The rock star and the circus animal
Trip Start
Aug 26, 2007
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2
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Trip End
Aug 25, 2008
Cheonan,
Korea Rep.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
And for all i knew, that was exactly what lay beyond the curtains and over the hills during that first week of quarientation.The hours ticked by and our freedom loomed. Shirts were ironed and (where present) ties adjusted, and then we the motley teachers met out Korean counterparts, our colleagues for the next year or more. There were handshakes and bows and where a common language existed pleasantries were exchanged.
My three co-teachers made good our escape from the compound, the thin road winding through wet green hills, between rice paddies, past little houses with prefabricated pagoda-style roofs.
where was my endless, ultimate city? where were the bright lights and big screens? i had half-expected jet-packs and hover-cars. instead we were overtaking tractors streaked with mud.
long before we had left the farms behind i was told we about to reach my apartment. all i could see were fields of rice, and a few shops. we parked outside the motorcycle repair shop and ascended the steep external stairway.
my apartment - the penthouse - wasn't quite ready for me.
children gather to stare at the circus freak
the wall-paper and flooring were still going up and down. but after a week of quarientation and being told to expect a studio apartment, and a small one at that, i was rather shocked to count one two three bedrooms and one two bathrooms, as well as a living room and a rooftop terrace that looked out over the entirety of my tiny town and its encompassing rice paddies.how many people would i be sharing this penthouse with? not one - it was all mine. the rock star treatment. all i needed was some furniture. a lot of it.
while the penthouse was being finished off we went to visit my main school. I was still reeling from the rurality of my neighbourhood when we turned off the road onto a narower road, drove through the rice paddies and past the duck farms. It was raining lightly and mist was curling down over the hills. We turned a final corner onto a muddy playground. The only signs of life were three little urchins standing on a metal scaffold, one of them with his pants around his ankles, pissing freely out out out into the air, the rain, the mud. my urbane rock star sensibility was in tatters.
gradually i come to better understand my status here; part rock-star, part circus animal. as i walk around my schools, i am tossed peanuts of english, goaded into performing a few choice words of my own. Korean words excite screams of delight. English words elicit stunned silences. After some classes the students gather around to shake my hands or to beg for an autograph.
they bow before the rock star
In the street i can make middle school girls giggle or scream just by waiting for a bus. When the novelty of my height and my eyebrow ring wears off the students move closer, notice my apparently copious amounts of arm hair, mime shaving, suggest that i am a monkey. the finest of lines exist betweent he rock star and the circus animal.there is no uncertainty at the dinner table though. Being in a very traditional province and in a country area, all of the social meals are very very traditional affairs, which means we sit on the floor, eat huge volumes of food, and observe a very strict decorum when offering and receiving drinks. Entire tumblers of soju are wasted for the sake of these observances. if an older man has an empty glass, dump your own, offer it to him, fill it, let him sip it, dump the rest, and offer it back to you. or he could down the lot of it, like my principal does.
at the dinner table i do my best to fold myself under the low table, my knees bulging out and my back curving over. most of the food makes it from bowl to mouth but korean metal chopsticks are slippery and there is still a goodly volume of spillage. Once the laughter about my awkward limbs and incorrect glass handling subsides the questions begin about why i am not eating more (ie any) meat, how i like the korean food (to which i refrain from answering in full and offering only 'very spicy'), and - once the principal has down enough (ie not many) drinks and turned beetroot red - which of my co-teachers is the prettiest.
view of the sticks
The rock star doesn't dine publically - he relishes 'western food' in his penthouse. in restaurants it is always the circus animal, performing the same old trick, driving his little car around in circles, while the audience stares and throws peanuts.after the initial shock of arriving at my school in the sticks, life began to normalise and i found out just how lucky i am to be teaching where i am. and never do i feel this so much as when the principal starts drinking, and turns gloriously red. it was on one such night that i discovered that my penthouse is virtually across the road from a karaoke bar. and that the principal and only the principal loves karaoke. but in a culture of serious elder-veneration, if the principal say sing, you sing.
so we descended to the smoky depths, the woman clustered at the back of the room, and the men closed in on the screen (because thats how they do things here), and began to sing. as long as the women poured drinks and rattled tambourines they were not otherwise needed. when finally they were dragged to the microphones, they were cut off before their song finished. so the men sang, the vice principal danced, did a cartwheel and left early. the rock star took his microphone in a hail of peanuts, screamed out two songs that only he understood, and then re-joined the ring of swaying embracing men. as the korean ballads became longer the principal began dancing with various members of staff. when it was the turn of the rock star the dance was slow and close, his sombre head resting on my shoulder. and for that one perfect moment i was part of the room, perfectlt integrated, no longer rock star or circus freak, and definitely not the strangest man in the room. the dance ended with a couple of twirls, the principal rejoined the ring of men. A few songs later he was hanging from the necks of two others teachers, his feet in the air like a monkey.
the next day, though the principal didn't turn up for work and i was once more both rock star and circus freak, living in my penthouse, waving to my fans who shout 'i love you' into the staffroom, performing for peanuts, babbling unintelligibly, and stuck in the captivity of my tiny one-street town.
there is to be no eternal city, just this street, three schools and as many bedrooms. Had i been dropped in that fantasy city i would have missed out on this strange and surreal corner of the world, a corner that will be gone one day, swept away by a tide of rock star and circus animals. but for now it is just me, turning heads every time i step onto a bus or into a classroom, more perplexed than any caged beast, and more ludicrous than any rock star.
