugliest cases outlined below, expect anything but "목." So now the humble Sanchon Hunjang asks you, dear reader, how would you pronounce the name of this fruit: 木瓜?

"목과"? *Zonk* Thank you for playing, you will receive one of those neither-붓-nor-pen 붓펜 as your consolation prize.

Or let's assume you're reading a newspaper from the '70's, when they still used 한자 in the news text, how would you go about reading the following:

智異山을 오르려면 六月은 너무 이르고 十月은 너무 늦다. 七·八月이 適合하다.

You could search your character dictionary of choice all day and you might find 다를 이 異 is read as "리" in the specific case of 지리산, but you won't find 여섯 륙 六 is read as "유" in front of "월" nor that 열 십 十 is read "십," except when it's read "시" in 十月, 十方淨土(시방정토) or 十王(시왕). And now that it's clear that 6월 is not 육월 but 유월, how ya gonna proceed with reading this common saying:

女子가 恨을 품으면 五·六月에도 서리가 내린다

So, lessee, now we've got 륙 => 육 by the standard sound change rules governing those snakey ㄹs and sometimes it sounds like 뉵 by the same standard rules (eg. 十六, which is no different than 합리 => /함니/) but when it means June, suddenly it's 유. Except when preceeded by "오" in the meaning of May. Then it suddenly becomes "뉴." ㅡ.ㅡ;;;;;;;;

Sneaky, sneaky... Some other tricky beasts that you weren't warned about include 困難(곤란) ☞ 論難(논란), 討論(토론) ☞ 議論(의논), 八日(팔일) ☞ 初八日(초파일), ...

The Sure They're Ugly, But Who Cares

"Who Cares" because these critters don't matter to the learner as long as we posit a learner of 한자 who is focused on modern Korean. The Who Cares includes two subclasses: (i) I don't care because it only applies to the Chinese language, and (ii) I don't care because it only applies to people digging through musty old tomes.
- Only applies to Chinese Chinese
  
  Languages evolve. They grow, transform and transmogrify. It's a fact of human life. So it's not too surprising that the word "record" could come to have a noun meaning and a verb meaning. And those two are pronounced differently for distinction. But the simple fact is that Korean learners are spared a lot of this soundchangeality because Korean borrowed the sounds of Tang Chinese without the tones (with the exception of the "entering tone" which is differentiated by consonants anyway). 'Cause those old Koreans didn't get the tone thing any more than your average Westerner does. It's just fun to say "Mandarin has 4 or 5 tones and Cantonese has 6 or 7, so Mandarin is just perversely difficult while Cantonese is an abomination to acquire second-language credits in. Best stick with ASL." So you got this word meaning "good" that looks like 好. It's pronounced 호 or [we'll just go modern Mandarin here] hǎo (3rd tone). Well that's pretty 好, no? People start using it and before you know it, someone's felt a need for a word that means "to regard as good," which is to say "like." Kinda like the 예뻐해주다 effect. Or 좋다 vs. 좋아하다. 그래 好야, 이뻐해줄께. And to tell these apart, the latter one gets pronounced hào (4th tone). The thing is, in Korean, they're both 호. Same goes for 中, 上 and oodles of others that have Chinese pronunciation differentiated in tone alone and thus not reflected in Korean. Are they different? Sure. But it doesn't matter to the hypothetical "me" that we have defined as our reference human.
- Only applies to moldy thousand year old texts
  
  The opening line of Confucius' Analects reads:
  
  子曰: 學而時習之不亦說乎?
  
  "子 The Master 曰 said: '學 to study 而 and 時 from time to time 習 put into practice 之 it [i.e. the thing studied], 不 is [this] not 亦 also 說 [?????] 乎 hmm?'"
  
  As for the italicized 說, in modern texts would be "to explain 설 shuō." But the fact is that characters were written long before significs were added, and the 兌 was there first. Then people started adding significs to differentiate which of the possible reading were meant. So we get 說, 悅, 脫, 挩, etc. In this case, the actual word one of his disciples is quoting Confucius as having said is now written 悅, but somebody somewhere started writing 說 to mean 兌(悅) and nobody corrected it out of reverence for the text. It's really not so different from the wild spellings that makes Chaucer so much fun to read. But, even though in this case the word is written 說, you'd be corrected pretty quickly if you tried to show off your 한자 knowledge and made the mistake of pronouncing it as "설." Because here it's pronounced 열 (as in 悅) and you'd suddenly have revealed you didn't know as much as you were pretending to. So we now have a new 옥편 pronunciation for 說: "열." But if you're not studying the Analects, it makes no difference to you because usage has been standardized in modern times, just like spelling, so now if you want "explanation" you write 說 and if you want "joy" you write 悅. And what could be more 悅 than a systematic approach to the use of Chinese graphs?
  
  Here's a bit of trivia for you: "When is our aquatic friend the 용 龍 not a 龍?" Answer: when it's used with the pronunciation "방 (尨)" to mean "vari-colored."
  
  Hey, look, there's one of those 방룡 now~ ^^
  
  There are grundles of other similar substitutions to be found in the oceans of text written in Classical Chinese that have resulted in numerous alternative pronunciations captured in 옥편. In addition to the graphs actually used in extant texts, there's also a long list of characters that are glossed as having an obscure pronunciation in dictionaries, but not actually used as far as anyone today can tell.
  
  Like that famous character-with-the-most-strokes-in-the-15-volume-Morohashi-옥편 graph that, ironically enough, means "wordy," 말많을 절:
  
  The Sanchon Hunjang says it's all so much worthless esoterica...as long as you're not doing Mandarin or pursuing Ph.D. studies in Classical Chinese lit. So while this last category could get really ugly, our assumed learner can just shrug them off with a light "who cares?"

When 안 중근 wrote his famous, "If in a day one does not read a book, thorns and briars appear in the mouth," he conveniently forgot to mention what a thorny brier patch it is in there as well if the book you're reading happens to be of Chinese graphs like his phrase is.

Bumpy

2008-01-01T18:29:00.001+09:00

Looking up Chinese characters is a real drudgery. The major reason is that there is no good Chinese dictionary--i.e. one where there is one and only one allowable position for each graph in the dictionary, thus facilitating easy lookup--in widespread use. Fortunately Chinese is not as ideographic as some would have the innocent believe, so most characters have a pretty good hint at its pronunciation. But when you run up against one that doesn't, or one that you can't recall, you're back to counting strokes or guessing at significs and counting strokes. And that can be tricky. Take a look at this example:

亞

It's not a particularly obscure character, used mostly now for "Asia." Where are you going to begin looking for a radical? (정답: 二) And how are you going to count those strokes? (정답: 8획) Those "staircase patterns" can be either 1 or 3 strokes, depending on direction! Few people can even write 亞 correctly and most just go for the variant 亜. This second option is far easier to write and identify (and thus count) individual strokes.

On the subject of 亞, before it was borrowed because of its sound "아" to mean Asia, it was used to mean "second." We can see this in the posthumous name given to the most revered of Confucius' disciples, 孟軻, who is referred to as "the second sage 亞聖" in Confucian shrines. When transcribing foreign place names into Chinese, the temptation to use characters used to write derogatory terms was generally avoided. Curious how Asia got stuck in "second" place.

In the same class of know-em-or-you-don't characters without any built-in pronunciation hints, there is the curious pair 凹 요 and 凸 철. The same staircase element that makes 亞 difficult in spades comes into play in these two words to a lesser degree. The meaning of these guys is pretty easy to remember, though. And, by happenstance, the shape of 凹 even holds a bit of a hint of the Korean vowel that is it's pronunciation. The first means "innie," and as you might guess, the second means "outie." Must have been used originally to describe belly-buttons. ^^

Unlike many, these two words are not your from-the-dawn-of-time type characters. They are not found in the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) Shuowenjiezi, China's first dictionary, and are not found until the Yupian (abt. 543), from which Korean 한자 dictionaries take their name, and the Guangyun (abt. 1007). This means they are not found in the true Chinese of the classical age. But these guys are still used today. And they still mean concave/convex, or "concave and convex" = "bumpy," when they are together.

Due to its resemblance in shape to a certain vulgar gesture, 철 can be seen on several web pages in a newly coined meaning that hasn't found its way into the 옥편 yet. Which brings us to what is perhaps the most famous calligraphic rendition of this character (that doesn't quite happen to have been done by an assassin/national hero).

Bumpy, indeed. ^^

알림: 필연의 기절

2007-12-29T14:53:00.000+09:00

Last night at the gas station, as the Sanchon Hunjang waited for the attendants to fill up the large tank, he glanced into the office to discover a remarkable machine. Well, at least it claims to produce something remarkable:

"기절 안 하면 기절시켜드립니다. " ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

And it ends in the same funny way as all those announcements/assorted warnings/pleas to not dump your trash/etc. signs out there.

These titled-people are all about telling everyone to do something, so they have to rely on all the authority they can muster. This means they hafta include a title at the end as a symbol of their authority to make the declaration. If no other title is available, then "owner 주인" does just fine. Or better yet, "Head Owner 주인장 백." Sometimes they even write it in Chinese to look even more superior to us masses: "주인 白," or "主人白." Surely everyone gets the unmistakable I'm-in-authority-here-and-I'm-only-doing-this-in-your-best-interest vibe here.

But as to that 백 tacked on the end...white...? Is that the authority's surname? If so, then there sure are a whole lot of Messrs White leaving signs around, at least compared to the percentage of the population that they occupy. Not to mention how difficult it is to find the expected signs that close with "주인 김," and "주인 최."

Well, like the Sanchon Hunjang always says, when in doubt, recheck the dictionary. Could it be that our humble friend 白 is hiding something? According to the Naver 옥편 page:

(copied here because the web is an ever-changing landscape and a poor Sanchon Hunjang can't trust it)

간체자(簡體字)

훈음 : 흴 백

사성음

bái

부수

白 (흰백 部)

획수

5 (부수획수:5)

난이도

중학용 한자, 한자능력검정 8급 (쓰기 : 준6급)

뜻풀이

㉠희다
㉡깨끗하다
㉢분명하다, 명백하다
㉣진솔하다
㉤밝다, 밝아지다
㉥빛나다
㉦비다, (가진 것이)없다
㉧아뢰다, 탄핵하다
㉨흘겨보다, 경멸하다
㉩흰빛
㉪백발(白髮)
㉫대사(臺詞/臺辭)
㉬술잔
㉭거저, 대가 없이
㉭볶은 쌀
㉭부질없이, 쓸데없이
㉭비단, 견직물
㉭소대(小隊: 군대 편성 단위의 하나)

상대자

黑

유의자

闡

Well...lessee here...white...clean...clear...bright...nothing too unexpected there. Oh, wait a minute...there it is, number 이응. 白 = 아뢰다. 아룀. I've seen that word, and her more modernized (which means "less honorific") cousin 알림 around. Even in signs of a similar tone.

So, putting "title + 백" at the bottom of a sign telling people what to do or what to abstain from doing is equivalent to putting "알림" at the top and the position by which your authority is stated at the bottom of the sign.

So let it be written, let it be done!

-- 산촌훈장 망상 일지 주인 백 ^^

As a verb!

2007-12-16T19:31:00.000+09:00

The Sanchon Hunjang is usually a bit late on catching the latest trends, but not too long ago funnyman 이경규 apparently opened a new chain of restaurants and one is in the neighborhood.

The name is a very interesting "食 eating [and] 酒 drinking (alcohol) 所 place," which is great because you don't often see 酒 used as a verb. This is not to be confused with "所食酒者 the consumed and quaffed (alcohol)" that one may experience inside the restaurant. ^^

And the vote tally is in

2007-12-13T10:30:00.000+09:00

While the residents of the Korean peninsula are readying themselves to vote for something as mundane as President, those Japanese have really been taking democracy to new levels. As if there were any question as to who will be walking away with the keys to the Blue[-tiled] House after the presidential elections next week...

Beginning in 1995, and faithfully every year since then, the Japanese people have voted on which kanji best represents that year. Well, not all of the Japanese population voted, to be sure, but the most influential 90,816 residents cast their votes, and the results are in. The Sanchon Hunjang is pleased to announce that the 한자 for the 丁亥年 (that's 2007 for anyone who didn't memorize her sexigenary cycle and forgot all of the hubbub about 황금돼지의 해 at the beginning of the year) is:

Yep, it's 거짓 위 僞.

That's as announced on December 12^th by the Kanji Kentei, a 한자 training and testing company, at the scenic Kiyomizu Temple in the eastern part of lovely Kyoto. And as mopped onto a white canvas by this nice monk fellow.

It appears that the Japanese were more than slightly affected by the discovery of the use of expired or faked ingredients in foodstuffs by the venerable Akafuku Co., Hinaidori Co. (think "한우" labeling), Fujiya Co., Mr. Doughnut, and so on. So affected were they, in fact, that the first and second runners up to 한자 of the year--먹을 식 食 and 불 허 噓 (also means "lie"), respectively--also are related to the food scandals.

This stands in sharp contrast to the character selected by Japan's Prime Minister, Fukuda Yasuo. He picked 믿을 신 信. Although he had his reasons (mainly that he was thinking along lines of issues between political parties and how they needed more trust of each other), it'd be kinda hard to be more out of touch with the man in the street than this, no?

The past 한자 of the year have been:

1995 震
1996 食
1997 倒
1998 毒
1999 末
2000 金
2001 戰
2002 歸
2003 虎
2004 災
2005 愛
2006 命

In the interest of completeness, the Sanchon Hunjang feels compelled to mention that Korea is not entirely lacking in vote-based 한자-related popularity contests. Its just that the Korean version is hosted by the Professor News and it collects votes only from teachers in institutions of higher learning. Not exactly 한자 selection by the people and for the people. But to their credit, they select a 4-word 한문 idiom, not just a lone dangling character.

It appears they are still tallying the votes, or interpreting the will of the voters or whatever it is that they do, for 2007. The 한자성어 winners over the past few years have been:

2001 五里務中
2002 離合集散
2003 右往左往
2004 黨同伐異
2005 上火下澤
2006 密雲不雨

Might they work?

2007-12-06T23:56:00.001+09:00

Towards the beginning of the Leftover Affairs of the Three Kingdoms 三國遺事 삼국유사 is the story of a lad who went by “Nose Thorn 鼻荊 비형.” His name certainly gave him enough for the other kids in his 유치원 to tease him about before they even heard about his conception in the union between the dead soul of King Four Wheels the beautiful Peach Blossom Gal. Nose Thorn liked to play with the ghosts and spirits. Probably better company than the neighborhood brats. And Nose Thorn could command his playmates to accomplish astonishing feats. One of those friends of his turned himself into a fox and ran away after Nose Thorn had him complete a public works project.

But then…

荊使鬼捉而殺之。故其眾聞鼻荊之名。怖畏而走。時人作詞曰。聖帝魂生子鼻荊郎室亭飛馳諸鬼眾此處莫留停鄉俗帖此詞以辟鬼。

荊 Thorn 使 caused 鬼 the spirits 捉 to catch 而 and 殺 kill 之 him. 故 Thus [if] 其 that 眾 group [of ghosts] 聞 heard 鼻荊之 Nose Thorn’s 名 name, [they] 怖 feared, 畏 dreaded 而 and 走 ran away. 時 At that time 人 people 作 wrote 詞 a song 曰 saying: “聖 The Sacred 帝 thearch 魂 ghost's 生 born 子 son; 鼻荊 Nose Thorn 郎 the lad’s 室亭 house [is this one]. 飛 Flyers 馳 and runners--諸 all manner of 鬼眾 ghosts: 此 [At] this 處 place 莫 do not 留 stay 停 or stop.” 鄉 The village 俗 commonfolk 帖 pasted 此 this 詞 song [on their houses] 以 in order to 辟 make flee 鬼 the ghosts.

Written words on a piece of paper posted at someone's house to control supernatural forces—an early ghostbuster kit! But I don't remember seeing that one in the movie.

Later, in the same book, we find another story with a similar element. The Dragon of the East Seas 東海龍 sent one of his seven sons to help out in the court of Great King Heon'gang 憲康大王. This son was named “Place-Acceptance 處容 처용.” Heon'gang was so grateful to have a subject that was worth something that he had a beautiful wife arranged for Place-Acceptance and gave him an official position in the government. That was all well and good until one day Place-Acceptance was dragging himself home, bushed, after a long day at the palace. He was looking forward to a little quality time with the wife, but when he walked into the house, he found that his beautiful wife was already enjoying that “quality time” with someone else. Not just anyone but the Spirit of Smallpox (역신 疫神), no less! Knowing the better part of valor, which of course means he knew he'd get his ass kicked in a fight with Poxey, Place-Acceptance did a little dance and sang a song as he stepped back out of the house, accepting his fate and leaving the two entwined to finish their business.

What sort of song does one sing in this situation while backing out of the house?

Good question. Actually the song itself is written in 향찰, an old way of transcribing Korean words using Chinese characters. Problem is, we don't know enough about the language that they spoke back then to be 100% sure about the finer points of his lyrics, but the gist is this: “Night settles as I wander under the bright moon of the Eastern Capital. Returning home, I look at my spot and discover four legs there. Two of 'em are mine, but whose are the other two? What can I do when what was mine is taken?”

Maybe Face-Acceptance was tone-deaf. Because his singing was too much for the Spirit of the Pox to bear. It came and bowed before Face-Acceptance and said that it felt bad enough about what it had done, but even more so since Face-Acceptance didn't even show anger. And then, in a true Marvel Comics moment, the spirit said:

誓今已後。見畫公之形容。不入其門矣。

[I] 誓 swear 今已後 from now on, [if I] 見 see 畫 painted 公之 your 形容 appearance, [I] 不 will not 入 enter 其 that 門 gate 矣 now.

So what do you think the commonfolk did then? If you guessed “因此國人門帖處容之形,” you would be correct!
(Small hint: “因 Because of 此 this 國 the state's 人 people [on their] 門 doors 帖 pasted 處容之 Place-Acceptance's 形 image.”)

Wheew. Now there aren't gonna be any evil spirits hanging around this little web diary. ^^

Ah, life was just so much more exciting in the old days.

So the people of the Korean peninsula have been pasting pieces of paper with writing or images on them to influence the supernatural for a long time. They call ‘em “부적,” and nowadays, they usually look something like this:

The thing about life as a human is that everybody needs a little something extra…or maybe a little less of something. That's why they make these 부적 in many flavors, to cater to many different demands. It's true market segmentation in action. You have your basic FOR talisman (FOR success at work, success in one's studies, FOR a new lover, FOR a son, FOR a pile of cash, FOR family peace, or just for good luck in general), and then there's the AGAINST model (to protect AGAINST disaster, disease, ghosts, marital strife, AGAINST bad dreams and even to keep bugs and wild animals at bay). Interestingly enough, there is a nigh unto never-ending list of official names for these, most of which are an abbreviated Chinese phrase to describe the effect of the 부적 with a 부 (short for “부적”) appended.

And if you read the fine print, you'll notice that, while the manufacturer might not actually recommend it, they can also be used in a pinch to immobilize your standard-issue Chinese vampire.

In the old days, anyone could just slap some ink on a paper, say it looked like 처용 and that was enough to keep the ghosts out. But nowadays those darn malevolent forces are becoming sooooooo sophisticated. They're not about to be stopped by such a simple ruse anymore. Nope. Nowadays if you want a talisman that works, you've got to make it the right way. You need to take the best quality Korean paper, made from the fibers of a paper mulberry 닥나무, and stain it in a solution of gardenia 치자나무 or spindle tree 회나무 berries that have been boiled down to make a potent yellow dye. That'll do for your canvas. Then you need a medium with which to paint. First you've gotta get your hands on some crystal cinnabar—a naturally occurring mineral that is used as a red pigment and was revered for it's mystic powers in Oriental medicine and Taoist alchemy. Grind it up into a very fine powder and mix it with enough oil to let a brush hold it and lay it down evenly. (Incidentally, this is also the same basic recipe as for high-end 인주, except 인주 is much more viscous and has added some fibrous roots to keep it in a clump.)

In the 1985 Hong Kong comedy Mr. Vampir[e] 강시선생, they use fresh chicken blood for the same thing, but chicken blood is not as powerful (read: expensive) as cinnabar, so Korean talismanmongers won't bother themselves with that stuff.

The right materials alone won't be enough to guarantee an effective product, though. You've also got to follow the right process. And, according to several prominent internet vendors, the secret process is:

Sit down with the client and choose a lucky day for the drafting of the 부적 based on his birth year/month/day/hour

The day before the appointed day, the medium and client must each bathe and avoid inappropriate activities and unclean places

On the day that the talisman is to be drawn, the medium must arise early (you've got to be a morning person to be a 무속인 now ㅡ.ㅡ;;;;;;; ), wash, put on clean clothing, offer clean water to the east, light candles and incense, clack her teeth together three times, recite phrases of power and otherwise prepare to receive strength from the divine

Next the medium must prepare the paper and cinnabar mixture

Finally, when it comes time to write, the medium must have full concentration of mind and body, and dash the whole talisman off in one uninterrupted Taoist flourish of brush on paper, much as 이태백 is famous for having done when composing a poem

This is the only way to guarantee a product with the true power of the supernatural. Just peruse the websites of any of the many 부적 peddlers. They will all assure you of the same process. Actually, their pronouncements of this fact are all so similar as to give one the feeling that they may have been cribbing from one another. Nah! Best to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that the same spirits are inspiring all equally.

These guaranteed-to-work talismans can be (1) stuck on the sore spot, (2) burned and the ashes consumed, (3) carried on the body in a special pouch or in the wallet, or (4) stuck on the wall of a building, usually over the door frame. Cinnabar—since it gets its color from the presence of mercury and all—is a poisonous compound, so you may want to be wary of this ingredient in a 부적 that you intend to consume. Note also it is said that if you take out your #3 type talisman and unfold it, all of the power dissipates, so consider yourself warned!

Looking at a few of these 부적, one starts to get the feeling of recurring thematic elements pretty quickly. The first type of imagery employed on these good luck charms is the written word, generally something inspired by Indic scripts or Chinese characters (but usually combinations or partial characters, called “broken characters 破字,” not actual Chinese characters). The Chinese-character inspired charms frequently start with “勅令” or “奉令,” informing the ghosties that it is a command from a higher power, so they ignore it at their own peril. They wouldn't want someone going all Nose Thorn on them, after all. The second type of imagery is geometric design, including those Book-of-Changes stripes that adorn the Korean flag. The third and final type of imagery is depictions of things. Animals, birds, celestial bodies, drawings of spirits and the like. These include designs inspired by Chinese star charts, which may not seem like a “depiction of things” to the uninitiated. Rather like 木 and 山 don't actually look a lot like the items that they have supposedly been pictographed from. So let's all get initiated. Here is a Chinese star chart:

You can see these elements combined in the following actual 부적s.

The driver out of all manner of evil spirits,

The talisman to chase away all sorts of illness. Begone!

The very suggestively drawn “keep away from my man and his dangling circly bits”부적.
Judging by his expression, the subject is less than pleased about the expected outcome.
Speaking of "suggestively drawn,"

The “whip it out here and make me happy, baby” talisman for marital bliss
(the Sanchon Hunjang will be handing out bonus points to anyone who can identify that constellation),
And finally there is

the fender offer of disaster.

This last one is depicted as a bird with three heads and two, maybe three, feet. Unfortunately the artist seems to have gotten a bit carried away in his drawing flourish because the inscription calls for a “三 three 頭 headed, 一 one 足 footed 鷹 eagle [to] 啄 peck 盡 completely away 三 the three 災 disaster[-bearing] 鬼 ghosts.” Oops. Maybe he got confused with the three-footed crow, 삼족오, that lives in the sun?

Or maybe it was meant as a joke? Because there is such thing as your joke 부적:

The Sanchon Hunjang's first introduction to 부적 wasn't anything on fancy yellow paper, but a Chinese-inspired character that someone had scrawled on the tasteful wallpaper above the door in the 여관 room with a magic marker. It looked something like this:

And a relative recently got a 부적 from his favorite Buddhist temple that really underwhelmed me. It was the Korean letters “광명진언,” printed in 72 point 바탕체 with a dot-matrix printer on an ordinary piece of old white A4 printer paper. With tractor feed that you had to tear off by hand, no less! The monk informed Sanchon Hunjang Relative X that the power was in the sounds, so if he pasted them up all over his house, only good things would come to him. Never mind that written letters stuck to a wall don't produce much sound.

I can't vouch for all the good things happening, but those trashy looking computer printouts sure are pasted on many of the walls of his house.

So now we're all the way back to any old schmoe slapping some inked lettering on a piece of paper to keep the ghosts at bay. But now he's using a computer! Isn't progress something?

Money well spent

2007-11-16T13:40:00.001+09:00

The other day, the Sanchon Hunjang was discussing 졸음운전 with one of the guys at work. We both have to travel 5o+ km each way to work, and have been working some pretty late hours.

So CP 'fesses up that he was dozing at the wheel not too long ago as he was going through the Highpass gate and he accidentally hit some guard rail, damaging the bottom of his car but not seriously. More than anything, it just woke him back up and shocked him into realizing that dozing while driving might be dangerous. Duh.

His solution was to pop in a CD and sing to himself as loud as he could with the windows down all the way home to fight off the urge to sleep. He must have looked like a nutcase to those who drove past him, but at least he got home and to bed in one piece. That day, anyhow. After hearing his story, the Sanchon Hunjang decided that if he ever runs across CP's Grandeur on the freeway to quickly put as much distance between us as possible.

But the ever-creative folks over at the Korea Expressway Corporation (note that "공사" that Chinese people just use to mean "company," but Koreans use to mean quasi-government corporate entity, as distinct from 회사) have their own way to combat sleepy drivers.

On October 22, they announced that Korea is the second nation in the world, after only Japan, to have developed a new and powerful freeway technology that both prevents drivers from becoming sleepy as well as preventing speeding and other driving faults that may result in traffic accidents.

What is this wonderful power in the fight against traffic mayhem, you may ask. A little background may be helpful in the unveiling. Surely you have seen (or rather "heard") the grooves that are sometimes carved into the shoulder of the road, especially on sharp turns, to let the driver know that she has gone over the line. The tires vibrate as they pass over the grooves to make a whining sound that is different from the sound of wheels gyrating quickly over ordinary asphalt.

Well, those amazing physicists over at K-EX have applied this same grooving technology into lines that cover a whole lane for a short stretch of freeway. Of course they ad noticed that differences in spacing between grooves can create different types of vibrations. Specifically different pitches. And by varying the length of these differently spaced grooves, you can get pitches that last for a relatively longer or shorter period of time. Surely the intelligent readers of the Sanchon Hunjang's humble web diary are getting a feeling for where this is going...they have engraved a short section of the slow lane on the 서울외곽순환도로 so that it plays music.

It works like this:

And the song that they have chosen to immortalize in asphalt is the dear 동요 called "비행기," that goes "떴다 떴다 비행기 날아라 날아라, 높이 높이 날아라." Or in English, it's known as "Mary Had a Little Lamb." If you'd like to hear the musical masterpiece for yourself, try this video clip. Or try it in person.

It is on the 서울외곽순환도로 for 판교, a bit south of 안현 IC at km 103, right before exit #29 (조남IC), between 시흥, 군포 and 안산. There is a sign right before announcing that you are soon to enjoy the strains of the 노래하는 고속도로.

After having experienced the singing freeway for myself, the Sanchon Hunjang has to give it a vote for being 신기해. And it may conceivably help jar somebody back from dozing. Provided that person happened to be dozing right over the short stretch where the grooves are. But how its supposed to prevent speeding or other driver faults....? Do you suppose asphalt/concrete dust carved from new grooves may have hallucinogenic properties?

말도 안 돼...

2007-10-20T15:37:00.000+09:00

Okay, okay, I know that you can't expect too much from fiction. Just a little break from the routine of life as you flip through some pages. I mean, heck, it's impossible for someone whose profession is a full-time writer to be an expert in everything under the sun. Or even everything that he chooses to write about.

While they're not great works of literature, the Sanchon Hunjang has already admitted to enjoying a few hours turning through the pages of The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons. So I was looking forward to sitting down with the first of Dan Brown's thriller novels, Digital Fortress. I don't think that my expectations were set too high: just a few hours of light entertainment. So I was excited when the brother-in-law gave me the copy he'd just finished as he departed for home this week.

The author is undeniably good at creating and sustaining a page-turning feeling of suspense in the story. Plus, already on page 1o out of 43o in Digial Fortress, things are really looking up for the story. That's because good ol' Mr. 밤색 is hitting topics close to the heart of the Sanchon Hunjang:

For two hours Becker interpreted an endless stream of Mandarin symbols. But each time he gave them a translation, the cryptographers shook their heads in despair. Apparently the code was not making sense. Eager to help, Becker pointed out that all the characters they'd shown him had a common trait--they were also part of the Kanji language. [...] "You mean these symbols have multiple meanings?" Becker nodded. He explained that Kanji was a Japanese writing system based on modified Chinese characters. He'd been giving Mandarin translations because that's what they'd asked for. [...] "Let's try the Kanji." Like magic, everything fell into place. The cryptographers were duly impressed, but nonetheless, they still made Becker work on the characters out of sequence. "It's for your own safety, [...] this way you won't know what you're translating. [...] When the code finally broke, Becker had no idea what dark secrets he'd helped reveal, but one thing was for certain--the NSA took code-breaking seriously.

So, let me get this straight: (1) there are some symbols out there used to write Mandarin, (2) these symbols can be translated into English, (3) at least some of those symbols used to write Mandarin are also used to write Japanese Kanji, (4) Kanji is a language, (5) it belongs to Japanese (6) the Kanji symbols are based on Chinese symbols, (7) there is a way to read the meaning of symbols in Japanese that gives very different meanings from what those same symbols mean in Mandarin, (8) at least some Japanese texts can make sense with no non-kanji symbols, (9) it's very impressive when someone who has been hired for his ability to read fluent Mandarin can also pick out the meanings of Kanji Japanese symbols, (1o) the NSA doesn't have their own people on staff who can translate Mandarin/Chinese/Kanji symbols, (11) one can translate Mandarin/Chinese/Kanji symbols in a coherent manner even when those symbols have been given to you out of order and without context, (12) it is possible to translate "endless streams" of characters, all provided out of order, and yet gain no idea of the meaning that one has translated upon finishing the task.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Dan, friend, the Sanchon Hunjang was with you up to #3, but things rapidly unravel from there. Perhaps it's too much to expect in-depth knowledge of the finer points of Asian scripts and their inter-relations from an author of bestselling fiction, but #1o, 11 and 12 just fly in the face of common sense!! And it's very difficult to enjoy a book when you are haunted by nagging doubts about the writer's knowledge of his subject from page 1o. I've got a sneaking suspicion that the computer science/security and cryptology that make up the core of the story are at least as far off the mark.

So, for me at least, Digital Fortress was a different experience from his other two thrillers. Maybe they were more enjoyable because the Sanchon Hunjang knows zip about DaVinci, art, cathedrals, Catholicism, etc., etc. So I could enjoy the ride without worrying about "facts" that don't make sense... The upshot is this: anyone want a complementary copy of Digital Fortress? I'd be happy to send my inherited copy to the first interested individual to request it. The cover promises, "THE ULTIMATE CODE. IT'S POWERFUL, DANGEROUS--AND UNBREAKABLE," AND IS BEYOND THE REALM OF BELIEVABILITY BECAUSE OF SILLY TECHNICAL MISTAKES BY THE AUTHOR. I think the original draft probably said all of that but the last part got cut for being too verbose. ^^

Don't settle for less

2007-10-10T21:52:00.000+09:00

Everyone knows that if you're going to have ethnic food, you've got to go for the authentic stuff. There's no point in wasting your time with the Korean rendition of the Australian version of Vietnamese rice-paper dumplings, for instance. Because all of those intermediate steps just get between you and the culture that you are trying to experience.

So it goes without saying that what you want is authentic food.

While you're at it, the Sanchon Hunjang says that it never hurts to bump that "authentic" up a notch and eat traditional ethnic cuisine. Because it might be authentic but some weird kind of local dish dreamed up in the recent past. Not what those people have been eating since the dawn of time. And if you're going to experience a country with your tongue, what they've been eating since before there was a history gives you much better insights into the culture and the people.

But why stop at just traditional ethnic food? Especially when that ethnicity is Korean and you're in the cradle of Korean civilization. Of course 한정식 is a nice Korean meal and all. Heck, it's even traditional. But what you really need is that little shove that pushes it to the limit. The extra initiative that pushes the envelope until you can ask yourself, "Like, how much more traditional could this be?" and and you find yourself answering, "None more traditional."

That's what they have in 인사동 at the 한정식 specialty boutique 섬진강. An extra step beyond. Because they are the Korean traditional ADVANCED restaurant.

Indeed, I think I'm safe in saying that this is the most advanced restaurant in the whole country. I guess you're picking up the phone right now to call for reservations. Bon Appétit ^^

And there was Illuminati-o-n

2007-09-29T13:26:00.000+09:00

Ok, so after reading that other Dan Brown novel--you know, the one with the tighter plot line--the Sanchon Hunjang became aware that the Illuminati are still alive and well and running everything from behind the scenes some 2oo years after they were founded. Not only are they behind everything, but they enjoy flaunting their mastery of all by using a funky kind of writing that can be read the same forward or backward. An "ambigram," rather like the very title of that very same book, on its very own cover:

Of course if one of these ambigrams can be custom made to fit the cover of a novel, maybe it doesn't belong to the realms of high art after all...

Still, the only thing ambiguous about ambigrams is which direction is "正 proper." But since they are identical in either direction, it's kind of a moot question.

The other day, the Sanchon Hunjang was musing on some individual graphs that were ambiguous in their own right. Which is to say that any of them could theoretically, in isolation at least, leave you guessing what the original language was supposed to be. Kinda like the Chinese "丫 yā(아)" and the English "Y."

Well that was before I came across the sign. The sign where someone has put together a very interesting ambiguous graph that (1) actually says something, and (2) is ambiguous about what language it is supposed to be read in and even (3) manages to say the same thing in two different scripts at the same time.

Behold a true ambigram...or "bi-language-gram"...or...well let's just get onto the beholding part:

I am impressed. Doubly so since it says the same thing in 한자 and 한글. Simultaneously, no less. That strikes me as quite a feat. Not that advertising logos rank any higher in level of fine art than novel covers, but still, kudos to the graphic artist!

Say...wait just a second here. The word that they have selected to represent in such a mystical fashion: 빛/光. That refers to illumination, right? "Illumination"..."Illuminati"...hmmmm...ambigrams...hmmmmmmmmmmmm...could this be just a coincidence? I hardly think so... *^^*

What languagie is that?

2007-09-16T13:47:00.000+09:00

呂657? As in "여657"? What is that?

OH I get it. You mean *8*657. As in your licence plate number.

But why write your 8 so it looks so much like "呂"? Surely there are enough funny graphs out there that are ambiguous about which language they belong to, like 己 and 口 and 大 and 从 and all those Japanese characters ぇ, し, そ, て, コ, ス, ト, フ, マ, ュ, ョ, ラ, ロ, and ヲ. And this doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of all the Japanese glyphs that look like Chinese (which maybe shouldn't be too strange when we consider that the Japanese script was devised as a simplified version of Chinese script, kinda like 구결).

So why would anyone want to push this envelope any further?

On hidden tails

2007-09-07T11:35:00.000+09:00

There is some argument about the period when the Classic of Mountains and Seas 山海經 (English version) was written.

At any rate, this book contains a wealth of information on old China's geography, flora and fauna, much of it fanciful. In the section on the mountains of the south, we find "有獸焉 , 其狀如狐而九尾, 其音如嬰兒, 能食人, 食者不蠱." With glosses, that is: "有 there is 獸 a wild animal 焉 therein, 其 its 狀 appearance 如 is like 狐 a fox 而 but 九尾 [it is] nine-tailed, 其 its 音 sound 如 is like 嬰兒 a newborn baby, 能 it is able to 食 eat 人 people, 食者 those who eat [it] 不 do not 蠱 [suffer from the effects of] malevolent forces."

Yep, it's the locus classicus for the fabled nine-tailed fox 구미호 九尾狐, those creatures that are able to transform themselves into beautiful maidens in order to seduce men and take away their vital energy, thereby supplementing the fox's own yin energy (foxes are active at night, thus thought heavy on the yin side and they can transform into that other creature with yin powers: a woman) by absorbing and thus taking away the yang essence of the male "she" seduces, thereby lengthening her own existence. Fox fairies are popular in Chinese and Korean folklore as clever tricksters.

Like vampires, the specific powers and weaknesses of nine-tailed foxes, and fox-fairies in general, depend somewhat on who is telling the story. And between the collections of supernatural stories collected in northeast Asia over the centuries, there has been no shortage of tellers. Some say that a fox that lives for a thousand years turns into a nine-tailed fox. Some say it sprouts a new tail for every hundred years that it lives. Sometimes it has to eat the hearts of men, other times absorbing (and thus robbing them of their) "essence" through sex or sex-like acts is enough. The Asian folklore idea that foxes wed on days when the sun is shining and rain falls at the same time is famously depicted in Kurosawa's movie Dreams. The storytelling continues into the present with such famous modern 구미호 as 고소영

and 김태희 and other schlock that nobody should be forced to sit through. And that's just in Korea! I won't even get into all the Pu Songling inspired stuff produced in China, let alone the stuff in video games or anime.

There are, of course, critters other than nine-tailed foxes that go around with their tails hidden.

Look at the first word in that 시조 by the 순수한 기생 홍랑. It's got one of those now-you-see-it-now-you-don't tails:

With modernized Korean spelling and a few touch-ups to eliminate archaisms, it looks like this:

멧버들 가려 꺾어 보내노라, 임에게 I pick out, break off and send a mountain willow to my beloved,
주무시는 窓밖에 심어두고 보소서 And pray you plant it outside the window where you sleep--
밤비에 새잎 나거든 나인줄 여기소서 When new leaves sprout in the spring rain, please think of them as me.

뫼 is the original spelling for the local word for mountain now spelled as "메," and there is no word 멧버들, but you can still find this mountainous morpheme, complete with 사이시옷 tail the word 멧돼지.

Yep, Korean has, at least since middle-Korean was spoken during the time of Sejong the Great, always had a fun way of making compound nouns by inserting a ㅅ between the words in question to mark the first one as a modifier of the second. Funny thing is that this ㅅ was never prounounced for the sound value /s/. It has always been pronounced by "tensifying" the initial sound following. So "윗이" comes out sounding like /윈니/ not */위시/.

If you are writing in Korean, you can always insert a 시옷받침 at the end of the first word, but when you are writing in Chinese you can't invent a new graph with a ㅅ appended every time you want to use one. That's why, at least in middle-Korean, we get floating 사이시옷 and indeed, it's this aspect that probably gave rise to the "사이" part of the name.

But in modern Korean, it's considered an anathema to have loose consonants running around. So, while the 시옷 would be visible if it were written in 한글, in mixed script the words are just concatinated. No ㅅ. ^^

You can see this in the modern version:

동짓달 기나긴 밤을 한허리를 베어 내어 To cut the waist from this long deep winter month night
춘풍 이불 아래 서리서리 넣었다가 And place it in coils under the spring-wind[-warm] blanket
어룬 임 오신 날 밤이어든 굽이굽이 펴리라 That, at night on the day that my partner beloved comes, I will spread it with meandering turns

Of course if "동짓달" is written in modern mixed script, it becomes a de-시옷'ized "冬至달" (still pronounced /동짓달/ but not spelled that way).

There's also a distinctly 사이시옷 sounding phenomenon in many places where two Chinese morphemes come together. Generally these are not officially recognized as this phenomenon--and thus written with a 사이시옷 (even when writing in 한글)--but it sure sounds awfully similar. I mean words like 대구 (對句), 사건, 대가, 성과, 등등등. The word 효과 is offically pronounced /효과/, as anyone can confirm by listening to well-trained broadcasting announcers, but listen to the man in the street and you will, likely as not, hear the officially unaccepted /효꽈/.

That's a pretty well hidden tail. But you can see hints.

There's another even sneakier one out there, though. The Sanchon Hunjang likes to call these guys 사이히읗, but as far as I know, nobody else has ever used that name. Listen carefully to what happens at the morpheme boundary when the bound-morpheme 수- (male) comes in contact with free morphemes.

수 + 개 => 수캐
수 + 것 => 수컷
수 + 닭 => 수탉
수 + 돼지 => 수퇘지

A definite ㅎ hiding in there, no?

It's not only 수- that has this hidden tail effect. The counterpart 암- (female) does the exact same thing. Not only these sex-indicators, 안- (inside) also does the same. Behold: 안팎. 머리 also shows it's tail when combined with -가락. And on and on and on.

There are indeed many strange creatures that go about in the moonlight with their tails hidden to trick the unwary. Be careful...

Done yet?

2007-09-06T21:24:00.000+09:00

Ask a random person if she is finished. With whatever. It doesn't matter. Assuming that she hasn't, nearly 1o times out of 1o she'll say "아직..."

Of course this is shorthand for "아직 다 못했는데."

You can check by just asking about something she was supposed to have done. Like that report.

"그 보고서는 어떻게 됐어?"
"아직 다 못 했는데..."

So the 아직 clearly comes before the 다, which of course comes before the verbal auxiliary 못 all followed by the verb 하다.

You can also see it when that same lady gets upset by something you are saying when she thinks you've gone to far and she hits you with a sharp "너 말 다 했어?" But you also meant to go on about her mother. So you shoot back, "다 못 했어! 왜?"

Lessee, so that's 다 before the auxiliary 못 which is before the verb. Check.

All of this 정리 is hard work, no? Now that that's all settled, it must be time to relax.

Care to listen to some music? Do you like 장혜진? Says here that she was born in '68. That must have been a good year. 육팔생 원숭이띠구나. 연예인들이 말하는 생년월일을 믿어도 되는지 모르지만.

By any chance, have you listened to her fifth album, Souvenir? Track 1 "이별 후유증"... Yes parting is surely a sad thing that leaves one feeling empty for a while. Track 2 is "사랑이란 그 이름 하나만으로." Sounds like a very idealistic view of love and life. Something I'd expect from someone in their early- to mid-twenties. Surely not from an artist who is pushing forty. I'm sure it's got a great melody, though. Track 3 says it's called "힘겨운 사랑." Ms. Jang sure seems to be focusing a lot on 사랑 here... Continuing right along in the same vein, track 4 is "My Love." 역시. Any bets on the topic of track 5? ^^ Yep. Welcome back to 사랑. It's called "못다한 사랑."

못.다.한.사.랑. That's what it says. But this goes against the ordering rule we established above. The 못난 "못" and the "다" seem to have done a little dosie-do on us here.

It turns out that you can say the standard 다 못 한 in most situations, but some situations dictate an inverted 못다한. So we get "못다한 사랑," "못다한 얘기"... But these critters are a lot like Ms. Jang: all fixated on love and longing.

After quizzing down a whole herd of native informants, most of whom just said "they're the same thing, aren't they," the Sanchon Hunjang has become enlightened. In strict meaning 못 다 한 and 다 못 한 are identical, but they differ slightly in nuance, and thus in usage. The standard is 다 못 했다, as discussed above.

But sometimes the speaker wants to show a bit of lingering attachment, and this is when he will say "못다한," especially about something that inspires reluctance to give it up. Like love. Like when your man says he's had enough and he's leaving whether you like it or not. Especially if you are the kind of woman who has a hard time letting go. Then you can spend days, weeks and months brooding over your 못다한 사랑 and all of the 못다한 얘기 that you meant to say to him.

And after brooding like that for several months, maybe you'll be ready to write a whole ream of new songs for Ms. Jang!

Are you allowed to say that?

2007-09-04T22:24:00.001+09:00

So Korean, along with other Asian languages, has specific words that are used to describe the actions or aspects of others, 진지, 연세, 존함 etc., etc. Frequently translated "honored something or other." This includes words like 약주 that actually have other dictionary definitions, but are used in practice as uplifted versions of ordinary nouns.

It goes without saying that one does not use these to describe one's own actions. Because that would belie poor breeding. Or maybe a poor attempt at comedy. A step down from using the royal first-person pronoun 짐 to refer to oneself.

But society is changing. And there are indications that some of the more esoteric examples of honored speech are beginning to fray. For example, many Koreans cannot correctly use the word 여쭙다/여쭈다 any more (in the old days, that was "엳다" ^^). Especially younger Koreans. They can remember that it means "to ask" and is an honored form. So they use it as "to ask/inform a superior" as well as "a superior asks." As evidence of this tattering of the hierarchical fabric, the Sanchon Hunjang submits a helpful tutorial aimed at native speakers on how to properly use these words.

You can also judge the lack of proper Confusion ^^ education that the young 'uns have been given by how they react in a situation with two social superiors and themselves. Say there's granddad and dad. Both demand respect and honored speech. But what about when you are talking to granddad about dad? Are you supposed to say, A: "아버지도 할아버지 존경한다고 하십니다," or should it be, B: "아버지도 할아버지 존경한다고 합니다"? Listen closely, especially in real life situations when the speaker is slightly out of her comfort zone because of the interaction with a social superior, and you'll hear A more often than not. Even from middle aged speakers who should know better.

Lastly, there's a funny construction of which the Sanchon Hunjang is just not sure what to make. As everyone knows, the ~시 infix makes ordinary verbs (and adjectival verbs) into wonderful gifts fit only to bestow upon honored others. And ~ㅂ시다 indicates a proposition for action that the speaker and company will all participate in together. So what does it mean when the speaker says something like, "자 회의를 마치십시다," with the "honored other" ~시 thing combined with the self-inclusive ~ㅂ시다 thing. It sounds like it shouldn't be possible. I can't vouch for whether it's proper textbook Korean or not, but it sure can be heard in abundance out in the wild.

Sure, language changes. Culture changes. Society changes. The Sanchon Hunjang isn't going to argue that we should all stick to the proscriptive approach. Just that it's interesting to watch the hints of change unfolding before your very ears.

On names and new coinages

2007-08-18T19:02:00.001+09:00

Once, a long time ago, the Sanchon Hunjang met a Korean gentleman who had a unique name. I mean there are unusual names, like 박초롱초롱빛나리, and then there are singularly unique names. This man had a singularly unique name.

His name didn't sound that unique.

But it was.

You see, his grandfather had invented a brand new Chinese character for use in his name. Since this all happened in Korea, perhaps the expression "Chinese character" doesn't quite fit in this case..."Chinese-esque character"? At any rate, there it was--a new invention for him alone. Being an invented character, of course it's not included in computer character sets for Chinese characters, not even in the monstrous Unicode set, so the Sanchon Hunjang can't type it here for your perusal. But this gentleman had one. All for himself.

To a naive Sanchon Hunjang, it all sounded like cheating. Rather like cheapening the veritable institution that is Chinese characters. That was before I knew that newly minted Chinese characters have been rolling off the line since the dawn of time, and things haven't stopped in modern times.

Some characters created recently in China include those for chemical elements, such as "氩 argon," and funky contractions of multiple characters into one like "do not 不" and "need 用" come together to form "甭 do not need".

But surely the heyday of inventing wild new Chinese characters was during the extremely short-lived second Zhou dynasty, when Empress Wu 武則天, ruled the land. Court officials convinced her to come up with complex and interesting new ways to write some dozen or two words that already had serviceable ways to write them. These are called 則天文字 (측천문자). The new writing included cosmologically aligned ways to pen 國 state (☞圀), 星 star (☞ ○), 地 (☞埊) earth and her personal name 照 (☞曌), all detailed in 卷七十六 of the New History of the Tang 新唐書. Wikipedia links to an intriguing page (that could be even more interesting with more detail) which reviews these characters.

In 1991, the Korean government got wise to grandfather-made Chinese-esque characters and the like and decided to put a stop to these shenanigans once and for all. They swooped in like Superman to the rescue and drafted list of "人名用漢字 characters for use in human names," which was added to the Family Register Law (originally 2,731 characters were listed, but there have been numerous additions since then and the current tally is some 5,151 characters). If there should be some twisted individual should get it into his black heart to subvert this piece of legislation that is single-handedly keeping the forces of chaos at bay, that individual would find himself unable to register the name in question. All legal names must now be made up of only the listed characters.

Unfortunately the law was not made retroactive, so there is still at least one misguided soul out there with a name that now can't be written legally. I sure hope he comes to his senses soon and has that abomination changed. If only the Korean high court could have gotten its hands on Empress Wu--surely such brazen Chinese character madness would have called for capital punishment.

Some Cold Mountian to beat the summer heat

2007-08-11T14:44:00.000+09:00

The poet(s?) known as Cold Mountain 寒山, but not starring Nicole Kidman, seem to have been verbally mauled by somebody who was keeping up with the latest trends in poetic styles for his failure to follow the new rules. As everyone knows, ya gotta keep up with the latest fashions.

The "latest trends" were the more and more rule-bound "modern 近體" approach to poem crafting, with some pretty picky rules governing prosody. These were laid out by Shen Yue 沈約, the man who discovered that Chinese is a language with tones. Of course artists are generally able to achieve greater creativity expression within a framework of confining rules. Although sometimes they may intentionally break the rules for effect. It is an irony of the human mind that wide open freedom without boundaries constricts creativity, while a tight structural framework that would appear to fetter creativity actually have the opposite effect, as Douglas Hofstadter explores at some length in his huge tome on translation, Le Ton beau de Marot.

How the Cold Mountain poet responded when the criticism was still hanging in the air is unknown, but it is clear that the comment on his lack of technical prowess as a poet must have stung. This is why the Sanchon Hunjang concludes that we are not seeing an intentional bending of the rules in the case of the Cold Mountain poet. Otherwise it would have been easy to dismiss the criticism: "I meant to do that," rather than stew. And stew. And stew. And then draft a reply to his tormentor, also in the form of a poem. And write it on a mountain rock or tree along with your other works for someone who comes along later to read and laugh with you at the audacity of that Mr. Wang:

有個王秀才; 有 There is 個 a 秀 super 才 talent[ed-guy surnamed] 王 Wang,
笑我詩多失. [He] 笑 laughed that 我 my 詩 poems 多 [have] many 失 mistakes.
雲不識蜂腰; [He] 雲 said¹⁾ [I] 不 don't 識 know 蜂腰²⁾ the "wasp's waist,"
仍不會鶴膝. Moreover 仍 [I] 不 am not 會 able [to do] 鶴膝³⁾ the "crane's knee."
平側不解壓; The 平 level and 側 deflected [tones--I] 不 cannot 解 understand 壓 their pressures,
凡言取此出. 凡 In all cases 言 [my] words 取此出 just come out like this.
我笑你作詩; [Oh, Mr. Wang] 我 I 笑 Laugh at 詩 the poems 你 you 作 write:
如盲徒詠日! [They] 如 are like 盲徒 the blind詠 singing of 日 the sun!

Way to go Cold Mountain guy, you showed Mr. Wang. How does it feel to be vindicated?

※ Incidentally, 한산's use of vernacular as opposed to pure literary Chinese is an interesting point in this poem. Like he's intentionally pushing back even more against those rules in this reply.

【주석】

1) 雲: Here we see a problem with machine translation between computer encoding schemes. This text clearly means to say "云 'says'" but some computer has translated the simplified mainland character 云, which serves double duty for 云 "to say" or "and so on" as well as 雲 "clouds" back into the traditional character cloud. It's easy to say (雲 or 云)=云, but going backwards doesn't work.

2), 3) As alluded to above, Shen Yue put together a system of no-no's in the form of a list of 8 evils to avoid in the composition of poetry, which he called the "eight ills 八病." The ideas were borrowed from Buddhist chanting practices that were imported from India. They consist of tone patterns that aren't supposed to sound pleasant. I suppose it's the equivalent introducing a few stresses in the middle of some trochaic verse that goes against the prevailing pattern. Wasp's waist and a crane's knee are names that he gave to two of these eight ills.

Mutually transitive

2007-07-14T19:04:00.001+09:00

There's that fun Chinese word 相. They sure manage to get a lot of mileage out of that one word. Just come along with the Sanchon Hunjang and explore the lexicographic space demarcated by that one word.

Early philologist Xu Shen, makes nothing of these constituent graphs. He just glosses the sound as 息良切 (식: [ㅅ]ㅣㄱ + 양:ㅇ[ㅑ ㅇ] = [샹])and then goes on with definitions. Rick Harbaugh, however, points out that it's made up of the sub-graphs tree 木 and eye 目 (both of which are pronounced "목," but the combination is not, interestingly enough). Speaking of which, when you look this one up in your 옥편, you've gotta be careful because it's made up of two of the Kangxi radicals. Which is it gonna be, eye? Or tree? (Give 龠, 鼻 and 率 a try if you have a lot of spare time and enjoy this brand of fun).

It looks like this when it's hand written:

Now everyone knows that Chinese words are written in ideographs that directly encode meaning into the written word without the need for an intermediary sonory mapping (unlike some inferior scripts), 相 clearly means....let's see...um...an eye by a tree...an eye behind a tree...it clearly must refer to somebody closing their eyes while leaning against a tree...um...while...uh...counting! Yes! That's it, it refers to playing hide-and-go-seek!

We can see how all the meanings applied to this word really do come from its ancient root meaning of playing hide-and-go-seek:

In modern usage, far and away the most common meaning is "mutual" or "together," which clearly stems from the fact that you can't play children's games like hide-and-go-seek alone. Browse any dictionary to find grundles of examples: 상호, 상응, 상이, 상관, etc., etc.

You can also see it in 한문 texts. But it's an interesting word usage-wise because it's placed in front of the verb where objects normally fall after the verb. In this respect, 相 is like that word "自 self." A quick example is that poem on meetings that weren't working out by the recently 다시 movified 황진이.

相思相見只憑夢, [For] thinking of 思 each other 相 or seeing 見 each other 相, [we can] only只 rely on 憑 dreams 夢;
儂訪歡時歡訪儂 When 時 I 儂 go to your house to visit 訪 you 歡, you 歡 have come to my house to visit 訪 me 儂. ...

In older sources, we find meanings like "look closely at," "examine closely"--clearly from seeking those hiding comrades. Also, "appearance," or "form," which comes from (?) what the 술래 is trying see in order to 잡아(?). It's only a baby step from these to the other biggie meaning: fortune telling on the basis of appearance, or physiognomy. For this specialty, I'd recommend you visit a practicing professional, who can be easily identified by the drawing of a face on their tent.

No sense in trying to do it yourself, 'cause this is not a do-it-yourself job. Unless, that is, you can make heads or tails out of handy reference graphs like this one:

As can be seen, this science goes hand-in-hand with palmistry and the bumps-on-the-head-istry of Bugs Bunny fame.

Then we get 相 = high official of state. Surely there is no arena more like a game of hide-and-go-seek than politics, so I suppose it is only natural that this extension of meaning should have happened. We can see this in use in the title of the collected works of 이규보, titled 東國李相國集 (Collected [writings] 集 of Mr. Lee 李 [Kyu-bo], Minister 相 of State 國 [in the] State 國 to the East 東). And we get into a chicken-and-the-egg thing with this reading and the others of "help/helper" and "the one who oversees rites." Round out the laundry list of definitions with an odd dictionary find: "alternative name for the seventh month," which is undoubtedly when young Chinese must have played the most hide and go seek.

So that's what the dictionaries say. And examples abound. But that's in the wading-end of the pool. Once you get out beyond the waist-deep section you've gotta be careful. Because beyond here there be dragons.

Professor Pulleyblank, in his Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar indicates that, even in the classical age, "Xiang 相 is sometimes used when the action is not strictly reciprocal, but there is a mutual bond of some kind between subject and object. Examples, though rare, do occur in pre-Han literature, for instance xiang cong 相從 meaning '(you) follow me.' Later it became much more common." (p. 137) "Following each other" would be something to behold.

But things become curiouser and curiouser.

In that song by ultra-famous poet Grand White 이태백 李太白, his meditative Sitting Alone at Mount Jingting 獨坐敬亭山:

衆鳥高飛盡 Masses 衆 of birds 鳥 flying 飛 high 高 are all gone 盡,
孤雲獨去閑 An orphan 孤 cloud 雲 alone 獨 departs 去 at leisure 閑.
相看兩不厭 Gazing at 看 each other 相, both 兩 do not 不 tire 厭--
只有敬亭山 There is 有 only 只 Mount Jingting 敬亭山

Which is to say that, of all the things in the world that our poet could gaze upon at length, the only thing that he never tires of looking at is Mount Jingting. Kinda like that old song "사랑" by 나 훈아, "보고 또 보고 또 쳐다봐도 싫지 않는 내 사랑아." Doesn't sound like a rave review of Mr. Na's sweetie to the Sanchon Hunjang, but it appears to work for the local fans. Coming back to the word of the day, surely it is an odd thing if a man and a mountain can mutually gaze for a time. At each other, no less! Not only that, but they don't get tired of doing it. Maybe he's anthropomorphizing the mountain and positing its feelings about himself, you argue?

Maybe.

But then how you gonna explain this one, by the Tang poet who somehow managed to fuse more detachment from the mundane world into his poetry than any other and thereby became the "Buddha of poetry." 王維 Wang Wei's "Lodge Among the Bamboo 竹裏館":

獨坐幽篁裏 Alone 獨, sitting 坐 within 裏 a deep 幽 bamboo grove 篁,
彈琴復長嘯 [I] pluck 彈 [my] lute 琴 again 復 whistle 嘯 long 長.
深林人不知 Deep深 in the forest 林, men 人 are not 不 known 知,
明月來相照 The bright 明 moon 月 comes 來 and mutually 相 shines 照.

"Mutually shine"? "Shine on each other"? So, Mr Wang, you are shining back at the moon? How does that work?

Turns out that, after the classical age, there was a further step taken in the same direction indicated by Professor Pulleyblank above, whereby 相 comes to be used in the place of an object that is not specified. In the words of another scholar, "A basic meaning of [xiang 相] is 'mutually, each other,' but frequently this meaning is weakened to something like 'transitively,' merely calling attention to the fact that the following verb is transitive" (p. 25). James Liu also mentions this in his Art of Chinese Poetry, where he mentions that he likes to translate it as "one." But the Sanchon Hunjang is not sure that "The bright moon comes and shines on one" is so clear either.

Maybe it's time to play hide-and-seek with an all-purpose English translation that does some sort of justice to this aspect of the word 相.

네임 체인지~

2007-06-29T13:06:00.001+09:00

To recap, first there was that supplement 補 - yer body 身 - soup 湯 (보신탕). It's a pleasant arrangement in the classical V+O modifies head N style and seemed to do a good job of suiting everyone's needs. Especially during the fast-approaching dog days of summer.

But no. It appears there was a secret need for that to be all shaken up.

So now we have 몸 body - 補 supplement - 湯 soup (몸보탕), with the order reversed to the Korean pattern O + V modifies head N. Which is great, but 보 by itself is supposed to be a bound-morpheme and shouldn't be left to float freely among other words like that. Might lead to dancing...

And, horror of horrors, it seems to be catching on!

I guess it all works because 몸 is certainly free, 탕 is pretty-much free and the compound is simple enough to be abundantly clear. Perhaps even to the poor "ingredients" that are caged next to the restaurant...

♥ Sutras

2007-06-20T15:27:00.001+09:00

The other day the Sanchon Hunjang was re-watching 김기덕's masterpiece of beautiful cinematography, 봄여름가을결 그리고봄. Of course the floating hermitage is still as stunningly beautiful as ever. Just like a lotus in a viewing pond, with its roots in grimy reality but has risen above the filth to bloom on the surface. It's a shame that the hermitage doesn't exist in the
real world...

Anyhow, the thing that struck the Sanchon Hunjang this time was the older monk's young disciple, who comes back after a prodigal foray into the defiled world, pursued by the police with a warrant for his arrest for murder. It is obvious to all that the younger disciple's emotions have run amok and wreaked havoc with his life. The older monk persuades the police to wait while he has the young disciple carve the 반야심경 Prajna Heart Sutra in good sized characters right there on the wooden patio in front of the floating hermitage.

This is because "the Heart Sutra has the power to calm the emotions," he explains. So the young disciple stays up all night carving the 260 characters of the monk's running script calligraphy into the patio before he is taken into custody, a changed man.

There seems little doubt that the disciple needed to reign in the emotions that were driving him. But the implication that, because the name of the Heart Sutra contains the word "heart," it should naturally be good at controlling affairs of the heart seems a bit tenuous. Not being too familiar with Buddhism, the Sanchon Hunjang wasn't sure how much credence to give this interpretation. But fortunately he has a native informant who is of a scientific and analytical bent both in life and business, and who also happens to be Buddhist. CP confirms that the Heart Sutra is an abridgment of the Diamond Sutra 금강경, and thus is a crystallization of the "heart" of the teachings of the Buddha.

CP then went on to expound upon how hanging a painting of the Bodhi-dharma has the power to dissipate harmful electromagnetic waves and ensure the health, happiness and wish fulfillment of the owner. Provided that it was painted by a monk with true spiritual power. Not a charlatan. This he knows because he saw it proved using the scientific method on television. Just for completeness, they also tested photostatic copies of the paintings and found that the copies do not possess the power of the originals. And these can be had, frame included, for a very reasonable KRW 3oo,ooo. Um... So much for "scientific and analytical approach to life and business." ㅡ.ㅡ;;;;;;;;;;

It does not appear that they tested electronic Internet images, however. And, since the Sanchon Hunjang is in desperate need of health and fulfillment of wishes, here I hang my very own image of the Bodhi-dharma. Neatly pirated from some random website. Hmmmmm. Interestingly, not only was Mr. Dharma the founder of the meditational school of Buddhism, but according to this highly authoritative website, it appears that he may also dabbled in the way of the empty hand...

At any rate, the Heart Sutra is short and sweet enough. And by its shape, anyone can easily see that it was destined to have a great effect on the people of a certain peninsular nation:

Here in Korea, you can even get it being chanted as a ring tone for your phone. And its influence on Korean cinema stretches far beyond 김기덕. There was that ever-forgettable 색즉시공 色卽是空 that took its name from a line in the Heart Sutra and then punned its English name, Sex is Zero, on the titillating word 色 (in the original it would seem to mean something like "visual form"). Before that, the legendary 임권택 directed a movie where 강수연 looses her locks, that took its name from the Heart Sutra, 아제아제바라아제. If you would prefer that in Chinese graphs, it is 揭諦揭諦波羅揭諦. Is that helpful?

Maybe with character glosses? 揭: 높이 들 게, 諦: 진리 제, 波: 물결 파, 羅: 벌릴 라.

I thought not...

All the funny Sanskrit (or maybe its Pali?) loanwords peppered in Buddhist texts mean that the non-expert can never be sure whether to take words at what they appear to mean, which makes for extremely slow reading. This is true even though Charles Muller has put the Soothill dictionary and his own Digital Dictionary of Buddhism on line to help out.

Give it a taste yourself on the Prajna Heart Sutra (with parsing hints provided but Pali/Sanskrit left untranslated):

Avalokiteśvara 觀自在 bodhisattva菩薩 was practicing 行 deep 深 prajnaparamita 般若波羅密多 At that time 時, [he] illuminated 照 and saw 見 the five 五 skandhas 蘊, that they were all 皆 empty 空. [He thus] crossed beyond 度 all 一切 suffering 苦 and difficulty 厄.

Shariputra 舍利子! Form 色 is not 不 different 異 from emptiness 空; emptiness 空 is not 不 different 異 from form 色. Form 色 straightway 卽 is 是 emptiness 空; emptiness 空 straightway 卽 is 是 form 色. Reception 受, thought 想, action 行, and cognition 識 are also 亦復 like 如 this 是.

Shariputra 舍利子! These 是 all 諸 dharma 法 are empty of 空 aspect 相: [they] are not 不 born 生, are not 不 extinguished 滅, are not 不 impure 垢, are not 不 pure 淨, are not 不 increased 增, are not 不 reduced 減. For this reason 是故, in emptiness 空中 there is no 無 form 色, there is no 無 reception 受, thought 想, action 行 or cognition 識. There are no 無 eyes 眼, ears 耳, noses 鼻, tongues 舌, bodies 身, nor wills 意. There is no 無 form 色, sound 聲, scent 香, taste 味, touch 觸, nor dharma 法. There is no 無 eye-field 眼界 up to and including 乃至 that there is no 無 field of will or consciousness 意識界 there is no 無 lack of 無 brightness 明 and also 亦 there is no 無 end to the lack of brightness 無明盡 up to and including 乃至 that there is no 無 old age 老 or death 死 and also 亦 there is no 無 end to old age and death 老死盡. There is no 無 suffering 苦, accumulating 集, extinguishing 滅, nor way 道. There is no 無 wisdom 智 and also 亦 there is no 無 obtaining 得. Because there is nothing which is obtained 以無所得故, the bodhisattva 菩提薩, relies on 依 prajnaparamita 般若波羅密多. Thus 故 [his] heart 心 has no 無 obstacles 碍. Because [it] has no obstacles 無碍故, [he] lacks 無 having 有 fears 恐 or trepidation 怖. [He] leaves far behind 遠離 the inverted 顚 and upside down 倒 dreamy 夢 thoughts 想, [reaching] the end of 究竟 nirvana 涅槃.

The myriad Buddhas of the three spheres 三世諸佛 rely on 依 prajnaparamita 般若波羅密多. Thus 故 [they] obtain 得 nuttara-samyak-sambodhi 阿耨多羅三三菩提. Thus 故 know 知 that prajnaparamita 般若波羅密多 is 是 a great 大 spiritually forceful 神 incantation 呪. It is 是 a great 大 brilliant 明 incantation 呪. It is 是 an untopped 無上 incantation 呪. It is 是 an unequaled 無等等 incantation 呪 that is able to 能 eliminate 除 all 一切 suffering 苦. [It is] true 眞 and real 實, not 不 empty 虛. Therefore 故 [did he] speak 說 the prajnaparamita 般若波羅密多 incantation 呪. [He] namely 卽 spoke 說 the incantation 呪, saying 曰: "Gaté Gaté Paragaté Parasamgaté Bodhi Svaha! 揭諦揭諦波羅揭諦波羅僧揭諦菩提娑婆訶."

☞ The actual mantra is usually repeated 3 times, and sounds like this in Korean: 아제아제 바라아제 바라승아제 모지 사바하.

And that, dear friends, is another reason that, even after many years invested in libraries pouring over dusty 한문 texts, one can still get disparaging comments like, "oh, I thought you knew Chinese" by well-meaning acquaintances if they find you unable to respond coherently to their request to extemporaneously translate the cursive calligraphy on random pillars at a Buddhist temples. Now you can never say that you weren't warned. ^^

너무 노골적이당~

2007-06-06T10:45:00.000+09:00

Okay...

So the marketing people over at Seoul Milk have hit a grand slam home run. They've come up with a snazzy slogan that means something in both "Korean" and English at the same time. What a feat! Take a look at this Seoul Milk truck that the Sanchon Hunjang happened upon on his way home from work:

There it is, clear as day: I [heart] you. Or, in the Korean version, "I love tits." You can't accuse the guys over at Seoul Milk of being dishonest. Lacking a sense of taste about where to declare their fetishes, perhaps, but certainly frankness is not a weakness here...

And, on the subject of breasts, or nipples, King Wen of the Zhou (depicted here with nipples covered, to protect the squeamish) apparently had four of them. Not only did he have four, but this was taken as a sign of his high level of humanity. Doubt an old Sanchon Hunjang? Just ask the Kangxi Emperor: 文王四乳 , 是謂至仁. (Quoted from Comprehensive [Discourses] at the White Tiger [pavilion] 《白虎通》)

The things you can learn about people from browsing old dictionaries...

...and milk delivery trucks.

A consonant reclaimed

2007-06-02T15:49:00.006+09:00

Isn't change just a nasty thing? Them old folk sitting around jawboning about the good ol' days have got it right. For example, how much better Korean used to be before the process of palatalization set in.

Yep, those old listeners used to be able to tell the difference between, for example, "to fall 디다" and "to bear on the back 지다" or "to get fatter (살) 지다" just by the sound of the word and no need to rely on such frivolities as context.

There is a whole string of victims to the declining industry in pronunciation:

"to pound with a pestle 디흘" ⇔ "to name (이름) 지흘."

"good 됴흔" ⇔ "clean/clear 조흔" [both "으" are actually 아래아 but precious few have installed the archaic Korean font required to view it, your web diarist included.]

"straw 딥" ⇔ "house 집"

"that 뎌" ⇔ "to put physical effort in 져" or "chopsticks "져"

People used to have no problem saying their d-before-i and could even prove their tongue dexterity by slipping in a glide vowel! But then all of the sudden, around the end of the 16th century, things began to shift.

People began not saying 뎔 to mean Buddhist temple anymore.

Useful verbs like "to carry 디니다," and "to keep/protect 디키다" went the way of the chyrannosaurus rex. And there wasn't even a huge meteor impact to trigger the change!

"It's just to hard," I'm sure was their excuse as they gradually adopted "절" and "지키다."

Nowadays it looks strangely archaic to see something written "뎌." Rather like Chaucer's spelling. Or saying "Ye Olde..."

임권택 thought it would be cool to lean on the archaic feel of the ㄷ as ㅈ effect in the title of his 판소리 move 춘향뎐. But he confused a whole slew of little 중학생 who hadn't learned about palitazation in 국어 class yet. They began fretting and madly writing their friends to figure out the relationship between 춘향전 and 춘향뎐.

Now, of course, The Story of Spring Fragrance was originally oral literature and, as such it existed in many versions that differed depending on the mood of the narrator as well as probably the response of the audience on any given day. The Sanchon Hunjang can't find any specific reference to 춘향뎐 as such, but the character 傳 is glossed with the pronunciation 뎐. So, while we can't be sure whether Mr. Im is just trying to lend an archaic flavor or whether he's following an actual name that was written somewhere.

To recap, we now have 디 / 뎌 → 지 / 져 or 저, in spite of 임권택 trying to turn back the clock.

People adjusted to the changed sound of those vocabulary items. And it was accepted that ㄷ is not followed by ㅣ or ㅕ, just like leading ㄹ are simplified to ㅇ or ㄴ. Once again all was right with the world.

But then one day somebody came along with a nifty new electronic device. Everyone who beheld it wanted to have one. They asked the owner what the name was, and she, fresh returned from the West, said "radio." Everyone ooh-ed and ah-ed. But how are you gonna say "radio" when you can't say "디" any more (let's just ignore the point that leading ㄹ are also not allowed in Korean...unless you're a 빨갱이, that is)? 라지오? 너무 이상하잖아. A solution had to be found. Some bright soul who has doubtless been lost in the sands of time came up with the wonderful compromise of 라듸오. Wonderful!

Well, we can do the same with that other awkward word that we need to put on each architectural masterpiece in the country: 삘딍.

Then more time passed, and most people forgot why we needed that weird 듸 thing in the first place. So it was simplified in the official orthography. So now we have 라디오 and 빌딩. But every once in a while you run in to an ornery old coot who refuses to adopt the changes. Or worse, somebody who intentionally archaizes by adopting these no longer accepted spellings. So you still find 라듸오 and 빌딍. Whachya gonna do with people like that? You've just got to shame them into adopting the new spelling by attacking their lack of 우리말 사랑.

So now, at a small fraction of the expense for re-claiming the land for an airport off 영정도, the Korean people have reclaimed the original 디! Except now it has a funny foreign feel to it. We've come full circle!

디 → 지 → 디

Now that it's kindly accepted by the Keepers of the Language, everyone should feel free to write "레이디" to their hearts' content. Just like the 경향 publishers do.

But isn't life just a complex mess? Doesn't something always fall through the cracks? 역시. You can still see the 지 that should have turned back into a 디 at the stroke of twelve but somehow failed to transform in the funny word"다방레지." How could this have been allowed to happen? And what the should be the effect on 티켓다방 (치켓다방?).

휴 머리 아프려고 한다.

오늘 할일 다 끝났으니 딥에 가서 쉬어야디. ^^

Deliberate impossiblity and ambiguous wills?

2007-05-25T14:07:00.000+09:00

At Pinyin.info, there is an article, "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard" written by David Moser in which his frustration at the difficulties is almost palpable. He is especially disparaging of classical Chinese:

Whereas modern Mandarin is merely perversely hard, classical Chinese is deliberately impossible. Here's a secret that sinologists won't tell you: A passage in classical Chinese can be understood only if you already know what the passage says in the first place. This is because classical Chinese really consists fo several centuries of esoteric anecdotes and in-jokes written in a kind of terse, miserly code for dissemination among a small, elite group of intellectually inbred bookworms who already knew the whole literature backwards and forwards, anyway.

He surely exaggerates a bit, but consider the following will left by an old gentleman on how to divide up his earthly possessions among between his son and daughter.

七十生子非吾子家産傳之婿他人勿取

The reading all depends on how you parce it.

Is that 七十生子,非吾子.家産傳之婿.他人勿取! "The son 子 born 生 when [I was] seventy 七十 is not 非 my 吾 son 子. For [my] home 家 and property 産 transmit 傳 them 之 to my son-in-law 婿. An outsider 他人 shall not 勿 take 取 [it]," or is it 七十,生子,非吾子!家産傳之.婿他人勿取. "At seventy 七十, [I] had 生 a son 子. How could he not be 非 my 吾 son 子? For [my] house 家 and property 産, transmit 傳 [them] to him 之. A son-in-law 婿 is an outsider 他人 and shall not 勿 take 取 [it]"?

Or how about the case of the man who had some plots of rice paddy around a well. The paddies below the well were of good quality but the ones above the well were very difficult to water an of significantly inferior quality. He also had a son and a daughter but was unable to afford a decent lawyer for whatever reason and left the a final will and testament that was sure to cause family problems.

井上子畓井下女畓

Is that "the [crappy ones] above 上 the well 井 are my son's 子 paddies 畓 and the [fine ones] below 下 the well 井 are my daughter's 女 paddies 畓"? Or is that supposed to be "Those [wonderful ones] with the well 井 above 上 are my son's 子 paddies 畓, while [those poor ones] with the well 井 below 下 are my daughter's 女 paddies 畓"? Time for this loving 남매 to spare no expense on good lawyers and rack up more than the total land value in legal fees.

It all brings to mind that old favorite, 아버지가방에들어갔습니다. So what are you trying to say? Is it that dad went into his room or [something] went into his briefcase? Just leaves one question: is modern Korean merely perversely hard, or is it deliberately impossible?

Buddha's Birthday

2007-05-24T14:24:00.000+09:00

Happy birthday, Buddha!

Now for those like the Sanchon Hunjang who aren't really Buddhist devotees and have been to just enough temples in the name of sightseeing that they all look the same now, let me recommend one that looks different:

수국사 (守國寺)

Its got a funky gold-leaf facade...

It's got the Tricky Dick Buddha Statue...

It's got a really friendly Abbot,
though no Costello...

And it's easily accessable by subway...
Just get off the ocher colored line (6호선) at 구산역 and walk it...

So go! 수국사 ho~

Musings on a "brilliant" riddle

2007-05-23T12:40:00.000+09:00

The Sanchon Hunjang remembers being in elementary school. Ah what a carefree time. The home room teacher apparently thought it would be wise to give us a taste of what the 근심 and 걱정 of the dog-eat-dog real world would really be like. She decided to read us The Hobbit. And of course she proceeded to do just that. No show of hands here. Elementary school does not believe in 민주주의.

In the book, there was a scene where Bilbo and Gollum decide to have a riddle contest to see whether one of them becomes a guide or the other becomes dinner.

There were such charming examples as:

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds stones to meal;
Slays kings, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.

and

A box without hinges, key or lid,
Yet golden treasure inside is hid.

(Look here if you can't remember and really must know)

I ran across a Chinese riddle in a rhymed couplet, of course, that follows the same vein. If you can't guess the answer, you won't become dinner. But if someone would like to buy dinner for the Sanchon Hunjang, I wouldn't turn that down^^

So without further adieu....to which object does this refer:

畵圓書方; 龍短虎長

This all tranlates(?), of course, as "Painting 畵 is round 圓, Writing 書 is square 方; dragon 龍 is short 短, 虎 tiger 長 is long." I guess it just comes down to interpretation, now. What is all this describing? Here's a small hint:

you're looking for an object in nature (Very small hint. Select to view.)

And here's the answer, just to double check that you've gotten it right ^^:

The sun

I don't think the first half bears much explanation. If you draw a picture of it, it will be round and look like a circle. Possibly with some rays eminating from it. If you were to write it (and by "write", of course I mean in 眞文 진문, none of that girlie 諺文 언문 schlock) then it would look very squarish in shape: 日. Unless you were to write 太陽, in which case it would be a pretty complicated outline...

I can't help but think that the last half of the riddle was added to throw people off who were otherwise on the right track. "The dragon is short, the tiger is long," what is that supposed to mean?

Well, of course in the old days, time was kept differently than it is now. A week was 1O days, not seven, and called a 순 旬.

You can still see the remnants of this in how people talk about the first 1O day week of the month 초순 初旬 = "early in the month," the middle 1O day week of the month 중순 中旬 and the last 1O day week of the month 하순 下旬. And a day wasn't divided into 24 hours, but 12--each two modern hours in length and named after one of the Chinese zodiac animals: 자 子 rat, 축 丑 bovine, 인 寅 tiger, 묘 卯 hare, 진 辰 dragon, 사 巳 snake, 오 午 horse, 미 未 sheep, 신 申 monkey, 유 酉 chicken, 술 戌 dog, 해 亥 pig. These hours used sinfied names (like 진시 "hour of the dragon" or 인시 "hour of the tiger"). You can also find pure Korean translations in older sources, but these are translations. It is interesting to see how they point to the complex consonant clusters that Korean used to have: . Tell ol' Sanchon Hunjang that doesn't look like a mouthful to say. But Korean has already lost lots of consonant clusters and is steadily loosing more. Ask your educated Seoul friends to say "닭이 운다" and listen closely for the ㄺ. Of course I don't hear anyone decrying the way nobody puts the "k" in "knife" any more, so maybe I'd better get back on topic...

The hour of the tiger was at dawn (3:00~5:00 a.m.) and the hour of the dragon was later in the morning (7:00~9:00 a.m.), so shadows at the hour of the tiger are much longer than those at the hour of the dragon. And shadows point back to the sun that casts them. So, sure the degree of difficulty ratchets up immensely in the second line, as the degree of ambiguity really takes off. But it does point to a single motif. Sort of...

And there you have it!

길가에

2007-04-04T15:56:00.000+09:00

눈길을 끄는 비석이 새로 생겼다. 한 획 한 획의 처리가 마음에 들어 서예가가 누군지 궁금해 하고 있었다. 알아봤더니 어느 블러거에 의하면 추사 김정희 선생님의 작품이라네. 역시.

그분의 작품이 지금도 봉은사에서 걸려 있더라. 옛날에 어느 서예가와 이 현판을 두고 얘기한 적이 있는데 나는 "너무 어린 아이가 쓴 것 같아 싫다"였고 그분은 "어린 아이 쓴 맛이 나면서도 흠 잡을 데가 없어 완벽하다"는 주장이었고. 나는 지금도 그 현광판은 별로지만 "남태령"은 매일 보는데도 좋은 것 같다.

Does this temple float your rocks?

2006-10-24T14:54:00.001+09:00

A cyber-fellow whom the Sanchon Hunjang can't really claim to know apparently recently took a trip with another cyber diarist to 영주. Specifically, Floating Rock Temple 浮石寺 부석사. Now the Sanchon Hunjang has never been there, so I have no memories to bore you with, but his photo of someone's rendition of 退溪 퇴계 (1501~1570 here's his most famous likeness)'s poem on 부석사 was an attention grabber.

浮石寺聚遠樓鄭湖陰贈僧韻 [Poem on] Gathering-the-Distant Loftbuilding at Floating Rock Temple with rhyme words Borrowed from Chŏng Saryong (Hoŭm "Shady Lake")'s poem "Given to a Monk"

鬼役天成萬古樓 The spirits 鬼 employed 役^*) heaven 天 to form 成^**) the loftbuilding 樓 of the ages 萬古;
風雲一任洗新秋 Wind 風 and clouds 雲 together 一 charged with 任 cleaning 洗 the new 新 autumn 秋.
夜深獨對高僧榻 The night 夜 is deep 沈, alone 獨 I face 對 the high 高 bonze 僧 bench 榻--
唯見長空月似鉤 [I] only 唯 see 見 the long 長 void 空 [and] the moon 月 that [looks] like 似 a fishhook 鉤.

※ Italics mark rhyming words.

Notes:

*) 役: it seems unlikely to me to see 作 twice in one line. The calligrapher seems to have written 役, so I'm guessing that the online 퇴계집's OCR software or inputter (well, okay this latter case is less likely) has mistaken 作 for 役.

**) Or "build 作," depending on which version you choose to believe, as the internet version has slightly different wording than has been captured in the photograph. But this kind of minor variation in wording between texts is common.

Unfortunately the Gathering-the-distant Loftbuilding, which was located on a hill in 경남 의령군 의령읍 정암리 during the middle part of the Chosŏn, has disappeared. Fortunately a new loftbuilding, 정암루, was built on the same site in 1935, so that midnight luna-gazers can still get their fill of crisp autumn air and pleasant moonscapes. Behold 정암루 at night:

Pleasant enough, no?

If the spirit of poetry does a little employing of its own on you and you can't help but dash off a few verses, another internet diary, is inviting seasonal poetry entries...

Best hurry, though, it's quickly getting cold!

My dinner with 영란 - A postscript

2006-08-25T00:15:00.001+09:00

After the lovely dinner and lively conversation with 영란, the Sanchon Hunjang started becoming curious about just how many people around him believe in fortune telling.

So I started asking people if they've had their fortune read. Nearly everyone had.

I also asked, "did you check your 궁합 before you got married?" Turns out that nearly everyone in my decidedly non-random survey had checked. Only the extremely devout Christians were exceptions.

This clearly was leading to the inescapable conclusion that, with the exception of Christians who are laced a little too straight, Koreans are all a superstitious lot with disposable income to blow on the occult.

Then the Sanchon Hunjang realized that he had missed the real question of "why?" So I went back and asked. Turns out that most people had done the simple fortune telling thing on a lark and that they didn't put any stock in it. But if this is the case, why would anyone check their marital bliss barometer with a soothsayer before the wedding? That answer was interesting. Not because either of them put any stock in it, but because there are bound to be some not-so-pleasant days in married life. And when there's a fight, someone--be it wife, husband, mother-in-law, whoever--is bound to drag out the "we were never ever meant for each other in the first place" argument. So it's better just to eliminate that possiblity up front by making sure bride and groom have compatible zoologies.

Makes sense to me.

That's the same logic that the Sanchon Hunjang used to send the wife for 2 months of intensive post-partum recovery. Otherwise, every little pain or soreness would harken back to the moment of 산후조리만 제대로 했더라면...

My dinner with 영란

2006-08-24T23:39:00.001+09:00

Not too long ago the Sanchon Hunjang was invited to dinner. When the Sanchon Hunjang showed up, it was quickly decided that relaxing in a bar would be preferable to more clothes shopping. I couldn't have agreed more. As soon as we sat down, 영란 started talking. It seems that, in addition to being a world- class 수다장이, she also is quite a believer in fortune tellers and has been to so many that she has become a semi-fortune teller herself.

She went on and on about Chinese zodiacs and the characteristics of people that have different signs as well as how those people get on with others. For example, she said, oxen are very patient animals. But if they get upset then they become very dangerous. Not to mention that they don't get along with tigers at all. This was all in response to the marital problems that one of the company was having. Tigers and oxen just don't get along. If you had asked your 궁합 to a fortune teller before you tied the knot, then you wouldn't be in this mess. Now that you've made your bed, just sleep in it. Your ox husband is suffering just as much as you are, but he's patient. Don't push him past his line, or you'll really regret it.

The Sanchon Hunjang protested. Surely this is quackery. How can every individual born in a whole entire year share the same personality traits? 영란 explained how the Oriental cosmological approach to fortune telling is not 100% accurate, it represents a primitive type of statistics. But that it is startlingly accurate in most cases. People born in the year of the tiger just tend to be pushy nags that drive their bovine husbands too far. I want to see the data set that was sampled to produce that statistical result. Nevertheless, in the interest of harmonious conversation, the Sanchon Hunjang held his tongue.

It was then that the silent KA spoke up. You know, my son was born in the year of the ox. When I went to the hospital to deliver him, I took the doctor aside and said, look since this is the year of the ox, he must be born after the sun goes down. I don't care what it does to me or my health--even if it kills me--you must do whatever it takes to see that he doesn't see the outside of a womb until after sundown.

The Sanchon Hunjang had no clue what could drive such apparent insanity. It was explained as follows. Since the ox is a beast of burden, the lot of the ox is to work all day and rest only at night. Therefore, anyone who is born during the day in the year of the ox is damned to a life of hard labor and precious little rest. If, on the other hand, said soul is born when the ox is at rest, she is guaranteed a life of ease. I still can't believe that a youngish woman who was born and raised in Seoul could still hold such backwards beliefs, and with such passion. But there she was.

Days later in an amazing coincidence of conversational direction, I discovered that this belief is not an isolated thing. BY said that her grandmother reassured her using a similar logic. Since tigers hunt and go about at night, to be born at night in the year of the tiger is a horrible fate. But since her mother had suffered long and hard to make sure that she was born right after lunch, she was guaranteed an easy life. BY's response wasn't really gratitude, though. Grandma, this is the twentieth century, where are you cooking up these wierd superstitions? That was more my speed.

It may be too late to change your fate, but best look up what hour you were born and check it against your Chinese zodiac sign. At least that way you'll know why you seem to be fated to work your fingers to the bone.

How to spot a real beauty

2006-08-18T12:34:00.000+09:00

In chatting with a friend, the Sanchon Hunjang was reminded that standards of beauty are not constant. Lipstick colors and skirt lengths come and go. Skinny is in, then it's out. But it's an inescapable constant that men, especially those who should know better, are drawn to beautiful women.

It's widely known that 양귀비 (179 - 756 A.D.) was rather plump and at the same time very weak--hardly able to move for herself (or at least she pretended to be). Because that was the standard of beauty of her day. If she hadn't been posessed of such hallmarks of beauty, she wouldn't even appear in history.

The immediate result? The emperor fell in love with her and she was able to use her influence to get her relatives cushy jobs in the government. The longer-term result? Others blamed her for the emperor's inability to concetrate on government. A huge rebellion broke out that nearly spelled the end of the Tang Dynasty (618 - 906 A.D.) and the rebel soldiers had her killed in front of the emperor. The permanent result? 양귀비 has gone down in history as (i) one of the 4 greatest beauties China has ever produced, (ii) an ultimate femme fatale, and (iii) along with Emperor Xuanzong as the inspiration for many poems/songs/stories/movies about the tragedy and Xuanzong's longing for his dead love, not to mention his efforts to contact her spirit.

But the corpulent look is no longer in. It's a shame, because otherwise the Sanchon Hunjang could be very popular. ^^

Looking back even farther into history, we find several lines of a verse from the Book of Poetry that describe in some detail the beauty of the daughter of an aristocrat (for the intrepid, the entire original with translation can be found here).

手如柔荑。[Her] fingers were like the blades of the young white-grass;
膚如凝脂。[Her] skin was like congealed ointment;
領如蝤蠐。[Her] neck was like the tree-grub;
齒如瓠犀。[Her] teeth were like melon seeds;
螓首蛾眉。[Her] forehead cicada-like, eyebrows like [the antenne of] the silkworm moth;
巧笑倩兮。What dimples, as she artfully smiled!
美目盼兮。How lovely her eyes, with the black and white so well defined!

Clearly the use of similie has a long history. And, while it is easier to compare with things close at hand, it's probably best to leave the insect imagery out of your modern love poetry. Again, it appears tastes have changed.

Although...if you did send this as a love letter, it would ensure that your memory would live on to the death of the pretty young recipient of the letter...

Is that 북창동 as in "北娼洞"?

2006-08-18T12:15:00.000+09:00

顔淵曰: 북창동식 means what in the name of a RS? ^^
子貢曰: ok
子貢曰: u know there are many many rs in 북창동
顔淵曰: yes
子貢曰: and their system is a bit different
顔淵曰: ok
子貢曰: not the typical one... it's hardcore and limited.
子貢曰: they don't have 2nd round
子貢曰: I mean 이차
顔淵曰: at all?
顔淵曰: okaaaaaay
子貢曰: but
子貢曰: in the rs
子貢曰: the service is different
顔淵曰: but they don't offer 2차 at all?
子貢曰: no
顔淵曰: oh
子貢曰: but if you lucky you can do that inside the room
子貢曰: in front of everyone
子貢曰: but it's very rare
子貢曰: anyways..
顔淵曰: do go on...
子貢曰: first... once girls are picked out, they started their greeting.. we call that "인사"
顔淵曰: ok
子貢曰: they say like " 오빠들 저희들 인사할꼐요"
顔淵曰: "hi my name is xxxx"
子貢曰: yeah... like... 안녕하세요 초희입니다.....and she 's dancing with background music
顔淵曰: ok
子貢曰: and takes off her clothes one by one
子貢曰: and finally she takes it all off
顔淵曰: as in all all?
子貢曰: all all
顔淵曰: i see
子貢曰: and she pours liquor over her boobs
子貢曰: .. and then that liquor .. is 흘러내려
子貢曰: it runs down her body and finally gets down her THERE
顔淵曰: must sting like a bitch...
子貢曰: there she has a cup ready for that
顔淵曰: a cup? hmmmmmm
子貢曰: she takes that liquor there and finally is heading for her partner
顔淵曰: ok
子貢曰: before that she makes that greeting in the middle of room
子貢曰: in front of 노래방 machine
子貢曰: and she moves to her partner
顔淵曰: yes
子貢曰: and she does a kind of lap dance
子貢曰: you know, an exotic private dance over man
子貢曰: like 기마자세
顔淵曰: is this a no-touch lap dance?
顔淵曰: ^^
子貢曰: haha you can touch
子貢曰: and she gives that shot to him
顔淵曰: ok
子貢曰: he drinks and she finally said
子貢曰: "오빠 안주"
子貢曰: that means
子貢曰: she allows you to lick her t*ts
子貢曰: as 안주
顔淵曰: i c
子貢曰: and other girls take their greeting in turn
顔淵曰: ok
子貢曰: that's the very first part
子貢曰: and then
顔淵曰: yes
子貢曰: ladies want us to take off our clothes
顔淵曰: again...all?
子貢曰: if the men are really close ... they take off all
顔淵曰: even really close
顔淵曰: that's got to be awkward...
子貢曰: and if not
子貢曰: they usually leave their underwear on
顔淵曰: ok
子貢曰: after guys take off, then they just keep singing and dancing in naked and they just 서로 몸을 부비다 heavily
子貢曰: so some couple just do THAT in the room
顔淵曰: with an audience
子貢曰: yep
顔淵曰: sounds wonderful :(
子貢曰: that's rare but can happen.. but there's never 이차 in 북창동
子貢曰: and finally last part
顔淵曰: wait...surely they must run out of alcohol or 안주 some time
顔淵曰: how do the waiters bring in new stuff
顔淵曰: if they never know who will be having sex on the table?
子貢曰: they don't care
子貢曰: they just see what happens
顔淵曰: hmmmmmm
子貢曰: or the ladies just hide their private part with shirts..
顔淵曰: i'm getting the feeling that you've got to be pretty drunk to go to a 북창동 place
子貢曰: anyway...
子貢曰: at the end, they say "오빠들 그럼 저희들 이쁜 짓 할께요"
顔淵曰: right. 이쁜 짓.
子貢曰: and they picked up some kinda dancing 메들리 song
子貢曰: long music
子貢曰: for more than 10 mins
子貢曰: and they turn off the light
顔淵曰: completely dark?
子貢曰: we can see because that karaoke machine and back light is still on
顔淵曰: got it
子貢曰: and they do that exotic dancing again
顔淵曰: ok
子貢曰: and then those chicks go to their partners and started to suck their c*cks
子貢曰: simultaneusly
子貢曰: because they all do that at the same time... they usually don't care about other couple's job
顔淵曰: i c
顔淵曰: even if they already had full-on s*x?
子貢曰: yes
子貢曰: but s*x is rare as i said
子貢曰: they heavily move their mouth up and down
顔淵曰: ok
子貢曰: no insertion usually
顔淵曰: well...you said oral s*x
子貢曰: yes
子貢曰: oral
子貢曰: music goes on
顔淵曰: yeah
顔淵曰: and...?
子貢曰: so 북창동 is a cheap but 실속적인 Place
子貢曰: and you know due to recent korea's depression, people hesitate spend too much money for entertainment
子貢曰: even in kangnam
顔淵曰: sure
子貢曰: so they began to open 북창동 style rs in kangnam
子貢曰: and that rocks
顔淵曰: i get it
子貢曰: there is no 2nd round
子貢曰: just 일차
顔淵曰: but since they take care of everything in 일차 it doesn't matter..
顔淵曰: ^^
子貢曰: got that?
顔淵曰: yes
子貢曰: very practical
顔淵曰: but don't they use condoms?
子貢曰: no
顔淵曰: you said that, rarely, they have s*x
子貢曰: it just happens if the lady gets the strong FEEEEEEL
顔淵曰: in front of everybody
子貢曰: that's why i said it's rare
顔淵曰: oh
顔淵曰: and if it happens...
顔淵曰: well...whatever diseases that lady has
顔淵曰: suddenly get shared?
顔淵曰: ^^
子貢曰: yeah...
子貢曰: that's nasty
子貢曰: but you know there are even more hardcore place in 장안 area
子貢曰: we all enter some 온돌방
子貢曰: and order box of beers
顔淵曰: it's a real RS?
子貢曰: really cheap ... bottle beers...
顔淵曰: ok
子貢曰: kinda middle of rs and 북창동
子貢曰: just 온돌방
顔淵曰: but it's an official business
顔淵曰: not just some guys call some girls for a party
顔淵曰: right?
子貢曰: they can have sex whoever you want all together until the beers run out
顔淵曰: even the guys끼리? ^^
子貢曰: so if you want be there more you need to order more box of beers
子貢曰: haha
顔淵曰: wow
子貢曰: and there's no concept of partner
子貢曰: so you can f*ck lady 1 and than lady 2 and three...
子貢曰: like turn arround
顔淵曰: i get it
顔淵曰: how do you find THAT place? ^^
子貢曰: i don't know, i just heard
子貢曰: ^^
顔淵曰: oh
子貢曰: i 've been to 북창동 but not more hardcore place..
顔淵曰: never BEEN there yourself, eh...
顔淵曰: ;)
子貢曰: kk
顔淵曰: one other logistics question about 북창동
顔淵曰: if them ladies are running around buck naked the whole time
顔淵曰: then that means they're not having a period then
顔淵曰: how do they handle ladies approaching or in their period?
顔淵曰: certainly nobody wants to see streams of blood running down their partner's legs... ^^
子貢曰: if they are in period... then they must have their vacation, i guess
顔淵曰: wow~
顔淵曰: cool job ^^
顔淵曰: how much does 북창동 cost?
子貢曰: hmm..... 4 guys... under 50만원
顔淵曰: r u kidding?
子貢曰: kidding what
顔淵曰: normal room salon for 4 guys is 1,000,000+
子貢曰: yes
子貢曰: 북창동 is much cheaper
顔淵曰: and that is without sexual service
子貢曰: right
子貢曰: that's why i said 북창동 is 실속있는.
顔淵曰: right~
顔淵曰: do they have some kind of time limit in there?
顔淵曰: like 588 place?
顔淵曰: or is it as long as you like--like that club, Ferrarri?
子貢曰: not like that. but if you don't order that much, they have a tendency to finish it soon
顔淵曰: i c
子貢曰: welcome to business world
顔淵曰: kkk
顔淵曰: yep. s*x is very business-like ^^
顔淵曰: where is 장안?
子貢曰: you know 장안동 또는 장안평
子貢曰: place where is famous for car shops
顔淵曰: what part of the city is it in? near 한남동? 이태원? 압구정?
子貢曰: that's a pro active attitude you hardcore man...
子貢曰: hmm..i can't really tell...you know i am really a bad navigator...
顔淵曰: but them hardcore places...
顔淵曰: how does one go about finding them?
顔淵曰: not that I would ever be interested PERSONALLY, you understand...
顔淵曰: it's for my friend ;)
子貢曰: kk i heard there are several places like that in 서울인근... but i don't know how to find them

Mango massage, did you say?

2006-08-13T15:03:00.000+09:00

The Sanchon Hunjang was nosing around and happened across this *ahem* enlightening philosophical discourse that purports to be between two of Confucius' disciples on some of the more carnal aspects of life. To post or not to post, that was the question. After ammending it ever so slightly, I place it here for the *헛기침* edification of the interested:

顔淵曰: I was discussing this and that with a friend yesterday
顔淵曰: and we started discussing the price of ladies (1) in a massage parlor, and (2) in a 완전 사창가
顔淵曰: do you have any idea? ;)
子貢曰: hmm... massage is maybe around 18 and No.2 is...hmm... maybe under 10?
顔淵曰: wow those massage ladies are kinda expensive.
顔淵曰: why is that? ^^
子貢曰: you know massage service is composed of two parts
子貢曰: 1. real massage 2. s*x
顔淵曰: fine
顔淵曰: but is the "real" massage a real massage?
顔淵曰: I hear it's a half-assed massage
顔淵曰: in an attmept to get you horny enough to ask for s*x... ^^
子貢曰: No
子貢曰: #1 is taken care by 맹인 전문 massage man
子貢曰: and #2 is taken care by hooker
顔淵曰: oh really?
顔淵曰: not all the same person?
子貢曰: no
子貢曰: different person
顔淵曰: so, when you were going on and on about their new product
顔淵曰: the "mango massage"...
顔淵曰: you mean some blind guy did that to you?!!?!?!?
顔淵曰: that's something about you that I didn't know ;)
顔淵曰: ...or really want to know either
子貢曰: no no mango massage is part of #2
子貢曰: u know , in #2, there's a shower part
子貢曰: the chicks kindly give you a shower
顔淵曰: oh
顔淵曰: kindly? ^^
顔淵曰: can you guarantee the kindness?
子貢曰: hahahaha
子貢曰: in that shower, she pours del monte mango juice all over your body
子貢曰: warm mango juice. not cold one.
顔淵曰: oh
子貢曰: so that's why it is called mango massage
顔淵曰: i c
子貢曰: oh my god, how can i know this kinda 불순한 stuff, oh no.. oh no.......
顔淵曰: well, what happens if you go to 588, then? :)
子貢曰: just simple s*x
顔淵曰: you must have heard it from your friend
顔淵曰: in detail
顔淵曰: no shower?
子貢曰: no shower.
子貢曰: she just washes your private part very simply
子貢曰: like for 30 sec
顔淵曰: how about her private parts?
子貢曰: and let you lay down
子貢曰: and sucks and f**ks...
子貢曰: you can't touch that
子貢曰: you can grab her boobs.. but they don't like it
顔淵曰: really
子貢曰: you know 588 is just a place for c*mshot
顔淵曰: no touchie?
顔淵曰: but s*x?
顔淵曰: that is too wierd....
子貢曰: yes
子貢曰: just for c*mshot
顔淵曰: as in, they make you c*m all over their face and hair?
顔淵曰: kinky....
子貢曰: no not that. just simple s*x
顔淵曰: so I guess that if you can't even touch them
顔淵曰: a kiss is going to be waaaaaaaaaaaay out
顔淵曰: right?
子貢曰: and the atmosphere is even not that romantic for touching and making love
顔淵曰: oh?
子貢曰: kiss is not possible, just 뽀뽀
顔淵曰: what did your friend tell you about the atmosphere?
顔淵曰: :)
子貢曰: it's like 빨리빨리.. 시간없어...
顔淵曰: really?
顔淵曰: is there a time limit?
子貢曰: you know if you stay with her more that like 20 mins... then someone rudely knocks on your door and saying loudly "야 시간지났어... 빨리 나와...."
子貢曰: like this
顔淵曰: hmmmm
顔淵曰: that is a truly efficient f*ck factory ^^
子貢曰: or just knocking the door heavily
子貢曰: 쿵 쿵 쿵
顔淵曰: so why does anyone go there?
顔淵曰: I don't get it.....
子貢曰: just for c*mshot i guess
顔淵曰: 아무리 그렇다해도 그렇지...그게 넘 심한데...
顔淵曰: so...
顔淵曰: you are saying that some people get desperate enough for just lousy s*x that they will even do THAT?
顔淵曰: but I see that the difference in price is worth it for an RS ^^
子貢曰: yeah
子貢曰: you know i guess more than 80 % of the customer for 588 is young men
子貢曰: like around 20
子貢曰: they don't have enough money but they really want to have a s*x
顔淵曰: seems like a hand job in a barber shop would be a better option
顔淵曰: or there's always the self hand-job... ^^
子貢曰: but 588 ladies are pretty
顔淵曰: True
顔淵曰: but it's not like you spend any time with them....
顔淵曰: so who cares if they're pretty...
顔淵曰: anyhow
顔淵曰: thanks for the info ^^

☞이상은 이부작의 일부임.

On tombs and translations

2006-08-01T14:15:00.000+09:00

At a largish park in Seoul not long ago, the Sanchon Hunjang came across a memorial tablet. These kinds of things aren't particularly rare, but for some reason they never fail to attract my interest.

The stone itself has a top, the main body and a base, like so many of its kin. And the body starts with a header in seal script (전서) over the top of a rather long main inscription in regular script (해서). For the seal-script impaired, the header says (right to left) "右議政諡忠憲 Discusser of Governance of the Right, Posthumously Named Ch'unghŏn."

In the background you can see a grave mound, so it is clear that the stone must have something to do with the indivual buried there.

There is also a descriptive sign that purports to explain everything in both Korean and English.

This is the memorial stone of Second State Councilor Kim Gu, and was erected in 1743.
Kim Gu's pen name was Ganbokjae and his posthumous title was Chungheongong. He received the highest score among all applicants on the civil service examination in 1682 and entered public service in the Office of the Inspector General and the Office of the Censor General. His advice on important matters there earned him the admiration of the people. He restored Prince Nosan's title of King Danjong and named his tomb Jangneung. He also contributed greatly to naming Queen Shin's tomb, Olleung.
This memorial consists of a square pedestal, a marble monument body, and a capstone. The capstone is embossed with various designs, such as dragons, phoenixes, roof tiles, the herb of eternal youth and bats. Such carvings are not found on other memorial stones. The inscription was composed by First State Councilor Yi Uihyeon and the calligraphy was done by Kim Gu's second son-in-law, First State Councillor Seo Myeonggyun. The block characters of the monument's title were written by Second State Councilor Yu Cheokgi.
To the north of this monument, in front of the tomb, stand a small tombstone, a pair of octagonal stone posts, and two stone sheep. These are also important for the study of tombs in the early 18th century.

이 비는 조선 숙정 때 우의정을 역임한 김구의 신도비로서, 영조 19년 (1743)에 걸립되었다.
김구의 자는 사궁, 호는 관복재이며, 시호는 충헌이다. 숙종8년(1682)에 춘당대 문과에 장원급제하였으며, 사헌부와 사간원에 출입하면서 사무에 대한 진언으로 일반의 찬탄을 받았다. 그리고 노산군의 단종복위와 장릉의 능호를 추복하였으며, 중종비 단경왕후 신씨의 묘를 온릉으로 추복하는데 크게 기여하였다.
이 비는 사각형 받침돌 위에 대리석으로 된 비몸이 있으며, 그 위에 지붕 돌이 얹혀져 있다. 지붕 돌인 옥개석에 용봉황,암막새, 수막새, 불로초, 박쥐, 그림무늬 등의 문양이 다채롭게 조각되어 있는 것은 여느 신도비에서는 잘 찾아볼 수 없는 특이한 것이다. 비문은 영의정을 지낸 이의헌이 지었고, 글씨는 김구의 둘째 사위인 좌의정 서명균이 썼다. 비의 제목글씨인 전액은 영의정을 지낸 유척기가 썼다.
이 비의 북쪽에 있는 그의 무덤 앞에는 돌비석과 돌기중, 석양 두마리가 배치되어 있다. 이것들도18세기 전반기의 무덤 석조물로서 묘재를 확인하는데 중요한 자료가 된다.

Maybe I'm just picky, but these explanations always seem lackluster. And I think the reason is that the translation into English is executed by someone whose purpose is to render a Korean text with precise accuracy rather than someone who is interested in communicating a message. (Whether the Korean original is useful information is another can of worms that I won't get into...) Maybe the English version turns out like this is because there was no audience defined. It is surely difficult to write before you know the level of specialized knowledge you can assume your audience has. To understand what the English on this sign is saying, one would seem to need a degree in Korean studies. But in that case, why bother with the English? The target audience could just read the Korean. Whether the Korean is well done or not, the English translation would seem misguided. It raises more questions than it answers:

Kim Gu? Is this that famous independence activist with the funky specs, 백범 김구?
☞ Nope, sorry. That's another Kim Ku (1876 - 1949)
Why are you writing more about the stone than about the person it was erected in honor of?
If this is a memorial stone and Mr. Kim's grave is there, why didn't you bother to list his dates of birth and death?
☞ Kim Ku (1649 - 1704)
Under what circumstances are memorial stones erected? Is this a common thing?
☞ These memorial stones are called 신도비, where 비 means memorial tablet ("비석") and 신도 refers to the road of the spirit (of the deceased). They are erected on the road to the graves of high government officials (during the Yi Dynasty, they were limited to the highest 4 grades of officials: 종2품, 정2품, 종1품, 정1품) and kings and describe the accomplishments of the man. Generally they are erected facing south and placed to the south of the grave.
What is a second state councillor? And other questions about the structure of the Yi Dynasty government (what is the Office of the Censor General, the Office of the Inspector General, what do they censor and inspect, are these prestigious assignments, are these the only positions he held, etc.)
☞ In the Yi Dynasty government, there were three state councilors who formed the upper eschelon of officials in the government under the king. They were 영의정 "Chief State Councilor," 좌의정 "Second (즉 "of the left") State Councilor," and 우의정 "Third (즉 "of the right) State Councilor." Notice that left is higher than right, and that our translator above mis-translated 우의정 as second councilor, when it is actually third. The answers to all the other questions about the Korean governmental structure probably do constitute a good portion of the coursework for a degree in Korean studies. ^^
Why did he use a pen name? Was he an author? What is up with these names given after death? Is that a common thing?
☞ Naming in traditional Korea was a complicated thing. Suffice it to say that it was very common for people to take a 호 號 as a sort of nickname. After-death names were very formulaic things (so you see the same characters and even the same names used over and over), but since they are bestowed by the king in recognition of the virtues of the deceased, it's a big deal and you had to be pretty exceptional to get one. The Korean also mentions his 자 was Sagung, but it's just more extraneous information.
Why is it so special that he placed first in the civil service exam? What was the system for becoming a government official? Why would he want to become a government official in the first place?
☞ Let's just say that the good jobs and the prestige were all with the government, and the two level government exam were the key to get in. Sort of like the Foreign Service Written and Oral Exams. And, like the Foreign Service Exam, a lot of trivia not necessarily related to the actual tasks involved in the job are tested. In the Korean case, it was a lot of detail about the Confucian classics and their orthodox interpretation, as well as one's ability to compose a poem in the traditional Chinese genres
You say that he worked on important matters, but the only things you mention are that he restored some dead guy's name and "contributed greatly" in the naming of some queen's tomb. Are these matters really that important?
☞ The dead guy was King Tanjong who was demoted to "prince," exhiled to 영월 and then assassinated by his uncle who took over the throne for himself. So the question of his legitimacy also affects the legitimacy of the dynasty. This is certainly something, but according to 지식 on Naver, Kim Ku's greatest accomplishment was working to ease some of the conflict between the factions in the government who were bickering night and day.
What are dragons, phoenixes, bats and the like symbolic of that they would be carved into the capstone of this monument?
☞ The others are auspicious mythical beasts. Bats are auspicious symbols because their name 복 蝠 sounds like "福 복 good fortune." Usually the capstones are pretty bland affairs with some rooftile inspired design (1, 2, 3), so to have all of these symbols carved is somewhat unusual.
Since you've framed this as a discussion about an inscribed monument stone, and you go on and on about who wrote which parts of the inscription, are you ever going to spill the beans on what the inscription actually says?
☞ I don't even want to think about how that translation would come out.

Not that all of this information should have been included on the sign. It would have become a huge billboard. It just would have been nice if they had put some thought into the question of audience, taking note of the difference in needs between the Korean- and English-reading audience in the process. This would have dictated different content rather than a mindless translation of the Korean.

Moving on... Everything promised on the information sign can be seen at the tomb. The burial mound itself has been allowed to descend into a near criminal state of overgrowth. Not a good thing at a Korean grave.

The grave stone itself says: 右議政 Discusser of Governance of the Right¹, 忠憲 Ch'unghŏn² 金公 Prince Kim³, 諱 tabooed word⁴, 構 Gu⁵ ['s⁶] 墓 grave / 貞敬婦人 Upright and Respected Lady⁷ 全州李氏 of the Yi clan of Chŏnju⁸ 祔 is interred 左 on the left⁹.

☞Notes:
¹ I.e. Third State Councillor
² His after-death name
³ This is the common form of address: surname + prince
⁴ The given name of the deceased is not supposed to be used, so it is preceeded with this "tabooed word" marker.
⁵ His given name
⁶ Usually they have "之墓 the grave of..." This one omits the "之 of" for asthetic reasons, which means to keep the same number of words on the right and left sides of the inscription
⁷ 정경부인 is the one of the Chosŏn period titles applied to the wives of men of high standing and was reserved for the wives of the higest officials in the government. Women of this level received treatment on a par with royal princesses (공주), princesses by concubine (옹주), the mother of the queen (부부인) and the wet-nurse of the king (봉보부인)
⁸ Family and clan affiliation were a big deal in Yi Dynasty Korea. Of all the people named Yi, there are many large groups, identified by the region where they settled: Kyŏngju, Chŏnju, Tŏksu, Yŏnan, Sŏngju, Sŏngsan, etc. Chŏnju Yi was the royal family of the Yi Dynasty
⁹ Wives are frequently interred with their husbands. Usually on the husband's left, but occasionally on the right. Additionally, sometimes there is a second mound for the wife and other times there is only a single mound, as here.

The grave site is laid out in traditional Korean fashion, with main grave mound with a stone offering table and some statues/pillars in front and a separate protective mound of earth winding its way in a c shape behind the main grave mound. I didn't check to see if it was truly facing south.

It's ALLOWED here

2006-07-30T13:01:00.000+09:00

In a visit to the Olympic Park, the Sanchon Hunjang made a shocking discovery. While adultery is a criminal offence in most of the peninsula (they have some picky rules on application, but anyway), there is at least one area where it's allowed!

야, 간통제(姦通制) 구역!

...or is that supposed to be 야, 간통 제구역(諸區域)?

Either way. *^^*

Spotted on the street

2006-07-30T12:38:00.000+09:00

It wasn't for lack of trying, but the Sanchon Hunjang just couldn't resist photographing this on his way to take in 괴물.

This is a young lady I need to get to know! *^^*

Twinners

2006-07-22T14:22:00.000+09:00

There's that fun word 쌍 雙. Most people know that 쌍 and 씨(氏) are the only two 쌍시옷 words in a normal sized 옥편, where 된소리 are hard to come by. Anyhow, if you don't already know, care to hazard a guess as to what it means?

☞ You don't want to get this one confused with that other 쌍 word (actually '상' pronounced with extra force, so it sounds like 쌍) that is so prevalent. ^^

It's not too hard to guess that 雙 means "pair" by the pair of short tailed birds 隹 sitting on (or in) the right hand 又. It becomes a pair of right hands in the modern mainland version: 双, which is surely an odd thing. If you remembered the "double-dragon" conglomorate 쌍용, or the word 쌍둥이 (some say 둥이=童이, others say that it's a pure Korean morpheme), that would have been a good hint, too.

Sometimes this 雙 word is used in people's names. The current CEO of LG Electronics, is a case in point. And in 100 of these cases, at least 98 will be actual twins.

Anyway, the whole reason that this 쌍스러운 thing came to mind was that the Sanchon Hunjang was noticing that many many acquaintances have chosen this year to wed. In inquiring into whether it was just chance or by design, I was informed that it is because this year is a Twin Spring Year 雙春秊 쌍춘년.

This should, under no circumstances, be shortened to 쌍년 ^^.

A Twin Spring Year means that the lunar year has 2 First Days of Spring (入春 입춘). In other words, the lunar 2006 (丙戌年 병술년) runs from solar January 29, 2006 to February 17, 2007, and this includes a first day of spring on February 4, 2006, as well as another on February 4, 2007 (this is due to the lunar 2006 having an extra seventh month added, which lengthens the number of days in the year. Thus there is the standard seventh month plus an extra seventh month). Because spring is associated with love and sparking, this is supposed to augur extremely well for those looking to tie the knot.

The other side of the same coin is that the lunar 2005 (乙酉年 을해년) was a Year that Lost its Spring 亡春年 망춘년, and thus a horrible year for marriage.

If you're not in the position to get hitched this year, not to despair. The next Twin Spring Year will be 2009, so you won't have too long to wait.

For those teetering on the verge of taking that wedding plunge, best not let grass grow under those feet and miss your chance at what promises to be a fortuitous year for that activity. What it means for the Sanchon Hunjang is that there's going to be much more lousy 국수 to be eaten before the year is out ㅡ.ㅡ;;;;

Be Careful....

2006-07-09T11:57:00.000+09:00

For those of you contemplating getting a chop made, best be careful. Have you ever noticed that your fortunes can swing on that single chop? That's why you have to be ultra careful who makes your chop for you. If they mess up, it's your life in the balance.

The Sanchon Hunjang just ran across a helpful website demonstrating the problems with some chops and the resulting effect on the owners' lives. And then they make a better one that corrects the flaws and improves the fortunes of the owner. How is that for helpful? Please refer to the following useful diagrams:

Dear reader, you will now have reached the inescapable conclusion that there is only one way out of your current sorry plight: do not walk but run to 보인당 and purchase one of their high-priced chops! It's sure to be money well spent.

Oops

2006-03-23T13:33:00.000+09:00

So you build a new building. Right in the middle of 남대문시장--sorry, I meant 숭례문시장. It looks nice and sparkly. This new building is sure to garner you a mint. Well, if you can get shoppers to come in and peruse the merchandise of the sellers, who you are gouging for 자리세, then it will.

Brilliant brainstorm! If you have some beautiful brass letters made to announce where people can enter/exit the building and have them installed in the street, surely the people will come in droves, no? And since 숭례문시장 is so popular among the Japanese tourists, best make the sign in 한자.

Beautiful. You're sure to make a mint!

'cept you got screwed, aesthetically speaking, when those minimum wage laborers installed your sign:

Surely they wouldn't have made it ""? Or would they...?

They're making a comeback

2006-03-06T17:47:00.001+09:00

On the subway there was this intriguing advertisement for one of those tonics that is supposed to help you not become as intoxicated by all of the alcohol you are bound to ingest at a typical 회식. A "morning after" tonic of a different ilk, if you will.

The thing that caught my eye about this advertisement is that it used 4 사자성어 (actually 2 사자 성어, one famous saying and one quote from a poem if you want to get picky), which had each been changed a bit, in its marketing. I'm not sure how effective this approach is, but it's always guaranteed to catch the eye of the Sanchon Hunjang.

Top Left: 三遷之敎 (the teachings of moving thrice) from 孟母三遷之敎 (Mencius' mother's teaching by moving three times, referring to the story of how Mencius started out life by a graveyard, but when he started mimicking the mourners in his play, his mom moved to a market. Then he started copying the traders, so finally she moved near a schoolyard and was happy when he picked up proper scholarly habits.) becomes the 三遷之交 ([social] exchange of moving three times)--they're all going to 삼차 tonight!

Bottom Left: 성삼문's famous rebuke in the form of a 시조 on those who were less than faithful to the deposed boy king 단종, 이 몸이 주거 가서 무어시 될고 하니 What will this body become, when it has died?/ 蓬萊山第一峯에 落落長松 되야 이셔 A tall pine with drooping boughs on the highest peak of Mount Penglai/ 白雪이 滿乾坤할 제 獨也靑靑하리라 That when the white snows fill heaven and earth, I alone shall be green, becomes 獨夜淸淸 (during the night, I alone will be fresh and clear).

Top Right: 旭日昇天 (the morning sun ascends the heavens) , a symbol for rising power that was especially popular during the times of the Japanese Empire becomes 旭日勝天 (the morning sun defeats the heavens), which clearly(?) refers to the ability of one who has imbibed this elixir to rise early the next morning, in spite of all of the 폭탄주 s/he has downed.

Bottom Right: 口尙乳臭 (the mouth still reeks of [mamma's] milk) becomes 口尙有醉 (the mouth still has drunkenness, which, they kindly explain, refers to the remnants of last night's revelry still in the mouth).

Not especially erudite changes, but given the fact that they are trying to appeal to Everyman, the whole thing strikes me as a bit high-brow. After years of all of the kids saying "I hate 한문 class most of all," maybe 한자 are becoming fashionable again. Maybe it's time to take leave of this 속세 and start my own 서원!

Every little word is magic

2006-03-01T10:52:00.002+09:00

Stolen directly from 서거정(1420-1488)'s 《東人詩話 동인시화》 with no input by the Sanchon Hunjang. ^^ Don't worry about my plagiarism. 서거정 lifted the introductory episode directly from 歐陽修 구양수(1007-1072)'s 《六一詩話 육일시화 [Mr.] One-of-six's Poetry Talks》.

☞ 東: 동녘 동, 人: 사람 인, 詩: 시 시, 話: 말씀 화, 歐: 게워낼 구, 陽: 볕 양, 修: 닦을 수, 六: 여섯 륙, 一: 한 일.

舍人陳從易 사인 진종역 of the Song Dynasty was reading a collection of poetry by uber famous Tang poet 杜甫 두보. Unfortunately, 사인선생 had picked his book up on the cheap at one of those book warehouse clearance sales and there was a big smear where a word used to be. What he still could read went like this:

☞ 舍: 집 사, 陳: 늘어놓을 진, 從: 따를 종, 易: 바꿀 역, 杜: 막을 두, 甫: 겨우 보.

身輕一鳥■, Body light, one bird [SMUDGE];
槍急萬人呼! Spears quick, ten thousand people shout!

☞ 身: 몸 신, 輕: 가벼울 경, 一: 한 일, 鳥: 새 조, ■: smudge 네모,
槍: 무기 창, 急: 급할 급, 萬: 일만 만, 呼: 부를 호.

사 인선생 was very curious what word belonged in this space. He tried looking through from the back of the page and every other trick he could think of to get a hint as to what the word was supposed to be. All to no avail. Since the lines had to be parallel, it gave him room to start guessing words that would fit in the gap. If he could find the one word that fit the best, presumably this would have been the word that the master of poetry, 두보, would have used. Finding the missing character became a bit of an obsession and he called his friends over to play his guess-the-missing-word game. They tried "is swift 疾," "falls 落," "rises 起" and "descends 下," all without success.

☞ 疾: 병 질, 落: 떨어질 락, 起: 일어날 기, 下: 아래 하.

Give their little game a try yourself. What do you think goes in the blank?

Later 사인선생 came across a good copy of the same book with clear printing. He thumbed to the page...

and discovered...

that...

the right answer was...

"passes by 過."

☞ 過: 지날 과.

東坡 동파 蘇軾 소식 once wrote a poem about a sick crane that included the line

三尺長脛閣瘦軀 Three-foot long shins topped by a skinny body

☞ 三: 석 삼, 尺: 자 척, 長: 길 장, 脛: 정강이 경, 閣: 문설주 각, 瘦: 파리할 수, 軀: 몸 구.

Then one day he covered up the word 閣, so it read "Three-foot long shins ????? a skinny body" and had 任德 임덕 guess what the word was. 임 was unable to guess the hidden word. 동파선생 slowly uncovered it and showed him that the right word was "topped by 閣."
☞ 任: 맡길 임, 德: 덕 덕.

As you can see, each individual word in a poem is agonized over at length by the poet and his/her commenters. This has implications for glib translators who just rush through, not bothering to analyze why the original poet may have selected a specific word over its rivals. If the original poet put that much care and thought into the original, doesn't the professional translator owe a bit more in faithfulness to the text?

Visit to the Republic...of China

2006-02-11T20:25:00.000+09:00

The Sanchon Hunjang just got back from a week in Taiwan with some friends. While in Taiwan, we saw a few interesting things:

Many busses are advertising Korean apples from 능금. Not just apples (蘋果), but great apples 大蘋果. My Korean friends really enjoyed that.

At the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, we happened to go in one of the side gates rather than the main gate at the end of the square. Upon examination, the gate turned out to be 대충문. On a visual inspection, the construction didn't seem that shoddy, but who am I to take issue with their forthrightness in naming. 대충 지었나보지, 뭐. ^^

At the Taiwanese version of 현충원, which they call 忠烈祠 충렬사, they have this extremely long and detailed ceremony on the hour for the changing of the guard. It was soooooo long that the eyes and brain soon begin to wander. There is not a whole lot for them to wander to, so the large gateway into the shrine is a big target for 눈길. So the Sanchon Hunjang is sitting there, staring at the gate without much thought.

Let's see... 충의. I guess that's the kind of thing you should expect in a place like this...만고유방...wait a second...did that say "만고유방?" A breast for all ages? ^^

I love Taiwan. 너무 유치했나?

None left here

2006-01-30T10:27:00.000+09:00

Sorry, we're fresh out of 신권...

Choose death 1

2006-01-22T21:02:00.000+09:00

On September 10, 1910, in response to the Japanese annexation of Korea, Chosŏn scholar Maech'ŏn Hwang Hyŏn penned four verses of "Poems 詩 on Ending 絶 Life 命 절명수" and a final statement 유서, then committed suicide by opium overdose.

亂離滾到白頭年, Mid confusion and dificulty, I rushed into my white-haired years;
幾合捐生却末然. Several times I decided to end my life, but still in the end, remain here.
今日眞成無可奈, This day truly things have changed, there is nothing that can be done;
輝輝風燭照蒼天. Buffetted by the wind, a dazzling candle illuminates the blue heavens.

妖氛掩峠帝星移, Bewitching vapors cover the peak--the emperor's star has shifted;
九闕沈沈晝漏遲. The nine-layered gates of the palace are deep, daylight spills in slowly,
詔勅從今無復有, Royal proclaimations and edicts from now will not be had again;
琳琅一紙淚千絲. A bejeweled page: a thousand streams of tears.

☞ 「妖氛掩峠」, 一曰: 「妖氛唵翳」Bewitching vapors cover and screen.

鳥獸哀鳴海岳嚬, Birds and beasts sadly cry, seas and marchmounts grimace,
槿花世界已沈淪. The generation of the Rose of Sharon has already sunk.
秋燈掩卷懷千古, Under an autumn lamp, I close the scrolls and consider times of old--
難作人間識字人. It is difficult to be a man of letters in the world of man.

曾無支廈半椽功, I have never had even half of a hall's rafter worth of merit
只是成仁不是忠. I've only achieved humaneness, not loyalty.
止竟僅能追尹穀, In the end I'm only able to follow Yĭn Gŭ,^＊
當時愧不躡陳東. At the same time ashamed not to have measured up to Chén Dōng.^§

*) Yĭn Gŭ: A scholar/statesman of the Song Dynasty who was killed along with his family when the Mongolians invaded.
§) Chén Dōng: A scholar/statesman of the Song Dynasty who submitted a note of reomonstrance to the emperor that the state needed more discipline, thereby incurring the wrath of the emperor and leading to his own execution.

＜유서＞
"나는 사실 죽을 의무가 없다. 난 국가의 봉록을 먹는 신하였던 적이 없다. 나의 죽음은 다만 인(仁)을 이루고자 할 뿐 충(忠)은 아니다. 그러나 나라가 선비 기르기 오백년인데, 나라가 망하는 날 한 사람 죽는 자 없다면 어찌 통탄스럽지 않으랴. 내 위로는 하늘이 내린 도리를 저버리지 않았고, 아래로는 평소 읽었던 책을 저버리지 않는다면, 어둠 속에 길이 잠들어서도 참으로 통쾌함을 느끼리라.

In fact, I have no duty to die. I have never been a government official, subsisting off of a salary from the state. My death is only to accomplish humanity 仁, it is not out of loyalty 忠. However, the state has been raising up scholars for 500 years. Would it not be lamentable if not even one person died on the day that the state fell into ruin? Provided I did not act contrary to the way that heaven above bestowed, or act in violation of the books below, that I habitually read, my consolation will be that I feel truly pleased, though I fall into a long slumber in the dark."

Unfortunately the Sanchon Hunjang could not find the 한문 original of his 유서.

The never exhausted flower

2006-01-12T21:48:00.001+09:00

Koreans call their national flower 무궁화. That's the without being 無 all-used-up 窮 flower 花, because the blooms last for a long time. If you look 무궁화 up in your Korean-English dictionary, you are likely to find that this bush and flower combination is called "rose of Sharon." In the US, it is true "rose of Sharon" refers to the plant called Hibiscus syriacus.

In the UK, however, this same appelation is applied to the flower Hypericum calycinum.

So it's clearly best to define your terms before launching into any long speeches on the rose of Sharon.

Either way, who is Sharon? Why are people naming different flowers after her? And what is her problem that she doesn't seem to know what a real rose looks like? The name was borrowed from the Song of Songs in the Old Testament. Because the 무궁 flower was thought to have come from Syria and, thus, could well have been the object of Solomon's song, which isn't specified very clearly in the first place.

But the 무궁화 flower didn't come from Syria.

It's from Asia.

Oops.

Now that you've diligently studied your Chinese characters, undoubtedly you're ready to have a cocktail napkin conversation with the next Chinese person you run into who doesn't speak enough English or Korean for 의사소통. You can just whip out your Mont Blanc fountain pen and write

韓國國花 = 無窮花.
中國國花 = ?

in that nice penmanship you've practiced so hard on your napkin and you'll be having a deep conversation in no time, right?

NotSoFast, partner.

It turns out that there's a single character that means 무궁화. It looks like this 槿 and it's called '무궁화 근.' That's the character you'll want to write on your napkin, 'cause Chinese folk don't get '무궁화' any more than English-speakers get 'never ending flower' (Susie Younger's book by that title where she talks about her attempts to save Korean prostitutes, notwithstanding)

This character is not unknown in Korea: 박근혜's 근 is 무궁화 근, after all.

In days past, even manly men would take pennames like "Apricot 梅 Moon 月 Hall 堂," but flowers in men's names (or nicknames) is a practice that has waned. Probably since that whole 단종 thing rendered 김시습 a hopeless vagabond for the rest of his life. But I did meet a man in town not long ago. His name was a 외자: 槿, and he was very proud of it because of the patriotism represented.

Maybe flower names for men are coming back in. Is it time for the Sanchon Hunjang to take a more floral 호? I'd better be sure and pick one that has a clear antecedent to avoid problems down the road. ^^

On old bonzes and old 부장s

2006-01-09T17:07:00.001+09:00

The other day I was reading a blog by that 没有劍的, where he cited a short Buddhist verse:

菩提本无树, 明镜亦非台. 本来无一物, 何处惹尘埃?

I'm not sure why he chose PRC style simplified characters, here it is in complified characters:

菩提本無樹，明鏡亦非臺；本來無一物，何處惹塵埃？

I was intrigued by what I could only half understand. The Sanchon Hunjang knows extremely little Buddhist vocabulary and even less of Buddhist concepts, so I was looking up some of the words. In the process, I came across a story explaining the background of this verse.

Below is the Reader's Digest version. Anyone who wants to read the whole thing, please go here.

There was a great Buddhist Patriarch living at a temple in China. At this temple were many monks, and a certain monk who had been there the longest. This monk naturally assumed that he was next in line to succeed the Patriarch because he had paid his dues in working at the temple for years and years (hmmmm. Something coming to mind here about all of the 부장 at the Sanchon Hunjang's office all lined up to become executives. The senior 부장 naturally expect to be made vice presidents, without regard to their ability or lack of same, because they've paid their dues by working like slaves at the company for years).

The Patriarch decided that he wanted a meritocracy rather than rely on a potentially mediocre successor who had been around for ever. He decided on a method to assess ability. Each monk at the temple was to compose a poem and the Patriarch would use these poems to pick his successor.

The old 부장, er I mean monk ^^, struggled with whether he was actually expected to hand in a verse, or if this was just some formality to name him as successor. Finally he penned the following:

身是菩提樹 The body is the Bodhi tree,
心如明鏡臺 The heart is as the bright mirror stand.
時時勤拂拭 Constantly, diligently buff and polish,
勿使惹塵埃 So as not allow dust and dirt to adhere.

Charles Muller's online dictionary of Buddhist terms says that 菩提 (보제) is Chinese transliteration for the word bodhi, which is the name of the tree under which the Buddha obtained enlightenment as well as the ground where this happened, and thus as metonymy for enlightenment. The bit about the bright mirror and busily buffing it is also common imagery for improving yourself. I assume this means working toward enlightenment, however that is done.

The Patriarch saw this verse and couldn't help but notice that the monk was as close to seeing enlightenment as penguins are to seeing bikinis on their beaches. He was disappointed because enlightenment means recognizing that there is no division or distinction between the larger universe and the ego, but the monk's poem clearly has an ego slaving away to reach this goal.

One much younger monk, Hui Neng 혜능, wrote:

菩提本無樹 The Bodhi ground originally had no tree
明鏡亦非臺 The bright mirror also no stand.
本來無一物 Originally there was not one thing,
何處惹塵埃 To what place could dust and dirt adhere?

The original text doesn't mention it, but this younger monk was either intentionally correcting or ridiculing the older monk. There's no other way to explain the similarities in these verses.

When the patriarch saw this verse, he knew that he had found his successor, so he spirited 혜능 away lest the senior monk do him harm out of jealousy. The Patriarch taught the Diamond Sutra to 혜능, whereupon he attained enlightenment and became Patriarch n+1.

All of this appears to mean that the Sanchon Hunjang comes very close to enlightenment after 28 minutes on the stationary bike at the health club, when everything turns to oblivion and I really can't remember there being anything in the universe.

Another Chinese riddle

2006-01-08T18:27:00.002+09:00

On the menu at 중경신선로 are some assorted 요리s, but the highlight we ordered was a heaping plate of 동파육. For the uninformed, here's what it looks like (for authenticity, graphic lifted from 중경신선로's page, linked above).

Of course 동파육 is named for that famous Song Dynasty statesman/philosopher/poet 소식 Su Shi (1037-1101). Su Shi liked to call himself 東坡居士 동파거사 and gorge himself on this pork dish that eventually took his name as its patron saint. He also spent a forced vacation on Hainan Island before it became a tropical resort paradise where businessmen go for 37 hole weekend rounds of golf.

In honor of the man who bequeathed 동파육 to us mortals, an entry on Su Shi (Anyone who wants to read a page with a bit more detail in modern Chinese about the following story, please look here).

During the reign of Emperor Shenzong 신종 of the Song (r. 1068-1086), there was a rivalry going with the Liao barbarians to the north of China. Once they sent an envoy to the Chinese court to demonstrate once and for all the cultural superiority of the Liao people. He threw down several difficult challenges of the form "here's a line of poetry, compose a parallel construction." The emperor and his court tried and tried but came up with nothing. Finally they called out their secret weapon: Su Shi. Su handily composed some parallel poetry to shut up the Liao envoy.

Then, when his composition caused the Liao envoy to stand dumbfounded for a moment, Su rushed in for the coup de grace. "Composing poetry is easy. But sometimes it's hard to see it." Then he grabbed a brush and proceeded to write the following:

☞ 亭: 정자 정, 景: 볕 경, 畫: 그림 화 (note that the part immediately above the line on the very bottom is sometimes written as 囚 instead of 曰, as you see it here), 老: 늙을 로, 拖: 끌 타, 笻: 대이름 공, 首: 머리 수, 雲: 구름 운, 暮:저물 모, 江: 물 강, 蘸: 담글 잠, 峯: 봉우리 봉

The Liao envoy spent some time looking at these mal-formed and twisted characters before he gave up. Su closed with the parting shot, if you can't even make out this poem, then you shouldn't open your mouth again on the topic (The Sanchon Hunjang is far too dim to take this subtle of a hint, that's why I continue to post here on poetry-related topics ^^). Then he gave the solution:

Long 長 pavilion 亭, short 短 sunrays 景: a picture 畫 without 無 man 人,
An old 老 big 大 sideways 横 drags 拖 his thin 瘦 bamboo 竹 staff 笻.
Turn 回 head 首, cut 斷 clouds 雲: a slanted 斜 sun 日 evening 暮,
Twisted 曲 river 江, upside down 倒 holds 蘸 to the side 側 mountain 山 peaks 峰.

Um, it's not great English, but I was just hoping to show what Su Shi had done with his funny writing to hint at the presence of unseen graphs. All together, he has compressed the following 28 characters into 12. For better understanding of the verse, as opposed to what he had done by writing it as above:

長亭短景無人畫，Long pavilion and short sunrays: a picture without people,
老大橫拖瘦竹笻. An old man drags his thin bamboo staff sideways.
回首斷雲斜日暮，He turns his head to see cleft clouds and the slanting rays of the evening sun,
曲江倒蘸側山峰. A twisting river holds the upside down image of mountain peaks from the side.

Very clever, Mr. Su. Now, if you don't mind, pass some more of that 동파육! ^^

Introduction to Classical Chinese

2005-12-28T20:57:00.000+09:00

The Sanchon Hunjang was going through some old files and stumbled across one from a long time ago. In the school library there was this old, hand-written mimeographed manuscript that was bound together. It was titled Introduction to Classical Chinese and was apparently written by Professor Peter Boodberg of the Unviersity of California at Berkely.

The manuscript was a series of 10 chapters, each of which had 20 characters that were introduced and then used in four different sets of drills. The first set glossed pronunciation in the traditional way you would see in a traditional dictionary or notes to a text, the second set glossed meaning again in the way you would find in a dictionary or textual annotation, the third set was a series of parallel sentences and the final was practice with short sentences. In addition to the 10 chapters there was also an introductory chapter called A, that uses the 214 radicals under which characters are filed in traditional dictionaries as the basis for its drills rather than 20 characters and also contains an additional section of proper names.

I'm not a copyright lawyer, but the condition and age of the manuscript leads me to believe that nobody would be bothered or harmed to see it come to light. I am not convinced how much time it is worth investing in, but I'll post the first chapter (Chapter A) as a barometer for interest.

A. Pronunciation Glosses
(1)非音飛 (2)无音毋 (3)匸音方 (4)雨音羽 (5)赤音彳 (6)黍音鼠 (7)首音手 (8)夂音黹 (9)囗音韋 (10) 冖音糸

B. Definition Glosses
(1)竹皮曰靑 (2)大鼓曰田 (3)一人曰一口 (4)大曰門小曰戶 (5)土山曰阜 (6)十斗曰石 (7)水豆曰豆 (8)馬二目白曰魚

C. Proper Names
(1) 老子 (2)比干 (3)鬼谷子 (4)尸子 (5)黃香 (6)高辛氏 (7)高齊 (8)田齊 (9)非子 (10)小白 (11)方言 (12)玉門 (13)金山 (14)長白山 (15)鳥鼠山 (16)黃巾 (17)鬼方 (18)黑齒 (19)月氏[氏音支] (20)大食,黑衣大食

D. Parallel Phrases
(1) 二人一口 (2) 木人石心 (3) 日赤月白 (4) 目見足行
(5) 牛角羊毛 (6) 香風甘雨 (7) 金谷玉田 (8) 竹馬木牛
(9) 黑衣玄玉 (10) 赤子老人 (11) 山雨谷水 (12) 白日靑山
(13) 羽足飛走 (14) 食麥衣皮 (15) 十日一雨 (16) 自小至大
(17) 鳥身人言 (18) 黃金白韭 (19) 血赤骨白 (20) 入門見子
(21) 白首黃口 (22) 石衣山韭 (23) 鼎大魚小 (24) 玉門金山
(25) 白毛黑文 (26) 文身皮面 (27) 行尸走肉 (28) 一目十行
(29) 大言小心 (30) 龜毛馬角 (31) 黑角白羽 (32) 一玄二黃
(33) 玄鳥靑龍 (34) 飛鳥走犬 (35) 弓人田父 (36) 龍文魚目
(37) 卜人方士 (38) 甘言鼎食 (39) 干戈弓矢 (40) 火老金生

E. Short Sentences
(1) 入山,入谷 (2)食魚,食肉 (3)土赤,面赤 (4)山高,食甘,毛長 (5)日入,日長,日食 (6)風生,生子,木生 (7)雨止,止雨 (8)風入衣,鼠入穴 (9)食大麥,食羊肉 (10)鼠食豆,人食麥 (11)入玉門,至馬邑 (12)玄鳥至,馬毛長 (13)大麥黃,衣食足 (14)見大人,子入戶 (15)小人鼓舌 (16)犬食人食 (17)見龍无首 (18)一角鹿見 (19)八月大水 (20)馬氏生女 (21)見一老人 (22)食一豆肉 (23)示人赤心 (24)水鳥食魚 (25)衣白麻衣 (26)子生而色赤 (27)士食十八人 (28)小水入大水 (29)至赤石川口 (30)見鼠白日行 (31)生子又生二女 (32)子八月而生齒 (33)子曰白馬非馬 (34)土生甘金生辛 (35)八月乙酉日食 (36)八月辛酉雨黃土 (37)牛生子二首一身 (38)十一月乙酉大風 (39)老子曰山生金石生玉 (40)八月石邑言黃龍二見 (41)自谷口至龍文山二十里 (42)見一黃衣人入門 (43)又行八里見一高山 (44)人十月而生馬十二月而生 (45)大而行小小而行大 (46)十月八日行二十里至大川又行十八里至火山 (47)木生火火生土土生金金生水 (48)龍首山長八十里 (49)大食人鼻大而長 (50)又曰囗山羊食鹿豕

Two quick notes:

Sound glosses are simple critters. Knowing or not knowing the sounds may be another matter... If it says X音Y, then that means X has the same sound as Y. There's also another system for "spelling" the sound of one character using two others. This pattern is XYZ切 or XYZ反, either way, the meaning is "X is prounounced with the beginning sound (opening consonant) of Y and the closing sound (vowel and any closing consonant as well as tone) of Z. So, for example, 二而至切音貳 would say 二(이) sounds like the first part of 而(이☞ㅇ) and the last part of 至(지 ☞ ㅣ) [so ㅇ+ㅣ = 이], and the same as 貳(이).

Sometimes the sounds have shifted somewhat so they are not always 100% accurate. But it doesn't matter because in a text, they are usually trying to give you a hint as to the tone of the word, so you can tell the difference between 好 (rising 上 tone) "good" versus 好 (departing 去 tone) "to like," for instance.

Anyone with interest can see these sound and meaning glosses in action in the traditional dictionary, the Kangxi Dictionary 康熙字典, which has been scanned and had the scanned pages posted online at www.kangxizidian.com. You find the radical on the left part of the page and the scans appear on the right. The big characters with no circles or anything around them are the dictionary entries and the double column stuff below each one is its definition, which includes the sources cited (characters enclosed in a box).

What is it with birds

2005-12-26T21:22:00.004+09:00

There is this infamous obscene gesture that people sometimes use in North America. Somehow or another, one of its names has come to be the "bird." Why? Who knows. Somebody out there hates birds.

In Chinese the word for bird is 鳥. It's easy to find in the dictionary because it is its own signific. Easy, that is, if you don't get faked out by the feet (灬) , think it's some sort of ideogram for roast bird and try to find it under the fire signific. The funny thing about this bird is its sound. If you look it up (11 strokes for signific plus 0), you'll find that the dictionary tells you it's pronounced niăo in Mandarin.

Of course Chinese is a family of languages, including Mandarin. From the other dialects, as well as historical rhyming dictionaries, we would expect this character to sound like diăo in Mandarin. Lest you think the Sanchon Hunjang is making this up, check Professor W. Baxter of the University of Michigan's outline to the etymological dictionary of common Chinese characters that he is working on (you can find this word in file #5). Professor Baxter indicates that the sound has been changed to avoid a taboo. Now there are several kinds of taboo, the most common of which would be if it were the same character or sound as a king's name. Luckily George A. Kennedy gives us a bit more flavor when he says the "sound should be 'tiao' [his Wade-Giles t is equivalent to d in pinyin] but the n is a substitution to avoid a sexually tabooed homophone." The word that Professor Kennedy is too classy to mention, but the Sanchon Hunjang is not, is 屌 (that's 자지 초). Larger 옥편 will also indicate that one of the less frequently used meanings of 鳥 is 'u.f. 屌.'

Korea has collections of 奇聞 Strange [things] Heard, one of which includes the following tale.

一新郞合卺之夕疑其婦已經人, 欲使婦吐實地, 以手撫陰戶曰: “此孔甚窄. 以刀尖刺裂可以納鳥.” 遂拔佩刀, 佯若刺裂之狀, 婦大懼急呼曰: “越邊金座首末子素稱, 不刺, 能納孔, 未有孔窄之事.” 云云.

I don't feel up to typing the definitions and sounds of all those words, but I'll do a mixed script 해석 with an 어려운 말 풀이 at the end:

One 一 groom 新郞, on the evening 夕 when he exchanged wineglasses 合卺 (i.e. married), wondered if 疑 his 其 wife 婦 had already 已 experienced 經 a man 人. He wanted 欲 to cause 使 his wife 婦 to cough up the full story 吐實地, and took 以 his hand 手 and while rubbing 撫 her 'shady doorway 陰戶,' said 曰: “This 此 hole 孔 is quite 甚 narrow 窄. I'll take 以 a knife's 刀 point 尖, stab it 刺 and rip it open 裂, so it will 可以 admit 納 my 'bird 鳥.'” Thereupon 遂 he pulled out 拔 the dagger 刀 at his waist 佩, and pretended 佯 just like 若 he was in the attitude of 狀 stabbing 刺 and ripping open 裂. His wife 婦 was greatly 大 afraid and 懼 hurriedly 急 called out 呼, saying 曰: “The last 末 son 子 of Prefect Kim 金座首 from across on the other side (of the village?) 越邊 plainly 素 speaking 稱, he didn't 不 stab 刺, but was able to 能 be admitted into 納 the hole 孔. There is no such thing as 未有 the case of 事 a hole 孔 that is narrow 窄.” And so on 云云.

☞ 合卺(합근): ①구식 혼례식의 절차의 하나. 신랑 신부가 잔을 주고 받는 일 ②혼례식을 지냄, 座首 (좌수): 조선(朝鮮) 시대(時代) 때 지방(地方)의 주(州)ㆍ부(府)ㆍ군(郡)ㆍ현(縣)에 두었던 향청(鄕廳)의 우두머리 육방(六房) 중의 이방(吏房)과 병방(兵房)을 맡아보았음 26대 고종(高宗) 32(1895)년에 향장(鄕長)으로 고쳤음 아관(亞官) 수향(首鄕).

So here we see in the wild acutal use of a bird representing that eel-like part of his anatomy that's always looking for a home. The annotator to the book that I got that quote from says that 鳥 is "남자 성기, 즉 '좆'의 이두 표기임." Maybe he needs a bigger 옥편, or then again, maybe he's right...unfortunately we don't get much etymological information from Korean dictionaries (Chinese either), so we are all left to wonder if these birds might not be related.

The real question is this, what exactly have birds done that has so angered humanity that the word "bird" is used in the East and West as a symbol for a sexually tabooed thingies?

What does it mean to speak in 반말

2005-12-25T16:53:00.003+09:00

Most people who care are probably already aware that Korean has a whole c of different honorific language that applies in different situations. There are the generic bits of language that lend respect to the subject of the sentence (like ~께서, ~시), as well as more specific bits (like saying 잡수시다 instead of 먹다, or 말씀 instead of 말. 치아 has to be one of the most bizarre of these. Why do we need a special honored term for teeth when there's not one for other body parts? What's so special about teeth. I mean, there is a whole host of body part names that show disrespect, like 대가리 or 아가리, but no other honored ones. It's not like teeth are even a common body part in conversation. That one's just a mystery. But I digress...) and then there are those generic and specific bits of speech that demean the position of the speaker to make the listener more revered (~드리다, 올리다, 여쭙다, 모시다...).

Of course there would be no fun in having such an overtly complex system if there weren't social pressures operating on people to use them correctly. It shows you have poor breeding when you use them wrong. I don't by any stretch mean to imply that native speakers always use them all according to the rules. I mean the little 고졸 ladies in my office seem to have learned that "여쭙다" means to ask and it's used to show respect to someone but they don't quite get that it specificially means "ask to someone who belongs to a higher social station," so we get wierd stuff like "the vice president asked (여쭈신다) the 부장 if he has a lunch appointment."

A good portion of the fun of this complex system comes when first meeting people. That's when you have to walk on eggshells to make a good impression. And if you start using 반말 too quickly, you'll get called on it: "이 자식이 초면부터 반말하네!" First you have to slowly circle, sniffing each other, to determine the pecking order in order to decided who is older (and hence has the right to drop to 반말 and, should he/she so deign, to allow the other party to do the same), first.

The Sanchon Hunjang was trained by strict teachers to studiously avoid anything that would give off even the hint of an approaching 반말. This may have been a good thing, but watching interaction by true native speakers, it occurs to me that this whole 반말 thing is much more complex than it appears at first blush.

Most learners have somewhere along the way picked up the notion that it means '해요' without the '요.' You can see this reflected in the language pages of the new and promising 갈비찜 wiki. But you can see Korean people say things that are clearly missing the final '요,' but they are not called for using 반말. This is especially true if it includes a ~시~ infix. One common example: '아, 그러시구나!' Indeed, you can see younger folk speak to elders in 요-less speech with impunity for hours. Clearly it is not just the lack of a final '요' that goes into this 반말 that everyone objects to hearing from young whipper-snappers.

There must be something more to what the word '반말' means. Maybe the dictionary will help? Naver says that it is a type of speech that falls between '해라' and '하게' or '하오' and '하게' and then goes on to add that it is a type of speech that neither lifts the listener up nor speaks down to her. I don't know about you, but what this says to me is that the whole picture of speech levels suddenly has suddenly become very complicated. The #2 definition in Naver says that 반말 means to indiscriminently speak down to someone. Ah-hah this is the 반말 thing that people of low breeding are getting called on. It doesn't have anything specifically to do with 요's or lacks of same.

So what goes into this talking down to someone, which is clearly something more than just leaving off the '요'? The Sanchon Hunjang has observed that people can speak without '요' for a long time with no reaction, but the minute they use the word '너 (or it's dialect cousin 니),' or interject a '야,' suddenly what they said has just crossed a line and the listener may comment on the forwardness of this individual, or at least wince. Other things that push people over the line are '~니' or '~냐' question endings, '한다' type statements, '해라' commands, or using '응' for yes instead of '예.' There are many others. This all comes back to the fact that there is a social register in Korean speech, just as there is in English (or at least in the brand of English that I was taught to speak). And in spite of what I was led to believe by all of those confused comments about 'just make sure you say 요 at the end,' it would seem that what determines social register in Korean is at least as complex as English.

Unfortunately, this all brings us back to the difficult situation of knowing that there is a socially unacceptable danger lurking if I make a blunder, but no clear way to avoid the danger. Perhaps it's just best to stick to ~습니다, anyhow. God knows it's easier to conjugate. ^^

Merry Christmas요!

Who signs this stuff

2005-12-03T12:37:00.000+09:00

The Sanchon Hunjang has been out of town all week, with limited internet access. Unfortunatley the same will be true through Christmas, so it would be best not to expect frequent posts in December.

On the trip out of the country, the Sanchon Hunjang found himself with some spare time at the airport. So I decided to browse the wares up for sale. This is usually an iffy proposition that I usually try to avoid. Best case is that I find nothing of interest, but more likely I run across some stupid (and very expensive) trinket that catches my interest and I put a dent in my wallet for yet another thing I didn't need. Much better to spend that time sitting quietly, book-in-hand.

Anyhow, over at the food court they had this 호박죽 that looked pretty good. Fortunately they were sold out and weren't inclined to make any more. Thank you! It was there that I saw this sign:

I am in the camp that says you can't expect perfect foreign languages on signs. Sure , it would be nice if they would go to the trouble to have a sign checked by a native speaker, especially if it's going to be in a place as frequented by the foreign friends as the airport... But I can accept the fact that the office in charge of sign making doesn't have a big budget. And they have 김사원, who spent 6 months abroad for language study. 김사원 can't very well 'fess up to his boss that he can't even string a few words together in a native way (which, by the way, is a much bigger challenge than it would appear. Try it in Korean sometime...). So it all goes unchecked. I'm okay with that. Sure "Broth To Chasa Hangover" isn't correct, but I get the gist.

But to just leave words as a question mark? "牛肉解 ? 湯 Beef soup to relieve question marks"?!?!?!? What is that all about? And that in the final product that will be put on public display, no less. What a horrendous blunder!

☞ 牛: 소 우, 肉: 고기 육, 解: 풀 해, ?: 나 몰를 물음표, 湯: 끓일 탕.
An aside on the subject of using "解" as relieve (as opposed to "cut up" or "break into constituent parts"), there's this curious word for "restroom," especially ones located at Buddhist temples: "解憂所 place for the releiving of cares."

Hmmm. Probably best to click for the larger version of that photo...

The really strange thing, though, is that they have the same content on a different sign about a dozen yards away. But on this sign, everything is perfect! It all makes the earlier blunder entirely unforgivable:

That's about the shape of it

2005-11-27T23:32:00.000+09:00

In English, we have a variety shapes ready at hand to describe things so our listeners can more easily understand complex abstractions, especially involving shapes. Some of these shapes are geometric (square, triangle, circle, cone, sphere). Others come in the form of accepted symbols. Thus there is no shortage of shape metaphors like a "y-intersection," or a "t-intersection." Those moving 180º turns that you see cop cars do in the movies are "j-turns" and you will have to practice on an "s-curve" and memorize when "u-turns" are allowed if you want to get your drivers' licence.

Korean, since they have their own alphabet, also have the tools for this type of shape-based metaphor. It is not difficult to hear people talk about things as being 니은 모양 or 디귿 모양. There is even that 속담 that goes "낫 놓고 기역자도 모른다," and means "can't even see the obvious."

Chinese doesn't have anything corresponding to letters, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that they do the same thing on the basis of whole words, since that's all they've got to work with.

We get things like 十 used for a plus shape and 一 used for a straight line shape, like you see in screwdrivers: 십자 드라이버 and 일자 드라이버. Indeed, a cross is a "十字架 plus-shaped rack." There is also 丫 that gets used to represent the shape "y." And if you see someone lying down, asleep, with their arms and legs spread, Koreans say they are "큰 대자로 누웠다 Lying in the shape of 大."

☞ 十: 열 십, 一: 한 일, 字: 글자 자, 架: 시렁 가, 丫: 가닥 아.

Given the wealth of Chinese characters, there is even more possibility for this kind of visual metaphor.

In the past, the Sanchon Hunjang has cited several poems attributed to 김삿갓 (1807~1863). Kim is not famous for high-brow literature, but his verses and the stories that accompany them are entertaining. Here is a "poem composed in description of something 詠物詩" that is attributed to 김. Its admittedly not politically correct, but he lived in an age with different values. Why not see if you can guess what he is describing, while we're at it...

☞ 詠: 읊을 영, 物: 만물 물, 詩: 시 시.

人皆平直爾何然, People are all level and upright, why are you like this:
項在胸中膝在肩. With your neck in the middle of your chest and knee at your shoulder?
回首不能看白日, If you turn your head, you are still unable to see the bright sun;
側身僅可見青天. When you tilt your body you barely can see the blue heavens.
臥如心字無三點, Lying down, you are as 心, without the three dots;
立似弓形小一絃. Standing, you are like the shape of a bow, without the one string.
慟哭千湫歸去路, After your thousand autumns of sad crying, when you depart on the road back,
也應棺郭用團圓. The shape of coffin you use will also have to be round.

☞ 人: 사람 인, 皆: 모두 개, 平: 평평할 평, 直: 곧을 직, 爾: 너 이, 何: 어찌 하, 然: 그럴 연,
項: 목덜미 항, 在: 있을 재, 胸: 가슴 흉, 膝: 무릎 슬, 肩: 어깨 견
回: 돌 회, 首: 머리 수, 能: 능할 능, 看: 볼 간, 白: 흴 백, 日: 해 일,
側: 곁 측, 身: 몸 신, 僅: 겨우 근, 可: 옳을 가, 見: 볼 견, 青: 푸를 청, 天: 하늘 천,
臥: 누울 와, 如같을 여, 心: 마음 심, 無: 없을 무, 三: 석 삼, 點: 점 점,
立: 설 립, 似: 같을 사, 弓: 활 궁, 形: 형상 형, 小: 작을 소, 絃: 악기줄 현,
慟: 서럽게 울 통, 哭: 울 곡, 千: 일천 천, 湫: 가을 추, 歸: 돌아갈 귀, 去: 갈 거, 路: 길 로,
也: 어조사 야, 應: 응할 응, 棺: 널 관, 郭: 외관 곽, 用: 쓸 용, 團: 둥글 단, 圓: 둥글 원.

If you guessed "a hunchback," you would be correct. In spite of the lack of sensitivity, his images of 心 without the three dots and a bow lacking its string are parallel, accurate and fresh imagery.

Kim is famous for having trapsed around the peninsula, writing verse that poked fun at people who needed to be brought down a notch or two, like pompous mountain village schoolmasters. Here is a verse he composed about a 양반 who lived with his wife and concubine.

不熱不寒二月天, On a February day, when it is neither hot nor cold,
一妻一妾最堪憐. One wife and one concubine are easily the most pitiable.
鴛鴦枕上三頭竝, Three heads are arrayed on the mandarin-duck pillow;
翡翠衾中六臂連. Six arms connect mid the kingfisher blanket.
開口笑時渾似品, When they open their mouths to laugh, they come together like 品;
飜身臥處燮成川. When they turn their bodies over, the place where they lie harmonizes to become a 川.
東邊未了西邊事, When he's not yet done on the east side, he takes care of business on the west side,
更向東邊打玉拳. Again he turns to the east side to carress a jade-white hand.

☞ 不: 아니 불, 熱: 더울 렬, 寒: 찰 한, 二: 둘 이, 月: 달 월,
妻: 아내 처, 妾: 첩 첩, 最: 가장 최, 堪: 견딜 감, 憐: 불쌍히 여길 련,
鴛: 원앙 원, 鴦: 원앙 앙, 원앙(새) = mandarin ducks, a symbol of marital harmony, 枕: 베개 침, 上: 위 상, 頭: 머리 두, 竝: 아우를 병,
翡: 물총새 비, 翠: 물총새 취, 물총새 = kingfisher, also used as the color of jade (from the color of the feathers of the kingfisher that change color from blue to green in sunlight), 衾: 이불 금, 中: 가운데 중, 六: 여섯 륙, 臂: 팔 비, 連: 잇닿을 련,
開: 열 개, 口: 입 구, 笑: 웃을 소, 時: 때 시, 渾: 흐릴 혼, 品: 물건 품,
飜: 날 번, 身: 몸 신, 臥: 누울 와, 處: 곳 처, 燮: 불꽃 섭, 成: 이룰 성, 川: 내 천,
東: 동녘 동, 邊: 가 변, 未: 아닐 미, 了: 마칠 료, 西: 서녘 서, 事: 일 사
更: 다시 갱, 向: 향할 향, 打: 칠 타, 玉: 구슬 옥, 拳: 주먹 권

The three of them lying together form a stream. This is not to indicate that one of them has a enuresis problem, but that their bodies together make the shape of the word for stream: 川. Alternatively, he could have said that they look like "三," but since that is the word "three," and there are three of them, it looses all of the cleverness, not to mention the rhyme pattern of the verse.

So far, we have looked strictly at using the shapes of letters/logographs. It is also possible to borrow a noun synonym for a more abstract concept to a similar effect. So you use a picture of one word to represent another word that is more abstract and can't be conveyed in a simple picture, this is the type of rebus that you see on bumper stickers, like "I♥NY" or "I ♠ my dog."

Korean also uses these. For example, if you were setting up a very classy gentlemen's club to appeal to the hornley salaryman crowd, and you wanted to conjure up the image of a widows' village full of lonely women who've had it--so they know what they are missing--but only have their hairpins to console themselves now...and you didn't want to come out and just say 과부촌, because that is just a little too direct and doesn't match with the classy image you had in mind, you could use a picture representing another word to just suggest the syllable "부":

In the above poem, the line above the "stream," where the man, his wife and his concubine laughing together form a "品" is the same principle, on a different level. Given the combinatory nature of written Chinese, where complex characters are made up of combinations of simpler characters, the possibilities in this realm are broad. Thus 김 uses the fact that "口" means "mouth" and that the word "品 product" happens to be made up of three of these for his pun-like construction.

Along the same lines, I suppose you could describe your dinner with three friends at a fine...
...restaurant as having been a "dish 器."

☞ 器: 그릇 기

The complementary action to this combinatory aspect of Chinese writing, dissecting characters up into their "constituent parts" in order to see how the meaning was constructed, is the underpinning of the first Chinese dictionary and a favorite pasttime of many scholars and wanna-be scholars.

But that's a whole 'nother bag of worms...

The Sanchon Hunjang’s Guide to Korean Funerals

2005-11-22T12:47:00.000+09:00

The Sanchon Hunjang has been to several Korean funerals before, but never paid any attention—just watched and copied what the guy next to me did. Well, I decide to take this as an opportunity to pay a bit more attention to what goes into the funerary rite, as observed 4 full days of funeral at two different locations this week. Fortunately all of the other people at the funerals were more than patient with my never-ending questions. So here goes a summary of Korean funeral etiquette as observed by yours truly.

There is some variation. Especially at Christian funerals, but the common funeral seems to follow basically the same script. Here is what one should expect when visiting a funeral for the family of a friend or colleague to pay respects:

Who should not go: Anyone who is engaged to be married and has set a date to tie themselves to the millstone…er, I mean to tie the knot ^^, is not supposed to go to funerals, nor to other people’s wedding ceremonies

What to wear: Think of going to a conservative funeral and dress accordingly. You can’t go too wrong. For men, a black or dark-colored suit and tie is best (many funeral halls sell or rent cheap black ties on the way in). For ladies, a dark colored pantsuit is probably most appropriate, but any dressy clothes in a dark color will due. Bright colors, and especially the color red, are most inappropriate, as are hats and chewing gum

Where to go: The obituary notice (訃告 부고) will come with instructions as to where to go, including a room number. It’s almost always connected to a hospital, and usually on a below-ground floor. The part of the hospital that you are looking for is called 영안실, or 장례식장.

Flowers: Important people or organizations who have some connection with the family of the deceased will send these large flower stands made up mostly of chrysanthemums with two long black-and-white ribbons. One side of the ribbon will have a message of condolence (謹弔/謹吊=근조 or 삼가 고인의 명복을 빕니다) and the other side will give the details of who sent the flowers. As you can see by this flower shop guy carrying one in, they are huge

Arrival: Make sure you drive to the right hospital, because 삼성의료원, 중대병원, etc. have several locations. After arriving at the funerary department of the right hospital, you have to find the right room.

Make a Donation: When you get to the room, there will be a small desk with someone sitting behind it and a large box with the word 賻儀函 or 부의함 written on it, located just inside the doorway. It is expected that everyone going to the funeral should make a donation (부의금: “condolence money”). Donations usually get larger the closer you are to the bereaved. 3o,ooo원 is a common amount for most circumstances. If the bereaved includes a close friend, then 5o,ooo원 or up would be appropriate. The money always must go in an envelope. They sell envelopes with 賻儀 already printed on them for this occasion at stationery shops. Or you can just write “부의” on any common white envelope (in 한자 if you want to look smarter than you really are ^^). They also have empty envelopes available at the sign-in desk right next to the donation collections box at funerals. It is not considered proper etiquette to let the person at the desk see how much money you put in the envelope so, if you didn’t come prepared, turn your back to him or step out of the room while you perform the money-stuffing operation. Be sure to write your name on the back of the envelope, because the family likes to keep track of who has come and who has made which donations. That way they can reciprocate in degree.

The Sanchon Hunjang originally thought that this money-giving custom was the strangest aspect of Korean funerals. It seemed like saying, “You’re wife died? What a shame. Here's 50 bucks, why don’t go to Vegas and forget about her.” But now I think I get it. It's like a different manifestation of shared labor that helps make communal projects possible. A funeral generates not insignificant costs. And everyone will have to put on a few funerals in life, so when there is a funeral, everyone pitches in so the expenses are less of a burden. It goes around and around, so in the end, nobody in a given circle of acquaintances comes out ahead or behind. It is just a means of matching the cash outflow from a funeral with some cash inflow. It’s like those 계, where there is not an overwhelming economic rationale for many of the participants, but it changes the timing of the cashflow streams of the participants to meet specific needs, without burdening anyone excessively

Sign in: There will be a book, called either “부의록” or “조위록,” sitting on the desk next to the donations box, with a pen. After you have dropped your envelope into the box, you sign your name in the book. Sometimes the person sitting at the desk behind the book will take your donation envelope and sign your name for you in the book.

☞ Sometimes people do the donation and sign-in steps after they are done with the bows and on their way out of the room. This is also acceptable.

Enter: The room is made like a Korean house, with a shoe-changing station by the door when you come in, and then a slightly elevated floor that is the main space. You take your shoes off, just as if you were entering a house. If you are carrying any bags or umbrellas, you should set them down by the shoe pit. If someone else is in the room doing their bows, wait until they finish and come back to put their shoes on before you enter.

At some funerals, they will have a large vase filled with chrysanthemums that is sitting by the shoe pit. If they have these flowers, you should take one on your way into the room. If not, just go straight in, to the front of the picture of the deceased.

Preparations: If you have picked up a chrysanthemum, place it in front of the photo where the other chrysanthemums are piled, or where they have cleared off space to place them. The stem should face you.

☞ Click for the labelled version

The next step is to burn some incense. In front of the picture of the deceased there will be food offerings, and in front of that there will be a table or stand with a burning candle, an incense urn and some incense sticks. Some people perform this while kneeling in front of the incense stand and others do it while standing—it doesn’t seem to matter. If you are in a group, only one person needs to do the incense offering, on behalf of the whole group, and then everyone will bow together. The person who is giving the incense offering grabs one or two sticks of incense, lights them in the flame of the candle and sticks them in the brazier.

A few people offered a fresh glass of alcohol to the deceased at this point, but the overwhelming majority just skipped this step. Those who did reached up and took down the cup that was sitting in front of the photo of the deceased, among the food offerings. They poured out the alcohol that was in the cup into the bowl in front of the incense table. Then they refilled the cup from the pot of alcohol sitting next to the bowl for discarding the used alcohol. They picked up the glass of fresh alcohol with two hands, circled it 3 times in the air above the incense and then placed the cup back where it had been originally, in front of the photograph.

After placing the incense, or offering the alcohol if you choose to, take a few steps back, so you will have room to execute the bows.

Bow to the Deceased: Facing the picture of the deceased, do one full bow (큰 절), ending in a crouched position, facing the floor. Hold the crouched position for a moment. Get back up on your feet and repeat. If it looks like this, then you're doing it right:

Then get up and do a bow from the waist. 2 and 1/2 times. That’s the magic recipe for the dead. If you are in a group, the whole group does the bows together.
☞ Many Christians seem to see this step as worshipping false gods, so they don’t do the full bows and just offer a short, silent prayer instead

Bow to the Bereaved: After bowing to the deceased, turn to face the relatives and do the same full-bow drill one time, followed by a bow from the waist. Depending on the specific family tradition, they will either have burlap armbands over a black suit, burlap leggings from the knee down with a burlap hat (looking not unlike a brown lunch bag on the head) or maybe the full burlap outfit from head-to-toe and a cane that is too short, to boot. Ladies will wear a white 한복, or more recently a black one, and they have a little burlap or white ribbon bow in their hair. But be aware that funerals are about sons. When a woman dies, even her husband is sidelined and the sons (and grandsons) take over the funeral show. At any rate, the family in the room will do the bow sequence at the same time as you do. Some people say that female visitors should omit the full bow during this step and just offer a bow from the waist. However, I observed that the family will just go along with whatever the visitor does. It is getting more and more rare, but sometimes you see a family with the 아이고 chorus going, where the bereaved will continually chant a tearful “아이고 아이고 아이고” interspersed with occasional wails like “우리 어머니 돌아가셨어!” These tend to be the traditionalists who have also gone for the full burlap suit.

Offer Condolences: After the bows, the family will usually offer a handshake. Sometimes they will crouch, so it looks like they are going for another full bow, but don’t be confused (although, if you were to be confused, you wouldn’t be alone. I saw several Korean visitors take the fake on this one.) This is the right time to express your condolences over their loss. A good sentence for this occasion would be:
상삼이 크시겠습니다

The family will thank you for coming and, depending on how talkative they are, they may give some details about the passing of the departed.

Let’s Eat: You walk back over to the shoe-pit, put your shoes on and walk out of the room. They will be having food served somewhere in the funeral hall and will usually guide you to the site, or maybe just point you in the right direction. Depending on the size of the crowd, some members of the bereaved family may come by to chat while you eat. The menu seems to be the same at pretty much all funerals: 밥, 육개장, 편육, 홍어무침, a few kinds of 김치, 떡, fruit, soft drinks, beer and 소주. You can eat at your own pace and, when you are done, stand up and go. If the family comes over to visit with you, common topics for conversation are:
- Where the burial site (장지) is and whether they are going to cremate (화장) the remains
- When the deceased will be washed and placed in the coffin (입관), and when the family will be departing for the burial site (발인)
- How many sons/daughters/brothers/sisters/husbands/wives are left behind (I hear that the last two are especially appropriate at Mormon funerals. ^^)
- How the deceased met his or her end (Given my observations, here it seems appropriate to ask if it came as a surprise to the family, or if they were given time to prepare, as well as share anecdotes of people you know who have passed away in a similar manner)
  
  ☞ The Koreans at both funerals were un-squeamish about discussing such details and seemed to find this more appropriate than my attempts to bring up “shop talk” related to work or other topics
It used to be considered good manners to stay up all night long with the bereaved for two nights from the date of passing, in order to show support and prevent them from being overwhelmed by sorrow. These all night sessions included heavy drinking and many rounds of poker and 화투/고스톱 (네이버 백과사전). I understand that this is still the custom in areas outside of Seoul, but today’s Seoul Cinderellas prefer to let the family of the bereaved get some sleep, so they all mysteriously vanish at about midnight. Also, many don’t feel that the boisterous atmosphere of a poker game goes with a funeral, so these are becoming fewer and fewer.

Hopefully this rather longish post is enough to allay pre-funeral anxiety and maybe even stave off a faux pas or two. If you are interested in more traditional funeral practices, I would recommend 임권택’s movie 《축제 Festival》 starring that Mr. 안 and his 성기.

Posted without comment

2005-11-15T21:07:00.000+09:00

동해몰과 백두산이 마르고 닳도록

2005-11-11T20:40:00.000+09:00

Not long ago the Sanchon Hunjang posted about a poem by 황진이 that spoke of how she and her love kept missing each other in their dream visits. Then this morning I was reminded of another verse that is similar in tone and message. Fortuitous timing, no?

近來安否問如何, These days are you well or not? I ask how you are--
月到紗窓妾恨多. As the moon reaches my silk [curtained] window, this wife’s resentment is great.
若使夢魂行有迹, If the dream spirit I send only left footprints,
門前石路半成沙. The stone path before your door would be half turned to sand.

☞ 近: 가까울 근, 來: 올 래, 安: 편안할 안, 否: 아닐 부, 問: 물을 문, 如: 같을 여, 何: 어찌 하,
月: 달 월, 到: 다다를 도, 紗: 깁 사, 窓: 창문 창, 妾: 첩 첩, 恨: 한할 한, 多: 많을 다,
若: 같을 약, 使: 부릴 사, 夢: 꿈 몽, 魂: 넋 혼, 行: 다닐 행, 有: 있을 유, 迹: 자취 적,
門: 문 문, 前: 앞 전, 石: 돌 석, 路: 길 로, 半: 반 반, 成: 이룰 성, 沙: 모래 사.

In her dreams, she has gone to see her love so many times that, if her dream self only had physical feet, she would have worn those paving stones nearly to sand already.

I said "she." And the persona in the poem is clearly a woman, as a male persona can't refer to himself with that humelific female pronoun "妾." Indeed, this poem was written by a woman, 이옥봉 (c. 17th century). But there's that Korean poem/song (Korean, as in it's in a Korean genre, not Chinese) 思美人曲 사미인곡 that talks in the persona of a jilted woman longing for her fickle love. That poem was written by a certain Mister 정철 (1536-1593) ... and it takes its name from an even older poem/song, called, (surprisingly enough) 思美人曲, that is recorded in the 《楚辭 초사》.

☞ 思: 생각 사, 美: 아름다울 미, 人: 사람 인, 曲: 굽을 곡, 楚: 가시나무 초, 辭: 말 사.

Turns out that there is this popular tradition that goes waaaay back where the author writes from the point of view of a woman who had been jilted by her love and using the situation as parallel to an official who is loyal to his king and wants to serve the king, but has been put out to pasture because the king doesn't see his (her?) heart. Usually backstabbing sycophants also figure in the scene of the author's dismissal.

The next time somebody misunderstands you, write them a long letter in the persona of a woman whose lover had suspected she is not true, as a metaphor for the situation. Then send it. When they come to lock you up for being a homosexual psychotic stalker, explain how it's an ancient Chinese tradition. Best to leave out the part about how you've sent your spirit over to his house so many times that you could've worn the asphalt away, though... ^^

Just stay away from the yellowed snow

2005-11-07T16:00:00.000+09:00

黃眞伊 황진이(?-?) is one of a handful of famous women that lived during the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392-1910). 황 was a 기생 who is widely respected because she was supposed to have been beautiful (enough to seduce a senior Buddhist monk to break his vows of celebacy, but depending on how long it had been since he'd been with a woman, that may or may not have required much beauty^^), witty, educated, bright and because she walked to the beat her own drummer.

☞ 黃: 누를 황, 眞: 참 진, 伊: 저 이.

Like so many figures that have become legend, it is impossible to winnow fact from embellishment. At any rate, there are 6 or so verses each of 시조 and Chinese poetry 한시 attributed to her that still survive (the exact number depends on who is counting).

One of those verses is the following, which has an especially intriguing second line.

相思相見只憑夢, Thinking of each other and seeing each other, we only rely on dreams--
儂訪歡時歡訪儂. But when I go to visit my love, my love has come to visit me.
願使遙遙他夜夢, I want to send, across the distance, his night's dream,
一時同作路中逢. That we start at the same time and meet mid-way.

☞ 相: 서로 상, 思: 생각 사, 見: 볼 견, 只: 다만 지, 憑: 기댈 빙, 夢: 꿈 몽,
儂: 나 농, 訪: 찾을 방, 歡: 기뻐할 환 ※ According to the 《한어대자전》, this word was commonly used, along with 儂, in old Music Bureau style poetry as a form of address used between lovers, 時: 때 시,
願: 바랄 원, 使: 부릴 사, 遙: 멀 요, 他: 다를 타, 夜: 밤 야,
一: 한 일, 時: 때 시, 同: 한가지 동, 作: 지을 작, 路: 길 로, 中: 가운데 중, 逢: 만날 봉.

She keeps going to visit her love, but he is not home because he has gone to her house to see her. It's like the old-time version of telephone tag. The original line is also clever because of the way it mirrors around the word "when 時."

Here is another poem 황 is credited with, this one drafted at a farewell dinner.

月下梧桐盡, Under the moon, the paulownia exhausts [its leaves];
霜中野菊黃. In the frost, wild chrysanthemums yellow.
樓高天一尺, The loftbuilding is high: within a foot of heaven;
人醉酒千觴. People are rapt on a thousand goblets of wine.
流水和琴冷, The flowing water harmonizes with the coolness of the lute;
梅花入笛香. Apricot blossoms enter the fragrance of the flute.
明朝相別後, Tomorrow morning, after we part from each other,
情與碧波長. [My] emotion will be as long as the blue waves.

☞ 月: 달 월, 下: 아래 하, 梧: 오동 오, 桐: 오동 동, 盡: 다할 진,
霜: 서리 상, 野: 들 야, 菊: 국화 국, 樓: 누각 루, 高: 높을 고, 天: 하늘 천, 尺: 자 척,
人: 사람 인, 醉: 취할 취, 酒: 술 주, 千: 일천 천, 觴: 술잔 상,
流: 흐를 류, 水: 물 수, 和: 화할 화, 琴: 거문고 금, 冷: 찰 랭,
梅: 매화 매, 花: 꽃 화, 入: 들 입, 笛: 피리 적, 香: 향기 향,
明: 밝을 명, 朝: 아침 조, 別: 다를 별, 後: 뒤 후,
情: 뜻 정, 與: 더불 여, 碧: 푸를 벽, 波: 물결 파, 長: 길 장.

There is an interesting ambiguity in the second line. It is clear that the verse reads "In the frost, wild chrysanthemums 'yellow 黃,'" the question is what it means to "yellow." If we were talkig about a tree or another type of flower, this would be a pretty unamiguous "wither." The problem is that, since chrysanthemums are yellow when they are in bloom, it could also mean "bloom in a pretty shade of yellow." Indeed, you can find translators on both sides of the fence, with some saying "fade," while others say "bloom prettily."

I discovered that it may be okay to just sit solidly on the fence. Just say that it obviously refers to the situation where some chrysanthemums have already withered, while others are in bloom. Behold:

I fear that rendering this in English, however, is bound to yield a clumsy monster.

Howzat again?

2005-11-03T10:39:00.001+09:00

The Sanchon Hunjang really likes the jasmine tea that they serve in the Chinese restaurants (I also love 철관음 녹차 or 국화차 that you get in China, too, but that's another post). I like it so much that I bought a HUGE tin of jasmine tea and that's what we drink in the Sanchon instead of 보리차. Weak jasmine tea.

So imagine my excitement when I go to the convenience store and discover they have a new beverage available for consumption. It even has three varieties and comes in a really cool, shaped aluminum can:

Of course I honed straight in on the jasmine variety. SCORE!!

I found the tea strong for my tastes. Waaaaaaaaaaaay too strong. So I was taking a break between sips so my mouth could recover, and looking at the package. The blue color is nice and the design is attractive. The shape of the bottle is especially intriguing.

Oh and what's this? It has some lettering on the side. It's Chinese, with a helpful translation.

[茶愛人]
차 사 사
茶 랑 람
를 愛人
하
는
☞ 茶: 차 차(or 다), 愛: 사랑 애, 人: 사람 인.

Um... 茶愛人 = "차를 사랑하는 사람"? I suppose someone could try to concoct this into something like "tea-lover," but that seems like a real stretch. Hey, 동원, shouldn't we have put 愛茶[之]人? 'Cause "tea loves people" is a bit out there. I guess that's what happens when people who failed middle school 한문 class go on to major in marketing...

I still like the bottle, though. I'm keeping that one on my desk. And I'll continue to buy the product. Just remember to dilute it with water before I drink.

At last, a good reason to learn Chinese

2005-11-02T08:07:00.000+09:00

It's apparently dyslexia resistant. I guess, to be fair, it's not just Chinese. They include Japanese, too. The theory is that the use of letters that represent individual sounds, while a strength for most readers, are the source of the problem for dyslexics. It's easier for them to read the syllable-length units of Chinese/Japanese.

I wonder what this means for Korean, where they have letters to represent each individual sound, but they write them as syllable units...

At any rate, here are two articles: the simplified one for the layman, and the complified^*) one for the specialist.

^*) In honor of a gentleman that the Sanchon Hunjang heard about many years ago who was explaining the different Chinese writing systems in use in Hong Kong and the Mainland when he said, "In China we have two different kind of characters. In the mainland they have 'simplified characters,' and in Hong Kong we have 'complified characters.'" complified...ㅋㅋㅋ

Owl that man!

2005-10-31T16:22:00.001+09:00

Xu Shen 許愼 허신's dictionary 《說文解字 설문해자》 defines the word "owl 梟" as "An unfilial bird that eats its [own] mother. Thus at the winter solstice [we] catch and dismember them. The character comes from [the graphic elements of] a bird's head on top of a stick."

☞ 許: 허락할 허, 愼: 삼갈 신, 說: 말씀 설, 文: 글월 문, 解: 풀 해, 字: 글자 자.

So those Chinese folk somewhere got the idea that owls eat their own mothers, which is one of the greatest sins in the view of those who highly value the respect that offspring should show to their parents. We see the same cultural idea reflected in a graphic bit of verse by 韓愈 한유 of the mid-Tang:

鴟梟啄母腦, The owl pecks it's mother's brains--
母死子始翻. Mother dies as offspring begins to fly.

☞ 鴟: 올빼미 치, 啄: 쪼을 탁, 母: 어미 모, 腦: 뇌 뇌,
死: 죽을 사, 子: 아들 자, 始: 비로소 시, 翻: 날 번.

This damns the owl to being a symbol for evil. As if that weren't enough, some cultural dictionaries say that the characteristic sound that the owl makes is heard by Chinese to be their word for "dig, dig" as in "dig a grave, 'cause this one's not going to make it." It's said to be the sound one hears right about the time you breathe your last. (Unfortunately I've only seen this in English sources, so I don't know what the "dig" word they are refering to is.) Just to show I didn't make this up:

The hoot of the owl is much feared. It is said that when any one is going to die the owl is heard calling out, "Dig! dig!" Of course, they think it is telling them to dig the grave that will soon be needed, and they instantly expect the death of the sick man.

And this practice of dismembering them and placing their heads on pikes at the winter solstice in order to ward off evil adds another meaning to this word: to gibbet someone (actually the English gibbet usually refers to locking someone up in a cage like this one...

...to die and have their remains act as a deterrent to like-minded evildoers. In contrast, 梟首 효수 (note: that's usually a transitive verb, as in "owl's head that man!") refers specfically to posting only the head of an evil-doer in a public place...

☞ 首: 머리 수.

...for the same purpose.)

The last definition for this word in the small dictionary on my desk is "mountain peak," which must owe something to the macabre resemblance of the Oriental gibbet to a mountain. This combination reminds the Sanchon Hunjang of 切頭山 절두산, or "Lopping-heads Mountain" in Seoul and the sad events that took place there.

☞ 切: 끊을 절, 頭: 머리 두, 山: 메 산.

The word 梟 is also used to describe the character of 劉備 유비 in the 《三國(志)演義 삼국지》 (I know those don't read the same. Fact is that this book is called by different names in China and Korea. What can a poor Sanchon Hunjang do about such complications in the real world? But hey, Amazon is selling several translations of it in English.), something like an "inappropriately aggressive hero figure." I suppose the logic must be something like "as long as he produces results, people will overlook his over-the-topness, but if he's not careful, he will end up with his head on a gibbet."

☞ 劉: 죽일 류, 備: 갖출 비, 三: 석 삼, 國: 나라 국, 演: 멀리 흐를 연, 義: 옳을 의, 志: 뜻 지

Cultural mores

2005-10-27T19:14:00.000+09:00

WARNING:

Don't be whistling at night. Or playing a flute either... 뱀 나타나!

And while you're at it, don't go around cutting your nails at night, either. Or if you do, be very careful what you do with the clippings because you just never know when some rat might eat the nail trimmings, turn into an evil copy of yourself and steal your identity. You'd probably spend the rest of your life trying to clean up your credit report so it's best just to be careful up front.

You can't believe the things you gotta watch out for. Especially at night... ^^

Short mouthed

2005-10-25T08:50:00.001+09:00

JH, who had worked in the desk next to me for a couple of years but was then sent overseas to work, was in town for the week. He's not getting any younger and is feeling the heat, so he was back to have a bunch of blind dates in hopes of meeting "the one." Of course he's been doing that every year for the past three, and he wasn't exactly letting grass grow under his feet when he lived here either. All this effort has yielded nothing. And judging by what he said this week, it doesn't seem he's seen any more success this time around. Maybe it's time to throw in the towel...

Anyway, since he was in town, all the old gang had to get together at the Indian chain Ganga for dinner. Over our blueberry lassis, we were all complaining about our superiors (the favorite pastime ^^). I won't bother to repeat any of what I said because everyone's already heard it.

JH was saying that his boss is a really nice guy. Too nice, in fact, because he can't say no to anyone and this results in dumptruck loads of work for his department. He was also saying that his boss is a gourmet. In addition to being a good cook, he also knows how to find wonderful 맛집 all over Korea. The problem with that is that he tends to forget that he's not in Korea any more. When they were eating 아구찜 the other day, the boss started going on and on about how there was a wonderful 아구찜 place on 종로. If they had been in Korea, they would all have been interested in the information, but in Amsterdam, the consensus was that he should just be glad he can get 아구찜 at all.

In the process, we also learned that his boss loves to order many many dishes off the menu, but he doesn't eat much, so they end up throwing a lot of food away. To this JS responded,

아~ 그분은 입이 짧구나!

Like so many expressions, because of the context, it wasn't too tough to pick out what she meant. But it sounded funny to have a "short mouth."

Opposite expression to "입이 짧다"? Hint: you can't say "입이 길다." It's "[니] 뱃속에 거지 들었다." So having a hollow leg is equivalent to having a beggar in your tummy.

All this talk about appetites is making me feel bad. I'm going to have to be sure and hit the gym tonight...

So, how long have you two been a couplet?

2005-10-21T12:30:00.000+09:00

In the old days, Korean people used to think very highly of 대꾸. So highly in fact that they would sit around all day practicing and trying to dream up new 대꾸 to use on each other.

Oops.

It looks like the Sanchon Hunjang has heard one too many people say that Korean is a 발음 나는대로 적는 언어, so there I went and wrote it just like I would say it, "대꾸." But wouldn't you know it, Korean orthography is trickier than that. I should have written 대구 (對句), even though the pronunication key in the 국어사전 tells me it's pronounced the same. Right down to the longer vowel on the first syllable. Not so 발음 나는대로 적는 거구나...

☞ 對: 대할 대, 句: 글귀 구.

It's probably a smaller surprise to hear that those old Confucian scholarly types sat around working on their 對句 대구, not their 대꾸. Because parallel couplets are a very highly regarded thing in the asthetic of Chinese poetry.

In Chinese poetry, the couplet gets all the attention and nobody gives any to the individual lines. Now as to that parallelism thing, in the first place 詩 시 poetry is, by definition, composed of lines of equal length. So the couplets are automatically matching in length. Other than this unaviodable aspect of line length, in old-style 詩 poetry, the use of parallelism in couplets was encouraged but not required. Parallelism refers to matching up all of the the parts of speech so that they come at corresponding positions in both lines. Thus, in a parallel couplet, the position of verb matches verb and noun matches noun. But as time went by, the tendency toward parallelism became stronger and stronger. During the Tang Dynasty, they had come up with new-fangled verse that was supposed to be parallel. To go one better they also added the new burden of requiring parallelism in the tones of the words (I guess everyone knows that Chinese is a tonal language and what that means), which had the effect of making an even stress pattern in the lines--adding a regular rythm to the verse.

There are different levels of parallelism, and the more levels of parallelism that the poet can incorporate into his couplet, the better the couplet is. But the the wording can't appear forced, because that is the biggest no-no of all.

That is the nitty-gritty. Maybe an example would make it more clear. Here is an example of a parallel couplet by the man 李太白 이태백 (the Chinese usually just say "李白," rather than use the 字 자 that he took from his favorite star...)

☞ 李: 오얏 리, 太: 클 태, 白: 흴 백, 雅: 우아할 아, 號: 부르짖을 호, 字: 글자 자.

擧頭望明月, Raise head, look at bright moon;
低頭思故鄉. Lower head, think of home-town.

☞ 擧: 들 거, 頭: 머리 두, 望: 바랄 망, 明: 밝을 명, 月: 달월
低: 낮을 저, 思: 생각 사, 故: 까닭 고, 鄉: 시골 향.

It's kind of a flaw to use the same character twice in a short poem, because it starts to look repetetive. But if you can do it in a way that doesn't seem overly repetitive, or if you are Li Bo, you can break this guideline. See how each line goes verb-object verb-adjective-object? It's not just that the verbs line up. Raise/lower are opposing actions, so that scores some points; looking and thinking are both things you do quietly by yourself--more points; and ending each line with a common phrase that is of the form adjective-noun gets even more points. And the phrasing doesn't seem artificial or contrived. Our judges rate this poem a solid 9.5. If only he hadn't repeated "head," it could have been a perfect 10.

That's the parallelism. This aspect of Chinese poetry can sometimes be a help in figuring out tricky lines, because you can use the clues provided in parallel line.

The observant will have noticed that 月 and 鄕 don't rhyme. That's because the rhyming usually happens between the couplets, not usually inside the couplet. In this poem, the first couplet ends in the -ang sound that you see rhymed in 鄕.

Like the Sanchon Hunjang said, these 대구 couplet things are very highly regarded in the noble art of poetry, so people sat around trying to think up good 대구. Just bring any two scholars together. If they don't start scheming on how to eliminate the guys in the opposing faction at court, they are likely to start playing around trying to trump the quality of each other's couplets. And we haven't even mentioned all the drinking games built around matching couplets.

This is why the Korean slogan writers so love those two-part slogans. They usually try to get the same number of syllables in each half and strive for parallelism in the phrasing...all because it hearkens back to that lofty pursuit of the old scholar types. Two quick samples from among the gazillions that bombard Korea dwellers every day in real life:

So anyway, 徐 "my-typewriter-key-sticks" 居正 서거정 (1420-1488) was a scholar and statesman during the early ChosOn Dynasty. Unfortunately he hasn't generated enough interest to have his own English Wikipedia page, which means he's not in the same league as the likes of 서태지, but he was still an amazing anthologer whose inkstone never appears to have dried.

☞ 徐: 천천할 서, 居: 살 거, 正: 바를 정.

Once, he went on a handyman kick and dug himself a lotus pond. Then he planted lotus in it and built a pavilion next to the pond so he could admire the blooms. Now, you can't have a proper pavilion without a clever pavilion name, so he named his pavilion 亭亭亭^*). The name was so clever that he even took it as his own 雅號 아호 (as those old scholars were sometimes wont to).

☞ 亭: 정자 정.

When 亭亭亭先生 had finished drafting his book of poetry criticism, ≪東人詩話 동인시화≫ , he was passing it around to a few friends to get their opinions before showing it to the world. 金守溫 김수온 (1410-1481) was one of those asked to peruse it and make comments. After carefully reviewing the text, he turned to 서거정 and indicated that he only had one comment as he inquired as to 서거정's inclination to adopt his suggestion. 서거정 asked to hear the comment. 김수온 responded, "if you can write a parallel phrase to go with 亭亭亭, then you can keep it, but otherwise, change it!" 서거정 wasn't up to the task, perhaps lacking the creativity of some others, and got off by arguing that there is no such thing as a three character per line poem, so he shouldn't have to come up with a parallel construction.

☞ 先: 먼저 선, 生: 날 생, 東: 동녘 동, 人: 사람 인, 話: 말할 화, 金: 성 김, 守: 지킬 수, 溫: 따뜻할 온.

Last story. Near Floating-in-the-Blue Loftbuilding (浮碧樓), there is a mountain, 牧丹山 목단산.

☞ 浮: 뜰 부, 碧: 푸를 벽, 樓: 누각 루, 牧: 칠 목, 丹: 붉을 단, 山: 메 산.

(painting of 부벽루, by NorK painter 홍성광, shamelessly swiped from the internet)

Once, the King of KoryO was on a royal procession to this mountain when he uttered the line:

北斗七星三四點 The seven stars of the Big Dipper are three and four dots

☞ 北: 북녘 북, 斗: 말 두, 七: 일곱 칠, 星: 별 성, 三: 셋 삼, 四: 넉 사, 點: 점 점.

There was a scholar who promptly came up with a matching line:

南山萬壽十千秋 The ten-thousand years the South Mountain [has seen] are ten and a thousand autumns.

☞ 南: 남녘 남, 山: 메 산, 萬: 일만 만, 壽: 목숨 수, 十: 열 십, 千: 일천 천, 秋: 가을 추.

The king was highly impressed with the match of this line to his original and so inspired by the mind that could instantaneously come up with such wonderful parallelism that he awarded the scholar highest marks on the civil service exam. The king was very impressed because, not only had he perfectly paralleled number for number and proper noun for proper noun, as an excellent couplet should, but the really amazing thing was how the scholar had matched the "3 and 4 make 7" effect in the royal line with an equivalent "10 and 1,000 make 10,000."

3 + 4 = 7 and 10 + 1,000 = 10,000? Hmmmmmm. It just goes to show that you don't have to be very good at math to write a poem. Or to become king, for that matter.

^*) In spite of what it may appear, this is not the Gertrude Stein approach to naming. In many cases, when a single character is doubled, it makes a 의태어. Of course there are cases like 山山 and 人人, where it doesn't--just one of the many pleasures of learning classical Chinese. 亭亭 is one instance where a doubled character becomes an adjective. When 亭 is douled, it means "우뚝솟다 shooting straight up in the air," so his 아호 is not "A pavilion is a pavilion is a pavilion," but rather "soaring pavilion." To complete the parallel, 서거정 would have had to come up with a noun, preferably that means a kind of building, that also makes some sort of adjective when doubled that could then be used to describe that same building.

What's cookin' in Hong Kong

2005-10-19T14:00:00.000+09:00

In case you are ever in Hong Kong and wondering what to eat, the Sanchon Hunjang has a tasty recommendation. Of course the dim sum is good, and many people go for that expensive steamed garupa stuff, which isn't bad either. Especially if you get it with steamed rice and put the sauce on it...mmmmmm

But, I've dicovered this fried shrimp dish with garlic sauce that is even better than those delicious treats.

It's not made out of a normal looking shrimp. They have these shrimp with yellow detailing that apparently come from Malaysia. I talked to several waiters at different restaurants about the name. They all agree that the Chinese name of this critter is 瀬尿蝦 뇌뇨하 "shallow-river urine shrimp" (I hope the "urine" part is just due to its yellow coloring...). Problem is that one guy says the English name is "gray fish," while another other guy gives "sea mantis." Who knows...

☞ 瀬: 얕은 강 뢰, 尿: 오줌 뇨, 蝦: 새우 하.

At any rate, here is what they look like on the fin...

...and here is a close up.

(Note to self: remember to chop the fingers off all coworkers accompanying me to restaurant, so they don't say "니가 맛 있다고한 게 이 놈, 맞지?" right when I'm taking a photo)

After the cook has his way with them, they come out looking like this delictable treat.

The stuff that looks like breadcrumbs on top is the garlic sauce, which is a wonderful salty snack by itself.

I've tried this same dish at many different restaurants. In fact, if you just point at the yellow shrimp, they all recommend it fried with the garlic sauce. But the place that does the best job is also one of the most reasonable in pricing (very reasonable on all of their menu items for that matter), which is a good combination. Here is a scan of their business card, which includes a handy map.

Go give it a try. Most highly recommended.

한자 배워야 하나

2005-10-09T23:55:00.001+09:00

Happy 한글 Day!

I was in Hong Kong on the train back to the airport not too long ago. The work was done and I was supposed to be thinking about how to write up what we had accomplished. Instead, I found myself just staring listlessly out the window, daydreaming.

When the train pulled into 靑衣 qingyi station, there was an advertisement that caught my eye for a moment:

It momentarily brought back memories of war stories told by Korean folk who happened to meet a real-live Chinese person in some context. They couldn't speak each others' languages, but they could communicate with each other in spite of this fact because the Korean had studied Chinese characters so diligently in middle and high school.

Hmmmmmm. Right. I'll bet it was a really deep conversation, too. Can I just see your transcript of that conversation there for a minute?

Korea has the two camps of education forever bickering about whether the 국민 need to learn Chinese characters or not. If we discount the nonsense (예: "Chinese characters are mini-pictures, so they involve both hemispheres of the brand and thus they lead to more balanced and better brain development"), the pro side seems to have three main arguments:

It's a vocabulary building aid
The argument goes that if you don't know the word 명랑, but you know 명 means bright and 랑 means bright, you can guess that 명랑 means bright. Alternatively, if you are translating something written in a foreign language by a new philosopher and he coins a new word in his foreign language original, you can invent a new Korean word to translate it based on the meaning of the original word and using the Chinese vocabulary roots in Korean. Then if you just write the Chinese in your translated text, all the readers will instantly understand all of the nuances of this newly-coined word. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

This is hogwash.

Native speakers already have a feel for the fact that there is a syllable out there that is pronounced "명" and seems to mean something like "light" or "enlighten." It makes absolutely no difference whether this speaker knows how to write that syllable in Chinese. When I was in school, we learned the Greek roots that underpin many vocabulary items in English, but we didn't learn how to write them in the Greek alphabet. That would have been so much wasted effort but orders of magnitude less than the Chinese case because at least the Greeks used an alphabet. Want to teach vocabulary building blocks? Do it. Why focus on how they were written in China?

It's a link to our literary past
It is true that 99.9999% of pre-modern content was written in classical Chinese, and if you want to learn to read it, you will have to memorize a bunch of Chinese words. However it is not true that memorizing a bunch of Chinese characters equates to literacy in classical Chinese. There will always be specialists who learn to read the original documents and everyone else will read Korean translations. There is a lot of stuff written in mixed script from earlier in the modern era, but this trend already seems to have died a hard death, or at least it has contracted a terminal case of "write so the readers can understand," so new editions of older works have the Chinese relegated to parenthetical notes.

China is growing and it's a communicative link to China
There is quite a bit of debate these days in the press over whether China is the up-and-coming power or whether starry-eyed dreamers are mis-analyzing the facts. Fine. China will become an important economic partner for Korea either way. But having everyone in the country memorize a bunch of Chinese characters is not going to be the most effective way to improve that relationship. In the first place, the mainland Chinese have simplified the writing of many of the characters in use, so they are no longer the same in appearance as the ones used in Korea or Taiwan or Hong Kong, for that matter (예: 億 ☞亿 , 龍 ☞龙, 義 ☞义). Surely this fact alone should give pause to educators thinking of investing precious student time in the memorization of 2,000 of these beasts for the purpose of improving economic cooperation with China. Point two is that Chinese use the words in different ways than Koreans do. Look back to the hotline 熱線 that brought on this tirade in the first place (Other 예: 東西, 中心, 鸡尾, 紹介 vs. 介绍). Also, many high-frequency Chinese characters aren't even used in Korea (예: 你, 呢, 吗, 甭, 甩 (to clarify, that is not the simplified form of 電, which looks like this: 电)). All of this points to the same conclusion as #2 above: there will continue to be specialists who learn Chinese as a language and this will help communication between China and Korea.

Ironically, I've mostly seen the memorization of Chinese characters hurt the many Korean students who are trying to learn Chinese. When starting to learn, the Korean students tend to want to see the characters for each vocabulary item, dialog, or whatever (because many of them are familiar). The teachers usually oblige, to facilitate the understanding of their beginning students. So the students get into funny habits when they come across Chinese characters. First they look at it and think of the Korean pronunciation. They know that the Chinese pronunciation is similar to the Korean with some funny little twist, so they add a funny little twist to the Korean pronunciation as they say it. Problem is, since they didn't bother to learn it right in the first place, the funny little twist that gets added is wrong as often as it is right. This is doubly true of characters that are homophones in Korean but not in Chinese. As a consequence, I've seen many Chinese teachers who refuse to show the characters to their Korean students and focus on education through pinyin instead, which seems to result in better speakers of Chinese.

In spite of having invested a bit of time in the study of Chinese characters myself, for the arguments outlined above, I think it is a colossal waste of time and resources to force everyone to do the same. If some people enjoy the subject and want to study, more power to them. But there is no valid reason to subject the entire populace to it.

Wholly cursive writing, Batman

2005-10-05T21:12:00.000+09:00

Most people who care already know that there are five major faces of Chinese calligraphy, and countless variations within each of those. The five biggies are 篆書 zhuanshu 전서 "seal writing", 隸書 lishu 예서 "clerical script", 楷書 kaishu 해서 "regular script" or "square script", 行書 xingshu 행서 "cursive script" or "running script" and the even more cursive and abbreviated 草書 caoshu 초서 "grass script". Not surprisingly each has its own rules about how to make it asthetically pleasing.

☞ 篆: 전자 전, 書: 글 서, 隸: 종 례, 楷: 본 해, 行: 갈 행, 草: 풀 초.

Not long ago the Sanchon Hunjang was going somewhere on the subway and in no particular hurry. There were some elderly gentlemen who had pasted samples of their calligraphy all over the inside of the subway station. They also posted a sign that read "가훈 써드립니다" and were busy practing the art of the brush. Not being in a hurry, I stopped to look over their work. One of the gentlemen noticed the Sanchon Hunjang perusing their works and escorted me to a piece, a short poem in 행서, that was framed especially nicely. He beamed as he explained how his good friend, who was not there at the time, had written this one and had been awarded a prize for it in some competition.

The calligraphy was impressive, and at the same time, it wasn't. It seems that this man had won his award in a pretty small competition. Unfortunately I didn't think to snap a picture of it at the time, but I have located a graphic on the internet that captures the essence:

Looking at the individual words, each each is executed very well. The artist had enviable control over his brush. The problem is that, with 행서 or 초서, there is supposed to be a rythmic flow. The characters are supposed to flow into each other, or at the very least, those little "tails" on the end of each character are supposed to point to the beginning spot on the following character.

As you can see in the red extensions to those tails, that I've taken the liberty of adding, this artist (and the gentleman whose friend I met) was writing a bunch of characters as opposed to a complete work that happens to be made up of individual characters. Most of the tails just point into empty space, rather than tying each into the whole. I wasn't there, but it feels as if he wrote one character, took a short break and then moved on to the next. Each one is nicely executed, but there is no sense of an integrated whole.

Here is how 행/초서 is supposed to look:

Again, I've taken the liberty of highlighting. Each word leads into the next, so you can see the flow. It is obvious that this artist had a complete work of art in mind from beginning to end.

Real calligraphers have this sense of complete work in mind when they pick up the brush to write something. This is why the professional calligraphers all got up-in-arms when talk emerged of replacing the signboard of 광화문, currently in 박정희's hand, with one made up of the three characters 光, 化 and 門 culled from the actual writing of King ChOngjo. Because, when you pick three characters that were not planned to be next to each other when they were written ("集字 집자"), they don't come together and make a work of art that feels complete. The option that they just elect one famous calligrapher to represent the country and write it was even more unpalatable. And the 한글 lovers all got up in arms, too, because this all meant stepping away from the beautiful script of Korea, not to mention writing it backwards. I haven't heard whether they really went ahead with the plan to replace the sign on August 15 this year. I'll have to use the excuse of checking to make another trip downtown.

☞ 光: 빛 광, 化: 변화 화, 門: 문 문, 集: 모을 집, 字: 글자 자.

The Sanchon Hunjang has to admit to dabbling in a bit of 집자, unfortunately. I wanted a ring with my name in cursive Chinese on it. But, not knowing anyone with the skill or inclination to pull it off, I just picked the 초서 samples of those three characters from my 옥편. I didn't realize it then, but the writing on that ring does lack something.

And, speaking of 집자 and lacking something...

I'm not sure who, if anyone, they got to do the writing for this stone, the name-stone for the 독도박물관 on 울릉도, but you notice it has the same disease. Each character executed very nicely, but no sense of whole. No linkage between the words. I wonder if they didn't do an 옥편 집자 job on this one.

I'll give you a hint, it's not 오뎅

2005-09-30T23:58:00.001+09:00

The Sanchon Hunjang has a little quiz for you. What do you guess is the title (and hence the topic) of the following poem by 鄭谷 정곡 (849-911) of the late Tang dynasty (618-907).

返蟻難尋穴, Retiring ants have difficulty finding their hole,
歸禽易見巢. As returning birds easily see their nests.
滿廊僧不厭, Though they fill the halls, bonzes are not bothered,
一個俗嫌多. Yet even one the secular man hates as being too many.

☞ 返: 돌아올 반, 蟻: 개미 의, 難: 어려울 난, 尋: 찾을 심, 穴: 구멍 혈.
歸: 돌아갈 귀, 禽: 날짐승 금, 易: 쉬울 이, 見: 볼 견, 巢: 집(nest) 소.
滿: 찰 만, 廊: 복도 랑, 僧: 종 승, 不: 아니 불, 厭: 싫을 염.
一: 한 일, 個: 낱 개, 俗: 속될 속, 嫌: 싫어할 혐, 多: 많을 다.

What is it that gives the ants difficulty in finding their hole while making it easier for the birds to find their nests? What could the monks not care less about en masse while those of us in the mundane world get upset over just one?

Yep, that's right, the answer is falling leaves.

There are a few common symbols for autumn. On the positive side, there are blooming chrysanthemums as well as the vivid foliage of maples and ginkgos. Then there is the fact that all deciduous trees drop their leaves, which reminds people (especially those of a sentimental bent, like poets) of their mortality.

Among all those trees, the favorite example of falling leaves, at least among 한학자, is the paulownia, or 梧桐 오동. 오동, not to be confused with 우동, is fast and straight growing tree that produces pods of many seeds that were used for packing material or burned to make a premium grade of ink, while the wood was used for furniture and other carpentry projects. The paulownia was to the Chinese apparently something akin to what the buffalo was to the American Indians. Paulownia timber may not taste as good as buffalo pemmican, but they're equally tough and dry in the mouth. The paulownia, however, has an edge over the buffalo because it was believed to be the only tree where the mythical 鳳凰 봉황 (unfortunately translated as "phoenix" sometimes) would alight. This is an advantage because the 봉황 heralds the birth of a sage, thus it's use in Korea's presidential symbol:

There is a Paulownia Island at the southern port of 여수, but if you should go there in search of paulownia trees, you would come away disappointed. There is not a single 그루! They have 동백꽃, instead.

At any rate, here is what those 오동 leaves look like:

Oops...how did that get in there...um...as you can see...uh...that's 어우동, and it looks like she's already shed a leaf or two...

Let's try that again:

Ah, yes, there we go. The leaves take an elongated heart shape. I'll bet you're itching to see how poets use this tree to signal the arrival of fall. Well itch no further:

〈秋懷〉鄭鎔 (정용) "Autumn Feelings" by ChOng Yong (c. 1587)

菊垂雨中花, The chrysanthemum droops down its rain-filled flowers,
秋驚庭上梧. As autumn startles the paulownia in the garden.
今朝倍惆悵, But this morning doubles my sadness,
昨夜夢江湖. For last night I dreamt of the rivers and lakes [that I had earlier enjoyed traveling to].

☞ 秋: 가을 추, 懷: 품을 회.
菊: 국화 국, 垂: 드리울 수, 雨: 비 우, 中: 가운데 중, 花: 꽃 화.
驚: 놀랄 경, 庭: 뜰 정, 上: 위 상, 梧: 오동나무 오
今: 이제 금, 朝: 아침 조, 倍: 곱 배, 惆: 실심할 추, 悵: 슬퍼할 창창
昨: 어제 작, 夜: 밤 야, 夢: 꿈 몽, 江: 강물 강, 湖: 호수 호.

Fall came so abruptly that it surprised the paulownia tree in his garden, causing it to suddenly drop its leaves, and reminding the author that autumn is here for real (he is calculatingly ambiguous about whether it is this year's fall, or the autumn of life that upsets him so). There is no more chance to enjoy water sports.

The reason that the paulownia has become a favorite symbol for fall is that it drops its leaves at the very beginning of the season. Some commentators say that it is also because the size of the paulownia leaf is so big (in China, at least, up to a meter across!) that even one really catches your eye. As this young lad kindly demonstrates, a monstrous leaf or two falling make a good hint that autumn has really arrived.

A sidewalk strewn with leaves this size would make my hole hard to find!

Retching hills

2005-09-28T07:00:00.000+09:00

I'm pretty sure that everyone has had the fun experience of dodging sidewalk pizzas left over from Friday evening revelers. Oh how the Sanchon Hunjang enjoys that weekend morning activity.

Anyway, there's that funny word that Koreans use to mean "to vomit," 오바이트. Most Koreans are convinced that this is the English word for the same action. The Sanchon Hunjang can't even count the number of times that someone has been telling a story that has vomiting in it, they get to that part, make a vivid hand motion...

...and then say "있잖아, 오바이트."

Everyone probably knows that the real Korean words to describe this are 토하다 and the somewhat clinical sounding 구토하다. Either way, that would be 吐: 토할 토. Some people may want to go on at some length about the "dirt coming out of the mouth" aspect of this word, but that kinda thing is just not my bag.

Strangely, many people seem to have not not heard of mountains vomiting. But they do it all the time, at least according to those poems written in classical Chinese by Koreans (or Chinese). Let me cite an example by the star of the 5,000원 note:

〈花石亭〉李珥 (이이) "Flower and Stone Pavilion" by Yi I (1536-1584)

林亭秋已晩, It is already late autumn at the forest pavilion,
騷客意無窮. But there is no end to the poet's thoughts.
遠水連天碧, Distant waters merge into the heavens' blue,
霜楓向日紅. Frosty maples, face the sun's red.
山吐孤月輪, The mountain coughs up a lonely moon-wheel;
江含萬里風. The river holds the wind of ten-thousand li.
寒鴻何處去, To what place are the cold geese going,
聲斷暮雲中? Their sounds disappearing among the evening clouds?

☞ 花: 꽃 화, 石: 돌 석, 亭: 정자 정.
李: 오얏 리, 珥: 귀거리 이.
林: 수풀 림, 亭: 정자 정, 秋: 가을 추, 已: 이미 이, 晩: 늦을 만, 騷: 시체 이름 소, 客: 나그네 객 [소객=시인], 意: 뜻 의, 無: 없을 무, 窮: 다할 궁.
遠: 멀 원, 水: 물 수, 連: 이을 련, 天: 하늘 천, 碧: 푸를 벽, 霜: 서리 상, 楓: 단풍나무 풍, 向: 향할 향, 日: 날 일, 紅: 붉을 홍.
山: 메 산, 吐: 토할 토, 孤: 외로울 고, 月: 달 월, 輪: 바퀴 륜 [월륜=보름 달], 江: 강 강, 含: 머금을 함, 萬: 일만 만, 里: 리(거리를 재는 단위) 리, 風: 바람 풍.
寒: 찰 한, 鴻: 큰기러기 홍, 何: 어찌 하, 處: 곳 처, 去: 갈 거, 聲: 소리 성,斷: 끊을 단, 暮: 저물 모, 雲: 구름 운, 中: 가운데 중.

This is by no means an isolated example. Such famous poets as Du Fu 杜甫 두보 wrote about mountains regurgitating the moon, and Su Shi 蘇軾 소식 (a.k.a. 소동파) even wrote a cycle of five poems about it happening during each of the watches of the night.

Ah, if only those sidewalk 오바이트 could be as poetic...

And I have 1.34 kids, too

2005-09-26T06:44:00.001+09:00

The other day the Sanchon Hunjang had occasion to ride on a city bus. So I jumped on the large horseless carriage. The trip turned out fine. But the bus was very special.

As you can see, it goes to 봉천1.5동. I looked on a map and am able to locate 봉천1동 and 봉천2동 but 봉천1.5동 is nowhere to be seen. It must reside in another dimension. Unfortunately I was going the other direction so I never got to experience the dimensional shift.