Namdaemun = panic attack!

By the time I arrived in May of 1994, it was already quite hot and humid in Korea. People are often surprised that I don’t like hot, sticky weather, saying “but you’re Mexican, aren’t you used to being warm?” I grew up in Mexico City, where temperatures rarely make it over 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and there is practically no humidity. I wasn’t raised in a rain forest, and that is exactly what Korea feels like in the summer. I wasn’t prepared to spend the next four months sweaty and sticky. Or
the next fifteen summers, for that matter.

Within a few days of settling in, Mom announced that she would be taking me downtown to check out Myeong-dong and Namdaemun Market, two very popular neighborhoods in Seoul.

Remember that I previously mentioned that I didn’t really experience “culture shock”? Well, definitely not in the context that it was difficult for me to adapt to life in Korea – but I have been through a few shocks in my life, and one panic attack. All because I lived here.

Myeong-dong and Namdaemun Market are right in the middle of Seoul, in between the city’s business district, City Hall, and Namsan Mountain. They are both shopping districts, but vastly different; Myeong-dong is modern, filled with restaurants, chic boutiques and stores, coffee shops, and bars, while Namdaemun Market is an old-fashioned market whose narrow roads and alleys are filled with street stands. The one thing they both have in common: they are always jam-packed with people.

Seoul is a very large city, and it has grown considerably since I first moved there, but as its size has expanded, so has its population: there are over 10 million people in the metropolitan area. So no matter where you go, at what time of the day or night, there will be people. Lots of people.

Myeong-dong was our first stop that morning. We got there early enough to watch the vendors open their shops and set up their street stands. Older ladies, adorably dressed in bright blouses with flower patterns and ill-matched checkered or plaid pants, swept the entrances to their stores and greeted each other loudly. Within minutes there were people everywhere, working, selling, shopping, talking on their cell phones, yelling at each other across alleys, etc.

I’m not going to condescend and pretend like Mexico City isn’t busy and over populated. There are even more people there than in Seoul. But when you’re smaller, the world looks bigger, and if the world you’re in speaks a language you’ve never heard before, it can be overwhelming. I started getting nervous and a little uncomfortable. I wanted to shop and look in the stores, and enjoy what was a really cool, chic, fashionable area… but I was getting light-headed. So Mom suggested we stop somewhere and get a bite to eat.

For us Westerners, sitting down at a table to eat is a social event: we talk through the meal, often dragging it out because we get so involved in our conversations. But for Asians, that’s not really the case, especially Koreans. Meal time is quiet time, they eat quickly, and they move on. The socializing is done before or after eating. After a year of living in Korea, my Mom had adopted that custom most likely out necessity: she had lived with her Korean in-laws, and she worked with Koreans. If she took her time eating like a Westerner, she would end up sitting at the table by herself, halfway done through her meal while everyone else was cleaning up their plates.

But I was fresh off the plane, so I gabbed on and on as my mom swiftly ate her “bibimbap,” a delicious mix of steamed rice, a fried egg, vegetables, sesame seed oil, and red pepper paste (to this day, one of my favorite Korean dishes). By my third spoonful, Mom was already done and getting the check. Waiting patiently, she explained that I would have to pick up the pace if I didn’t want to end up eating on my own all the time. Almost two decades later, I am still a slow eater. It’s one of the few Korean customs that I stubbornly refused to adopt because I enjoy talking during meals – sometimes too much – and I like tasting my food.

In keeping with the crowded, fast-paced, loud, and slightly overwhelming rhythm of the day, we headed to Namdaemun Market.

*Here is an informational ditty, folks!*
The word “Namdaemun” means “the great south gate” of the wall that used to surround and protect Seoul during feudal times, which still stands as a strong and
beautiful testament of traditional Korean artistry and architecture. The massive
market sprung up next to this ancient gate and it has been there dating back as
far as the early 1400s, but what stands today in terms of buildings and
businesses can be traced to the end of the Korean War, in the 1950s. Since
2007, the city government has funded renovations to the buildings and
businesses, improving the market’s efficiency and appeal.

*Now back to our regular program…*
There was no way anything could have prepared me for Namdaemun Market. Its
chaos is contained within several city blocks, filled with buildings stacked next to each other covered in neon signs and billboards, which are in turn surrounded by street vendors with huge stands teeming with just about anything one could possibly ever want to buy. The market is so huge, that one can actually shop by “categories,” as in food, textiles, clothes, kitchen ware, beauty products, herbs, Western and Eastern medicines, underwear and socks, china sets, and the list goes on and on. Entire buildings are dedicated to one single category or a few, and the variety of goods for sale is mind-boggling.

I don’t remember whether my Mom took me to Namdaemun on a weekday or the weekend, but that wouldn’t have made a difference because at any given time there are probably over a million people there – without factoring in the vendors, of course. Walking as slowly as I could, because the flow of people carried me from stand to stand, I told myself that the best way to approach this experience was in pieces, one at a time.

First, I spotted several stacks of glass jars with ginseng roots floating in oils and alcohol, looking like small trees in chloroform, surrounded by bright red and golden Chinese characters. Right next to that, a store sold dried spices, roots, fish and vegetables in large tubs that reached as high as my hips. I stepped closer to look and smell the fish and an old lady with really curly black hair and a bright flowered shirt
that did not match her polka-dotted pants said something to me in Korean that I
couldn’t make out, so I bowed politely and scattered away.

I spotted my Mom looking at olive green clay flower vases a few stands over and tried to make my way toward her, but I ran into a huge pile of discount clothes with a man standing atop, yelling through a megaphone, as a crowd of women reached and climbed over me to rummage through pants and blouses. So I did what I hadn’t done since I was three years old and got lost at the supermarket: I yelled for my Mommy, in complete desperation. I couldn’t breathe, my ears were ringing, my head was spinning and my sight was all blotchy, I couldn’t focus on anything. My Mom’s hand reached in and pulled me away from the megaphone wielding man and the ladies attacking the mountain of discount clothes, held me and talked to me until I calmed down. Then she took me home and recovering from what had been my first and only panic attack, I made her promise me to never, ever take me to that place again.

Surprisingly, I managed to avoid Namdaemun Market since 1994 until last summer, before my Mom and Dad moved to Peru and she begged me to go help her pick out – and carry – souvenirs and crafts for friends and Dad’s coworkers. She promised me lunch and Starbucks, so how could I refuse? The renovations and government-funded makeovers really showed this time around. The roads were wider and cleaner, the buildings looked newer and it wasn’t quite as noisy and full of people as the first – and last – time I’d been there. I was apprehensive at first, but fifteen years of other overcrowded markets and places in Korea had toughened me up, and I found that I was actually comfortable. I wasn’t little this time and the world no longer looked so big, and speaking Korean also helped; I understood every sign and billboard, and everything people said around me. Well, everything except the bright red and gold Chinese characters.

We walked around until we found the building my Mom was looking for, whose category was traditional Korean arts and crafts. She bought twenty mother-of-pearl inlaid jewelry boxes, thirty card holders, and twenty pocket mirrors. The lady who owned the locale was so thrilled she walked my Mom to the ATM when she realized she didn’t have enough cash, gave me an ice-cold coffee in a can, and threw in a bunch of key chains as “service,” Koreans’ expression for “free gift.”

So my second time in Namdaemun didn’t involve a panic attack. To my surprise, I enjoyed it and if someone asked me to go back now, I’d be happy to. Perhaps what changed the most wasn’t the market, it was me. Maybe time and age helped me appreciate the experience and I am better at taking it all in at once, as well as one little piece at a time. Sixteen years later, Namdaemun Market wasn’t scary anymore, or overwhelming, I wasn’t a kid and I didn’t need my Mommy to rescue me.

The one thing that has definitely not changed at all is that Korea is as hot and steamy as a rain forest in the summer. Both visits to Namdaemun involved me sweating bullets and feeling sticky and gross, dreading the heat and complaining about it profusely. Just like my inability to read Chinese characters, my deep dislike of hot and humid weather will never change.

30 days: let the countdown begin…

On May 12, I will leave Korea, again. I refuse to say that it’s for the last time, or that I will never come back, because life and its twists keep bringing me back here, and so far I have spent half of my life in this country.

However, this is the first time that I realize how strongly I have been shaped and affected by this place, its culture and its people. This is the first time that I see how much I am really going to miss Korea. This is the first time that I really don’t want to leave.

There is no better time than now to begin writing about my life here, the myriads of memories that I have gained and treasure from this country, the lessons it has taught me, the amazing people who have come into my life because I was here, and all the ways that I became who I am because of Korea.

I moved here in May of 1994, having just turned 13 years old, from Mexico City, Mexico. The culture shock that awaited me should have been intense, especially for a teenager, but surprisingly, I never experienced it. My father had passed away in January and perhaps I was still reeling from that loss, so moving to a completely different country and having the opportunity to become a completely different person was actually a welcome change.

Everything about Korea was different: the smells, the colors, the sounds, people, food, language, etc. Nothing was familiar. I was completely out of my element and had been taken out of my comfort zone, but as uncomfortable as I felt, I was also excited and eager to explore this brand new place.

My mother and I shared a tiny apartment in one of Seoul’s oldest neighborhoods at the top of a small hill, from which I could see the Han River and the lights of the high-rises and cars on the freeway reflecting over the water at night.

My mother had her bedroom, which barely fit her dressers and her bed, the other room had her work desk and computer, her books, and enough room for me to sleep on a Korean-style mattress on the floor. The bathroom was also quite small, with a “tub” that could not have measured more than 3×3 feet. The kitchen, like the rest of the apartment, was so tiny that only one person could be in it at a time. When my mom lived on her own, it was enough for her, but it quickly became obvious that I needed my own space. We eventually moved to the villa across from ours, to a much roomier apartment and although we all still had to share a bathroom, I had my own bedroom and I could take a bubble bath if I rested my legs over the edge of the tub.

Outside of our apartment villa was a 400-year old ginkgo tree that miraculously managed to die and come back to life in all its green leafy glory every year with no gardeners’ help. I liked sitting at the foot of the ginkgo at night, especially in the summer, and hear the cicadas sing incessantly, the hot humidity encouraging their crazed mating calls.

I remember watching the lights from the buildings reflecting on the water, the cars rushing over the river on Panpo Bridge, hearing the sounds coming from the houses and apartments in my alley, all huddled together with orange and green thatched roofs that grazed each other. People speaking Korean, some even English, as the neighborhood was popular with foreigners. Even late into the night I could make out the sound of someone practicing on their piano or their violin, the two favorite instruments of Korean children. Smells from food whose names I could not even pronounce or identify floated through the air and intrigued me; I was never a picky eater and living here strengthened my sense of culinary adventure.

What I remember most is how I felt; alone and accompanied at the same time. This one Mexican girl who now called Seoul home, who was there to stay as far as she could see into the future. Surrounded by the millions of strangers who inhabited that huge, bustling city, that did not even stop to rest at night. I was excited and intimidated, and even at that young age I already had the sense that my entire life would be different and special because of who I was and where I was. I knew there was a bigger picture even before I could see it.

That was 17 years ago and the bigger picture that I sensed then is now clear, and I still remember exactly how my 13-year-old self’s skin tingled and how my stomach turned.

I went back a few months ago to see if the old apartment was still there; the villa has been bulldozed and a newer, more modern apartment building replaced it. The ginkgo tree, however, is still there, imposing and strong, its trunk wider than my arms could ever reach when I tried to hug it. It is protected by an iron fence, and there is a plaque on the fence that declares it “Cultural National Treasure #716.”

That’s one of the fascinating things about Korea; little things, like a tree that lives for hundreds of years, last longer and are often considered more valuable than buildings and man-made structures. That’s one of the lessons it taught me, to appreciate the importance of memories and experiences that are impalpable over the value of possessions or things.