Tea Time

A few weeks ago, Sasha and I were visiting one of many department stores in the Seoul area on a search for anything familiar. Our main purpose was to scour the basement grocery department for imported goods that we could stock our cabinets with. We did pretty well as we found curry paste, salsa and nacho chips, dark chocolate, and Sriracha hot sauce -- all items not found in our neighborhood market.

We were also intrigued by the coffee and tea sections on the first floor. I had been looking for something-other-than-Lipton black tea since we arrived, and the local market only sells a variety of green teas and some fruit teas, all of which are sold by the bag (or jar) en mass. I set out to find a familiar box of Earl Grey. (I'm okay with bags, but they shouldn't be Lipton.)

I'm beginning to sound a bit snooty about tea. I should clarify that I don't really know bunk about tea other than the fact that I like to drink Earl Grey with a bit of honey and milk. I've preferred this to coffee for some years and here in Seoul I was missing both dark tea and dark coffee. I found the tea displays and looked longingly at signs I didn't understand for about twenty seconds before two women approached to help me.

Department stores seem to hire hoards of people to sell their goods. In every corner of every department, a uniformed woman waits to assist you in any way she can. From a western perspective this can be overwhelming to the point of annoying, because there is a sense of pressure to buy when an employee follows your every move. On the other hand, if you are looking for information or even to buy a product, a friendly assistant is no more than two feet away. (I've quickly come to accept this cultural difference, even though it takes some level of mind over body to remember the woman following me isn't assuming I'm a thief, nor is she trying to pressure me into buying and leaving her store. Minimum wage is about 4,000 won--or $3--in Korea and jobs at all levels are competitive. The attentive service brings job security to an employee, if not additional commission.)

The women helped me choose a Korean tea--one not stored in teabags, but rather in caps of tightly pressed dried tealeaves wrapped in tissue paper. Each cap brews 2 liters of tea. This tea is fermented, they told me (like so much else in Korea, I thought happily), and has purifying qualities for good health. I was trying something new! But I also included a box of familiar Earl Grey tea in my final order.

At home I brewed my fermented tea and drank it. A lovely tea indeed; my unsophisticated pallet believing it to be much like a black tea. I couldn't tell you what was fermented about this tea. I'm not sure what I had expected, but I found it not unusual in the least. I welcomed a break from the green tea that is as lovely, but somehow slightly tiresome in its unfamiliarity. In the west we hear so much about green tea and its antioxidants, its purifying nature. It's the best tea, the healthiest, and the trendiest, too. This has always made me feel a bit bad about preferring black tea. Could I really be doing my body so badly? Alas, it makes no difference as I now had fermented tea, which purifies AND tastes like what I want to drink.

Fast forward several weeks and I am introduced to tea from a different perspective, a Korean perspective.
I attended a tea workshop in which a tea maker explained her work and shared her tea. "The tea tree," she said, "is where tea leaves come from." With this imagined in my mind as many types of tea tree as there are types of tea - green tea trees, Oolong tea trees, white and black tea trees...

She continued: "Green tea, white tea, Oolong tea, black tea, they all come from the same plant. The difference between these teas is the level of fermentation the leaves are exposed to. Green tea is not fermented at all and, therefore, maintains high levels of vitamin C. Fermented teas lose much of their vitamin C in the process, but maintain their purifying qualities."

This information was so new for me that I had to research it online when I got home. Indeed, green tea and black tea are one in the same and the term fermentation is quite misleading as tea leaves are not treated with vinegar and left to steep for weeks or months, but rather oxidized. Alas, the Camellia sinensis made my evening. My fermented tea is black tea and it is no less beneficial to my body than green tea (so long as I find enough vitamin C elsewhere).

The most rewarding event of the evening (outside of drinking lovely teas, of course) was peering into the tea-maker's large ceramic bowl of lotus tea. This was an infused green tea and I'll tell you, when it is done right, green tea is not tiresome.

Bird brained...

My mother refers to pigeons as something like rats of the sky---even if they don't spend all that much time in the sky.

What she means by this is that they are dirty and gross and, well, horrifying. In addition they are found in every major city in this world (as well as some minor ones, I'm quite sure), just like rats are. Luckily they do not grow to be the size of raccoons, as some urban rodents are known to do. I'm sure that would only make them that much more horrifying. My mom may never travel to another urban local again if she knew she could expect turkey-sized pigeons swooping from the eaves to chance partaking in her morning croissant or afternoon snack.

But that brings me to the real issue at hand when pigeons are being discussed. They are scavengers at best and flock to the places where they know there is food. In some towns pigeons wait patiently (I am anthropomorphizing; perhaps the pigeons would not call it patience?) for scraps to be left behind and then dive in to clean up. In other places, certain parts of Seoul being in this category, there is no waiting, the pigeons move right in as you eat.

This would gross my mother out. In fact, if she reads this, she may think twice about visiting. (Don't worry, ma. We'll do our best to avoid these areas.)

The real message here isn't about the pushiness of the birds (they're hardly unique---they are pigeons, after all); I don't need to tell you about how they turned their heads so one sharp, bright, amber eye could keep us in view as Sasha munched on a pancake; I won't go into their efforts at pouncing this way and plunging that way to position themselves most strategically for the moment a morsel fell from the paper wrapping in his hands to the stone walkway below his feet.

I would rather like to tell you about how the pigeons contribute to the textures of Seoul. For these pigeons are not smooth, feathered beings. These pigeons are waxy and crusty. They are missing legs or parts of feet and some have string tangled around those parts that remain. Their shiny black heads are dull, sticky and grayish. Some look as if they dunked their heads in wet cement, then stood to let it dry in clumps above their beaks and through chunks of top feathers. More than anything they look un-groomed and unkempt. Their appearance makes you wonder where (how) they live and how they missed the lesson about keeping oneself reasonably clean.

Other birds hide their crust and gunk with molt. Perhaps the molted feathers can't be released to fall away due to the general stickiness of the rest of the bird, or perhaps the feathers are hanging on at their roots like loose teeth do in children's mouths. In either case the downy hangers-on only add to the general disorder of the creatures as they scavenge.

These birds are like zombie birds, hobbling and wobbling to and fro as they eye you with one eye and then bounce and turn in order to eye you with the other. With missing feet parts, crusty heads, crooked wings, and dirt-caked beaks, one may wonder if there is anything worth noticing about these creatures. But there is. There is something that is perfect in each of them twice.

Their sharp, amber eyes never miss a beat. Pitch-black pupils so perfectly absent of color see every morsel fall, they see every anxious human arm wave them away, they see every competitor approach. And it's those perfect eyes wrapped up in an imperfect package that makes pigeons a texture of Seoul.

Feeling Home

It was late by the time we arrived at the building that was to be our home in Seoul. We were led up one level to apartment number 204. My tired eyes looked around at what seemed a rather cramped, small space. Our luggage flopped onto the middle of the floor and the room was instantly full--as it happened, the middle was the edges and they met the walls directly.

We slept a roasting hot sleep, the dry air cracking our throats throughout the night, and awoke several hours later when day had broken. We sorted our belongings into the drawers, cabinets, and closet that made up our new surroundings. The floor that had been hidden under our luggage was warm and felt nice under our feet. It looked of wood but didn't really feel like wood, although the telltale grain of lumber was there to be seen, and even felt. Still today, weeks after this first encounter with the space, my eyes follow grain lines across the floor and to the walls, where the texture changes from not quite wooden wood to intricately pressed paper.

The walls are wrapped in texture as well. One wall is fancy with red circles on a cream background. Ribbons of subtle gold run from the floor to the ceiling, sometimes transecting the circles, both large and small. The other walls are decorated in a subtler paper--all off-white color and only diamonds pressed into it at regular intervals. The walls are touchable.

It took me a week to realize it, but everything in this apartment is touchable.

The floor is warm and grained but won't splinter,

The walls are a color that changes with light.

The desk drawers and closet have a laminate luster,
That kind's hard to find but sure out of sight!

There are tiles in the kitchen that I like to touch, too.
Then the glass in the doorway is partly opaque,
Which makes it all rough and hard to see through.
The list could go on, but I'll stop for your sake!

The phrase goes "feel at home," but I didn't feel at home until I felt home. It's all here. Every little bit of it.

...smooth mirrors; small, rough bathroom floor tiles; lampshades of canvas; a glass table top; the bright metal runners that are our cabinet handles; the soft and speckled pink marble that would hold in our thresh; the porcelain of our bathroom; the brand new metal fixtures; more tiles, more paper, more fake wood window sills...

Dots Mean Danger

I feel the earth move under my feet-
and when I feel the dots through the soles of my shoes, I know the trail is changing...

Dots don't mean danger really, but they do suggest great change in terrain. Be it a turn in the walkway or a flight of stairs, the dots warn walkers of changes ahead. Call it the death card of pedestrian existence: you've come this far and great change is imminent.

What am I talking about? The warning blind sidewalk, of course.

Hengtong go-ahead blind sidewalk and warning blind sidewalk have the advantages of combustion resistance, slip prevention, wear resistance, static prevention and easy laying.

What's more, they can be found all over Seoul. Quite literally, actually. Upon arrival, I naively assumed that these tiles, which are laid side-by-side to form a trail down the center of every major city sidewalk and metro station, were a form of divider for what can become heavy pedestrian traffic.

Interestingly, these markers changed in texture from those with four long, raised areas (which could invite forward progress by acting as runners when placed one in front of the other) to those covered with raised dots. The dotted tiles were also often laid side-by-side, and usually in conjunction with the runner tiles in some way. Sometimes the dots were not adjacent to the other tiles at all. I once found a single dot tile in a stairwell landing. There were no other tiles--not dots nor runners--in the building at all.

Try as I might, I can't claim a bit of genius in figuring out that these runners and dots are actually trail for the blind (Is it okay if I don't call them go-aheads and warnings? That's not very visual). A friend told me what they were. And I think a friend told her. Regardless, it's the truth. And these dots are not random.

Above: Dots warn subway riders (the seeing as well as the blind) not to stand too close to the edge of the platform.

Below: Runners lead the way to two metro exits. A group of dotted tiles at the intersection warns of a turn to the left and to the right.

Sometimes the tiles making up the trail are yellow and sometimes they are white. I've even seen pink dots with triangular cuts of black dots wedged into them. This rare aesthetic aspect of such trails may be to engage the sighted in the blind sidewalk experience. If nothing else, it conforms nicely to my vision of the textures of Seoul. In the photo below you see runners in white, and dots, warning of a staircase on the right and the subway boarding dock on the left, in yellow.

Finally, some tiles are just different. At points throughout the city and throughout the metro system one finds circles, not runners. Like those in the photo below, the go-ahead tiles consist of four arcs placed to make a circle. There is a dot in the center of this circle, but the dot is only one dot and the dot is a bit larger than those on a warning tile. All the same, these alternative runner tiles are accompanied by dot tiles to warn of change.

Whether it be to warn of a turn in the flow of traffic, a ledge or a staircase, a raised grate in the sidewalk, or a precariously placed vending machine in the hallway (yes, it happens), dots mean danger. Dots mean pay attention because things are changing.

And dots, I've found, are everywhere.

The closer you come, the sweeter it tastes.

I've often heard the closer one comes to a fruit's native land, the better said fruit will taste. And although I've had ample opportunity to test this theory, I think perhaps it's only making an impact this time around. In my short time in Seoul, I've eaten apples and bananas that taste of a type of heaven that I have not been unfamiliar with in this lifetime.
First, I should clarify a few things:
1. I grew up in northern Michigan, which is apple country and have lived for a number of years in Portland, Oregon, just south of the great apple state of Washington.
2. I visited the Big Banana in Coff's Harbour, Australia when I was 17. They have a banana farm there and I ate a banana split, but I don't remember much more about the place.

Apples do really well in point 1's parts of the world, but we all know apples are not native to these areas. Apples can also be really tasty in point 1's parts of the world, but many may know that familiar tastes can be improved by unfamiliar surroundings. Be it proximity to the apple's native seeding ground or remove from that which is familiar, I find my experience with the round-ish fruit here in South Korea awakens something inside of me. The crunch, the aroma, the sweet juice, (the absence of mealiness), all let me know that this is right. This is what apple--sagwa--was meant to be...

As for point 2, I must admit my ignorance to the world of fruit and most other things when I was 17 years old. A banana is a banana is a banana, I would have assumed. Hence, I ordered a banana split, totally destroying any chance I had of tasting a maturely picked banana. But if the experience of consuming Guinness beer in many parts of the world, save Ireland, is to be my guide (and it will be for the time being), then there is indeed proof that things taste better the closer you get to their place of origin.

The Netherlands is the closest I've come to the original recipe and the Netherlands is where I prefer to drink my Guinness these days. It certainly isn't as good in the U.S. It's not even as good in Germany. (I'm saving the real deal in Ireland for later in life, there is no point in rushing good things and what reason is there to live without reason to live?)

Back to bananas: I'm not in a tropical paradise here. The bananas I consume in Seoul are not gingerly plucked from a tree in the foothills. They come from somewhere else and perhaps it's really only conjecture at all that I am now closer to the tree from which they were pulled than I was in the northern United States. I can safely say that I am closer to their native place in this world, if that counts for anything. At any rate, they taste better. And they do amazing things with themselves that I've not seen before...

They plump like Ball Park Franks. I've had bananas turn brown, become mushy, and take on a sickly sweet flavor that makes them good only for baking banana bread, but I've never had one open itself up and attempt to lay seed on my kitchen counter. That, my dear readers, is beautiful. And it's edible to boot.

While the skins of these popped bananas are speckled with brown, the fruit inside is still firmer and more flavorful than any be-speckled banana I've had the misfortune to peel Stateside or in Europe. It's as if the fruit is telling me in the most natural way possible that it's ready now. Eat.

And eat I do. Here's to fruits you thought you knew!

P.S. I've not yet encountered Guinness here, but I'm sure I'll only try it once when I do... for the sake of experiment, of course.