Back in Brooklyn

On another trip, en route to another flight. Sometimes I fly out of JFK instead of the customary EWR because of significantly cheaper fares. The shuttle would drive on the Cross-Bronx Expressway or the Long Island Expressway and I find myself gazing towards the Verrazano Bridge, shimmering seaboard of the Atlantic and feel suddenly nostalgic.

I am a New Yorker, by birth. As the city evolved from Koch days to Dinkins nights to Guiliani's revolution, I learned to identify myself by my birthplace the farther I ventured from the proximity of the Big Apple. I remember crossing 42nd St with my mother. "Close your eyes!" she admonished, fearful of some triple X vision that would steal my innocence. There was her unfailing closeness to my every step, watchful of potential kidnappers. Strangers tried to give me candy, and she intervened so I never knew if it was an innocuous lollipop or a pedophile in disguise.

Bay Ridge. There was the omnipresent shore a few miles away; we would either go to the beach every weekend or eat fresh seafood as a concession. There were steaming shish kebab carts on the corner and the old man who refused to take money from us. There was the Italian baker who let me choose the biggest, cheesiest Sicilian slices from the local pizzeria. My eyes would rest on old posters of a woman choking and a man helping her, both faceless and yellow, primitive precursors of CPR. I remember window-shopping for Barbie dolls at Century 21 Department stores. I remember opening a single gift on Christmas morning (Santa was all we needed) and never realizing we were poor.

I went to P.S. 314, while my friend Tony across the street went to Catholic school. I used to go there too, until I was harassed by a racist nun. Tony's older brother went to Harvard, and his mother, Cookie or Candy was her name, scolded him for acting "rich." She never forgave the girlfriend in the gleaming convertible and fought hard to prevent him from getting his own phone. Tony never understood it. We watched Michael Jackson videos and Thriller and tried our hand brake-dancing in the streets.

When I was in Brooklyn, my Latina friend AriSally had a house draped in burgundy velvet and all things red. I fought imaginary kungfu with a Chinese boy named Kenny and hung out with a black girl Monique, whose hair were wondrous spirals that just stuck out, no matter what she did. And I had a crush on a Taiwanese boy named, get this, Chiang Kai.

Then we moved to New Jersey. It was the first time I experienced culture shock. Everyone around me was white and Italian, with flowery surnames that ended in vowels. Suddenly, it mattered that I wore boy's socks and I did not have a playroom brimming with recent Cabbage Patch kids. I did not play softball and I was ridiculed because my sentences ended with "thank you" or "please." They smirked when I told them my family only had one car. And I became painfully aware of what I did not have.

Worst of all, I was Asian. Globalization had not hit suburban New Jersey in the late 1980s. There was no Chinese food or appreciation of anything Asian. We were still considered "Orientals" at the time, and anything remotely Pacific in orgin was relegated to the Karate Kid. My nickname at school was Miyogi. They laughed that I knew more about Shaolin and Wudang than I did about "Roseanne."

I learned that kids are cruel, how words and stares can penetrate the bone and make you bleed deeper than any flesh wound. In New York, danger lurked in the streets. Sometimes, I would hear shouting and fighting from my bedside window. In the good neighborhoods of New Jersey, it is a more insidious danger, the kind of bullying that drives students to suicide these days. What's more, I am not sure that inveterate meanness goes away when people grow up.

Enter Jeju Island

This is Korea's answer to Hawaii: a vista of lush greenery, crystal waters, and indecisive volcanoes. Ironic how lava and ash from smoking mountains comprise most of the places we think of as paradise: Hawaii, Jeju, Capri. Out of destruction come our most coveted vacation spots. Perhaps we are more aware of our mortality when we come to these islands. Perhaps we sense that life is fleeting and this beauty within each of us becomes ever more exquisite.

People come to Jeju Island to honeymoon or to fall in love. I came here because I had walked out of my life. My mother followed the footsteps of her favorite Korean TV drama All In, filmed on location here. And apparently, we were accompanied by a plethora of little ones.

Let me explain. South Korea is the mecca of educational after-school programs; students are more ubiquitous than pens. We ran into large groups of students with matching parkas at practically every national site, monument, or museum in Seoul. It must have been field trip week. Some were inquisitive, some were bored, but their sheer numbers made sight-seeing painstakingly slow. Noisy. And they followed us to Jeju. Imagine trying to admire waterfalls and scenic panoramas with giggling kids running past you every two minutes. Or climbing Sunset Peak, a mountaintop with dazzling views of the island, and finding middle-schoolers throwing tissues at each other on the summit. They were impossible to avoid, even at lunch. Some found my mother endearing; they even gave her gifts and shared kimchi with her. Mostly, they just laughed at me. So much for my maternal instinct.

Luckily, I was in good company. I ran into two single Korean gals, teachers on holiday. One was a tomboy, rather petite, dressed in no-nonsense jeans and a t-shirt. The other was feminine and tall, with long ringlets flowing over her ruffled blouse and she sported high-heeled sandals. She carried a purse, and a magenta parasol to keep the sun from infringing upon her fair complexion.

They were exploring a new walking trail that promised to take hikers through all the delights of Jeju, and I joined them. Despite their command of the language, their mastery of trails left some to be desired. Not that I minded. The shores of Jeju were so beautiful. Sapphire seas breaking onto the black rock beaches in a perfect angle of light. We trudged through hills and cliffs overlooking the ocean, and kudos to my friend with the high heels. Along the way, we also traversed unknown roads and wound up stuck on the wrong side of criss-crossing highways.

We laughed through it, and they told me about the rigid Korean social structure, how society expects them to be already paired off, and how single women were regarded as pariahs. "Everyone wants to know why you are still single and then they are scrambling to set you up." I wasn't sure America was so different. They were a few years older than me, approaching forty and I discerned the lines of defiance in their faces. Both were attractive, but seemed somehow wistful. I wondered about their past relationships and the inevitable endings, since neither appeared to trust men. Maybe they were even divorced. Edith Wharton once said, "Our legislation favors divorce, but our social customs don't." Same thing applies to singlehood. Philosophically, we are encouraged to be independent, but socially, we are discouraged.

Single women of a certain age tend to be bold, audacious, and defiant. Maybe it's because we are free. Maybe we just don't care. Or maybe our defiance is a defense mechanism. Maybe underneath it all, we are afraid to be hurt again.

The Flavors of Haggling

If there is one thing I learned from all my travels, it's haggling. Like cuisines and smells, every country has its unique style. Some challenge you; some overwhelm you; some are downright scary. But you can always count on one thing: the victory of getting a bargain, whether it is real or illusory. How often do we strut through a charming marketplace with a swelled head, thinking we've made a fantastic deal and meanwhile doing noticeable damage to our wallets?

Truth is, we get ripped off. We always do. My grandfather used to say, "The seller never loses out. It is only a matter of how much profit he makes." Wise man. Yet it is a ritual, an enticing dance between tourist and native, a contest of wills to see who emerges on top. A game, a negotiation, and the prize is that sparkling, idiosyncratic trinket that seems ever so inviting with no practical use in everyday life.

You can taste culture through the way the indigenous parade their wares. The Thai are sweet-talkers. They smile coaxingly, cajole with finesse, and welcome you into their well-worn taxi-cabs with no meters. Next thing you know, you are drinking Coke or champagne in the lobby of an overpriced jewelry factory or a well-established brothel.

The Chinese, on the other hand, are exceedingly verbal, whether you understand them or not. "How much? I give you good price." They follow you around, flaunt their merchandise, and curse at you in Mandarin if you look and don't buy. Resourceful folks: they've got everything, including open boxes of Viagra pills that you grab by the fistful for twenty yuan.

Egyptians are touchy-feely. For some reason, only swarthy bearded men are vendors in marketplaces; women are non-existent in the working-class strata of the tourism industry. If you window-shop and leave, they grab you, entwining their arms around your waist and pull you into some sinister corner where they stock "the best stuff." Apparently, it doesn't hurt that I'm a Western woman and they are not allowed to see bare skin on their own Muslim women. Between the American concept of personal space, male/female dynamic in a sexist society, and knowing I was not protected under Islamic law, I felt genuinely threatened.

Indians are fighters. Very aggressive. They battle swarming crowds and flies to get to you, they bicker with you over price, and they beat the crap out of any potential competitor. Case in point: Coming back from the Taj Mahal, we were offered plastic souvenirs by an eight-year old boy asking for a dollar a piece. An Indian-American walked by, informing us it's only worth a quarter. In the blink of an eye, the boy rallied his cronies of four and they charged like bulls at the Indian-American. He even forgot his sale. Let me not recount the endless vendor brawls that occurred on the stairs of our tour bus.

Koreans? I don't remember haggling there. I didn't have a desire to take home any isolated memento to remind me of the country. Seoul is not a city of things. Seoul is an experiential city. It inspires us to experience the things that are evanescent. Carpe Diem. To seize the day. To live in the moment: to savor good food, companionship, and the energy of life buzzing around us.

Finding Samcheong Dong Part Deux

The next day I returned to the Changdeokgung palace 6 blocks away, a Unesco World Heritage site and undoubtedly more popular than the Gyeongbukgung. It's interesting how rather arbitrary opinions define the way we think...someone at Unesco liked one palace better than another, therefore it becomes more worthwhile. After all, what really separates the noteworthy and the forgettable, success and failure? Opinion.

The Changdeokgung was similar to its older and larger counterpart, except for an exquisite garden situated on a lake in the inner courtyards, aptly named the Secret Garden. Well, it wasn't so secret anymore. Practically everybody who was anybody who visited South Korea had to get a photo with the Secret Garden. It was a greater celebrity than Lee Byung Hun. Aggressive photographers bellowed at tourists blocking shots of willow branches, pavilions, and mirrorlike ponds.

Truth was, the Secret Garden wasn't photogenic. Digitally, the waters came out muddy, and the trees appeared awkward and crooked, gangly sprouting teenagers with leaves. I wondered how many enjoyed the living beauty of such terraced landscapes, since most did not lift their eyes from the camera's viewfinder. Reminded me of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, prosaic men who preferred to see the dark silhouettes of things rather than the things themselves. When faced with the possibility of something real, do we make the leap?

As I left, I saw two fellow backpackers like myself. (Okay, so I really wasn't a backpacker yet, but I pretended to be one in my mother's absence. It made me feel more adventurous.) One was a mild-mannered Korean girl and the other, a beautiful Caucasian girl with an almost tangible exuberance for life. They looked like college students. I introduced myself and invited them to coffee to escape the sweltering heat.

Where, you ask? Samcheong Dong, of course!

Over tea and Kahlua, they told me they were sisters, visiting from Belgium. My bewilderment must have surfaced in my face, because Sun Mee, the Korean girl, leaned forward. "I was adopted. I'm Belgian. People come up and speak to me in Korean, but I have no idea what they are saying."

"It terrifies her," the emerald-eyed Cheryl laughed. "She shakes her head and turns away. Really quickly."

"She's not afraid of anything," Sun Mee countered. "She does whatever gets into her head. Moving out, quitting jobs, moving in with her boyfriend, takes off whenever to see the world."

"She thinks too much and she's too responsible," Cheryl gently berated. "It took forever to get her to Korea."

"Why Korea?" I asked.

"I just wanted to see the country I left when I was 6 months old. And I want to meet my mother."

I found out later that she did meet her birth mother. That it was like two strangers meeting, and that it felt like coming home. How they visited temples, Yangsan, museums, ate black pork dinners together, and still felt out of place, the residual memory of how things could have been permeating their conversation. Yet they still talk, though both are shy.

I realized that no matter where you go, you still have roots. Whether it is near or far, whether it hurts or not, your flesh calls to you like a conscience. Blood is a magnet; it eventually brings you home. I remembered I had left my mother back at the hotel.

I lost touch with Sun Mee soon after. But I wrote this for her, a Rendez-vous*.


Perhaps she will embrace the birth mother.
Marvel at the eyelid's flat plain, its singular whiteness
undisturbed by a crease, so like her own.

The woman's hair would be cropped close to the scalp
or pulled into a bun, speckled grey from weathering Korean snow.
And the girl would spot stray hairs, black as a calligrapher's ink.

protruding from the woman's neat ensemble, the disarray
she must have felt, finding herself with child. Aneong hay say oh?
the girl might ask, hesitation inflecting the vowels incorrectly.

This is not the question she wants to ask. Speech suspended in the
throat like a muffled bird. The woman responds in English, language
native to neither, but a common tongue and good enough.

Meanwhile her sister, a Belgian, is waiting.
She's the landscape of an entire country onto herself, steely confidence,
wheat shade of hair, and green eyes open to all they can hold.

The girl is thinking of tomorrow when she departs, what to say, and
how to pour feeling into it. Outside the sky is thundering.
She's hoping the silence between strangers is
like a break in sound, resting
between great chords of music.


*First published in the River Poets Journal, 2009

Finding Samcheong Dong

I love ruins. Old buildings, architecture, decrepit rocks that are shadows of their glorious past; they all make me feel connected to the long line of human history, that continuum on which we are mere specks, no matter how important we think we are.

So I am fascinated by the past. I don't know what that says about my optimism or ability to move on. All I know is that I tend to be more interested in dead stones and departed people than I am about the latest figment of pop culture. (Who the heck is Kim Kardashian?)

In Seoul, my idea of fun is hitting every archaic imperial palace and strolling around, imbibing the atmosphere of kings and queens who reigned centuries ago. I believe that karma exists not only in people, but in places. The walls and floors around us absorb the love, faith, power, struggle, and blood of generations past. That karma, the karma of places, can influence events of the future. I wandered about the Gyeongbokgung, the largest royal palace in Seoul, my eyes drinking in every detail. I imagined a lonely concubine in the courtyard; a stately mandarin in the official hall.

My mother nudged me forward, pointing at our empty water bottles and the grating sun of about 93 degrees Fahrenheit. She surveyed the lake, ceilings, and buildings; then sat in the shade waiting as I completed my circuitous tour. "I don't see what all the fuss is about," she confided, shrugging. "They all look the same. Upturned eaves, pavilions, elaborate red and green etchings; it looks like the Forbidden City, except the roof is grey." I glanced around, hoping no Koreans understood Vietnamese. So much for my grand imaginings of the past.

We left, both annoyed; she feeling exhausted and me feeling slighted because I was not ready to leave. Like any good mother and daughter pair, she rushed me, I snapped, and we fought. Somehow, we managed to miss a turn, a street, and the metro station. We ended up lost.

Now, in a wonderfully organized city like Seoul, it is impossible to really be lost, even for the directionally challenged like us. We poured over the map and located another metro station within a few blocks. I grated my teeth the entire way, since it made such a huge difference in the grand scheme of things and it was naturally all her fault.

A block from the metro station, there were crowds of people heading into a side street. The station was faintly visible in the distance, beyond the teeming heads rushing into that alley way like ants. I looked at my mother and she nodded. What do we do when we see everyone else jumping off a bridge? We follow.

At first it was just people, and I wondered if we joined a rat race, literally. Gradually, shops and cafes began to emerge from the dust of foot-traffic. Tasty barbeques and scallion pancakes grilling in the street. Green-tea and red bean ice cream shops. Intoxicating smells. Artsy jewelry like turquoise and moonstone. Snazzy boutiques that even I, clearly no fashionista, could appreciate. We walked the entire 1.6 miles of that neighborhood without tiring.

"What is this place?" I wondered aloud.

A friendly bystander replied: "Samcheong Dong."

Samcheong Dong!

Todd, a NYC friend who had visited Seoul with native Koreans, recommended Samcheong Dong as one of the coolest neighborhoods in the city, kind of like Brooklyn or Soho. I had searched for it, but it wasn't marked on any of the maps and I was forced to bypass it. And if we hadn't gotten lost, we would never have found it.

I thought about that as my mother and I sat down in a cafe. I thought about it as she sipped some pomegranate-flavored green tea aloe vera drink and I drank my brandy infused cappuccino. I thought about all the things I was searching for with no luck: love, inspiration, a sense of self and the knowledge that I was not just living, but going somewhere. The somewhere I landed was not where I wanted to be, and I woke up one morning lost to myself.

So maybe we need to be lost before finding our way. Maybe there is no roadmap to the best things in life. And like Samcheong Dong, maybe I'll find them not when I'm looking, but when I'm desperate to make a quick exit.

South Korea, Asians, and Bathtubs

I had met Allison and Jeremy on a tour of Egypt and Jordan two years ago. When you share a Turkish bath, a hookah, and forays into the land of Jesus together, I guess you are eternally bonded. So when I discovered they were teaching English in Suwon, I promptly invited myself over.

They lived in a charming little apartment decorated with paper lanterns. I was surprised by how native they had become, since both were white as apple pie. Allison pranced to the sounds of K-pop, catchy songs with one or two words in English. "Oh baby, oh baby," she'd moan before breaking into a barrage of Korean syllables, synchronized to tunes of a synthesizer.

Jeremy took me to eat kimchi and galbi, yelling at the waiter with a ferocity I'd never seen. "Yokyo!" "Don't worry," he'd tell me, noting my embarassment. "They don't come unless you are loud. In Korea, they don't get tips so they make no pretense at being nice. They want to serve you and be done with it."

They taught me to wave down a taxi by fluttering my fingers like a butterfly. Apparently, waving to someone with upright fingers is offensive, equivalent to giving them the finger. Well, I'd already made that mistake at the airport. There I was, carting my mother's suitcases overflowing with just-in-case crackers and cookies, wondering why taxis honked and sped up when I tried to flag them down. We finally took the train.

Then they introduced me to the bathroom. There were clever heating pads on the toilet seat, by which I am deeply impressed. And there was the bathub. Or lack of it. The tile floor extended another three feet from the sink. Breaking the continuity was a drain, sitting like a pothole in the middle of traffic. A shower head dangled from above.

"Oh, didn't you know?" Allison asked me, "Asians don't take baths." Actually, I didn't. Or maybe I did. The only time I recall ever taking a bath was when we couldn't go to the beach and my mother filled the tub as a makeshift swimming pool. I was six. Otherwise, I took showers all my life. Hmm...

It's funny what grabs hold of our imagination. Suddenly, it became clear. We don't take baths in our bathtubs. My mother stocks unopened cosmetics there. My aunt has a lovely Jacuzzi chock full of dusty VHS tapes. My great-aunt's greenhouse resides in her tub, complete with a sunroof.

But it was true beyond my Vietnamese family. My best friend's parents, South Indians in San Diego, store a repository of clothes in their hot tub. I surveyed my Chinese and Filipino friends on their parents' use of bathtubs, layering in the geographic diversity of Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, and Texas.

The response was unanimous: STORAGE. Plants, clothes, toys kids had outgrown, unused but functional electronics, extra linen, knick-knacks, wedding paraphernalia, etc. Apparently, whatever our parents didn't know what to do with, they put in the bathtub. Kind of like the kitchen sink. It's an Asian parent thing.

Okay, I don't admit to knowing what that's all about. Maybe they are practical people who don't understand space without utility. Maybe it's about holding on to culture, this stubborn tradition of not taking baths. Maybe they don't want to waste water. Maybe it's about baggage. Maybe it's about not letting go of certain things.

I wonder if we will ever understand the enigma of our parents.

Me and My Scar Go to the Jingabong

The first stop on this journey was South Korea, galvanized by friends who were teaching English in Suwon (never underestimate the power of a friend to get you out of your comfort zone). Suwon is twenty miles from Seoul and an industrial center where companies like Samsung have their headquarters.



Straight away, I was awed by the grace of Korean women and the chauvinism of Korean men. In airports, ladies nimbly push carts of luggage while men walk behind them empty-handed. In trying to get an oversized suitcase off the baggage conveyor belt, I appealed to a strapping young Korean man beside me. He seemed bewildered, pointed at me, pointed to himself, shrugged and stalked off. So much for chivalry.



Another custom is the love of communal heated baths, affectionately referred to as the Jingabong. Everyone swims stark naked in these 100 degree pools, most often filled with spring water. Reminiscent of old Roman baths, this is a social activity with folks chatting, reading magazines, etc. and yes, they can be co-ed. Being a fan of spas, saunas, whirlpools, and anything that causes me to sweat on a cold day, you'd think I'd be first to hit the Jingabong, right?



Wrong. Remember that ordeal with my body? It culminated in a pretty conspicuous scar. Let's just say the contrast is startling and my belly has not seen the light of day since. So I decided to stay away. And I found out how smokers felt trying to quit. For four days, it was torturous. Then I did the classic American thing: I gave in.



Before I knew it, I donned a cotton robe and rushed down to the Jingabong. Gingerly, I stepped into the water and remembered the humiliation of my eight year old self when someone pointed out that my fly was unzipped. I waited for someone to point out the zipper in my flesh. I imagined those beautiful Korean women, preening themselves like swans, wrinkling their noses at my imperfection. I could almost hear the snickers.



Then I looked up and realized that no one was looking at me. They were carrying on conversations, checking out tabloids, falling asleep in recliners in that blissful state between sleep and relaxation. No one even bat an eyelash when I moved from one side of the pool to another.



I discovered that I was not nearly as important to everyone else as I thought I was. That's the strange thing about insecurity; we expect people to spend far more time thinking about us (and our faults) than they actually do.



My scar? It finally got some fresh air. And I got to sit in a heated thermal spa brimming with spring water. It was fabulous. Some people say that you can touch divinity through meditation. I think a Jingabong could get you there with a lot less work.