After our return from the ancient kingdom , we attended a pair of music and ballet performances in Seoul through the university. The first was the annual concert of the Sungshin Philharmonic Orchestra in late October: Reinicke: Flute Concerto in D Major; Mendelssohn: Piano Concerto No. 1; and Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique.  They performed in the Seoul Center for the Arts, one of the great monumental and singularly impressive performance halls in the city,

Remember that Sungshin is a women’s university and this full symphonic orchestra is entirely personed by women, with one exception, its conductor.  What was I thinking? Some Like It Hot? I hadn’t actually projected the composition of the orchestra, but out of a subconscious lurk I must have expected some male forms on stage. So I share my naivety with you as I report this aggregation was in fact hot, and not some but all of the audience liked it, immensely so and with deep appreciation – many curtain calls and an ultimate encore of the university’s alma mater. The conductor was vigorous throughout the engagement, his orchestra rapt, precise, and sensitive to the demanding requirements of the varied program. Sungshin’s President Ho Jin Shim was the audience’s most enthusiastic member, as it should only be. We had tea with her later and Teresa Zhung, the university’s Coordinator of Faculty and Student Exchange Programs, a Korean-American and graduate of Penn State, who has been a great friend here. President Shim is a leader in the performing arts in Korea and is also President of the National Ballet. She is a woman of deep intensity, intelligence, determination, definitely to be reckoned with, and remarkably youthful.

As a reward for our enthusiasm, on a balmy warm late October Saturday afternoon the following week, we were invited to the National Ballet Theatre to see Prince Hodong, based on a folktale of romance, intrigue, personal commitment, fidelity, betrayal, and brick wall tragedy Romeo and Juliette style.  The performance was in another superb venue.  This is a traditional ballet toes down, and the members limbed with grace and graced with exquisite faces, particularly Prince Hodong who posed gladly with Barbara, as you will see. The princess was sadly unavailable to pose with me.

There were many children in the audience, most of them small, but I did not hear one squeak, shout, whimper, or cry from any of them. The house supplied great big cushions so the children could see the stage clearly and be comfortable in their seats.  I refrain from the urge to generalize here at length, but it appears – from other events and observations in public places – that children receive consideration and are afforded amenities that enable them to be an appropriate part of whatever is going on.  The story of the prince and princess has the irresistible force of folktale of course, something Jungian, an Urmacht, which simply reaches for the human heart however small – the very people for whom folktale was invented to see them on through life with warnings, promises, and understanding – and never lets go.  I have seen Korean films based on other folktales, and they have this same impact  transferred into that medium. Recently I screened A Tale of Two Sisters for my Memory, Longing and Reunion class, the sixth time a Korean film (which began in 1926, in Seoul) had been drawn from the folktale Jungwha (rose) and Hongryeon (lotus), this time by Kim, Ji Woon, who adapted it in accordance with his considerable talent.

We flew to Beijing just after Election Day in November and were happy for the buffer of the Pacific Ocean and the welcoming arms of another continent to comfort us in the wake of the ignorance of  a turkey brained electorate back home. Beijing was totally wonderful, and as two total tourists on this trip, we could have assumed that China was a land of interminable delights, with people going about their daily lives with ease and freedom, except for the reminder on one of our five days there when the city was unequivocally blanketed, with pollution, and our awareness of the hideous cancers it generates and the Chinese government’s primitive stance on mental health.

No doubt Beijing is a showcase flexing with the marvelous muscles of an Olympic capitalism, stirring memories of our heyday but with soured ripples of discomfort two Americans well aware that, as Duke Ellington penned it “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,” back home again in Indiana,* in the other forty-nine states of economic emergency. Among the pleasures of the city was our stay in a fivestar hotel, The Kerry Center, of the Shangri-La worldwide chain, at very reasonable rates with a superb staff, equipped with perfect English and an encyclopedic knowledge of all aspects of the city.

Along with this bounty, and knowing even less (love minus infinity) Chinese than Korean, we taxied to every spot, and we covered the basic “touristic” (as the menus in Greece always proudly proclaimed) tour sites, striking out first for the Great Wall on our first full day, a section  about an hour and a half away. A ski lift, touted as a cable car, deposits visitors after angling over a deep ravine just below the wall. The pitch of the paving of the wall sent us down nearly precipitously only to be confronted with an equally challenging rise. If you have any doubts about the wonders of the views, the structure and the awe that comes from thinking about who built this (slaves and prisoners) over the better, parts of the first two millennia ACE they dissipate once you are underway because no matter what section of the wall you choose to visit and the rubber of your soles makes contact, those who had to do the forced construction experienced the square root of agony paramount to the pyramids, gulags, and Nazi labor camps.  And as everyone learns either through study or a guidebook, it didn’t keep anyone out.

Tienneman Square is flat but still level with high discomfort. There is no bench or other sitting surface other than the stone of its flooring. It is surrounded by monolithic buildings of Stalinist-inspired  immediately post revolutionary victory of the late 1940’s wholly utilitarian construction. It’s full of police, uniformed and otherwise, and CCTV surveillance abounds.

But across a wide, wide street lies the Forbidden City of Imperial China, endless square meters of it, all of it unfolding before your eyes and tiring as its magnitude makes it, an appetite for more, and more, and more of it pulled us all the way through to the opposite gate nearly four hours later. Yes, we’re lingerers, and one feels bewitched, absorbed, and with some Lucretian atoms of oneself left behind. Choose one part? The garden.

We also took a taxi to the Summer Palace on a cloudy and sharp Sunday and saw Beijing’s first imperial telephone  from 1906, state of the art and the height of western technology at the time. The emperor’s minister of communication oversaw the system’s installation and maintenance.  “Dear Skype, you’d never believe what your evolutionary progenitor looked like….” This is another unforgettable place with  Buddhist temple at the top of a, as the brochure put it,  “very cardiovascularly challenging ascent of hundreds of steps.” The temple rises behind a five-tiered pagoda.

Beijing also has a thriving contemporary art scene, ala Soho of old, Chelsea, and Dumbo, in a district called “796” somewhat recalling the artists’studios housed in the Brooklyn Naval Yard; most of the galleries are located in former factories dating from the 1950’s deserted with changes in technology and the modern manufacturing associated with it. Some of the buildings and their former chimneys have an imposing social realismic  and cubistic rake to them.

The last morning of our stay – the angelic hotel allowed us to retain our room until 3pm – a perfect cold autumn deep blue skied day we visited a neighborhood with homes dating back in to the 17th century, pedaled in a rickshaw by the driver featured in Barbara’s photographs of the excursion; he took us around the lake which many of the homes looked out upon, stopping here and there so we could visit and tour some of the homes; they housed families at night and were attended museums by day, with staff who spoke excellent English. We took the opportunity to get married imperial China style.

We did not shop even though we were close to the Silk Market; we vi-   sited briefly and didn’t need ten thousand and four cashmere sweaters.  There were other visits and attractions, but eating was exquisite. The first night it was…you already know this…yes, Peking (Beijing) Duck note capital “D”uck, at the Da Dong  restaurant, where only the most skilled of fowl surgeons are allow to practice their art of cheirugy. The bird is carved close to or at one’s table. We had reservations for ½ duck, but we ordered a whole, and had no mercy on its flesh and skin. You know that in NYC they serve some crepes wherein with to wrap the meat, sauce, and savory scallion stalks, but we had  a 4” stack; this was not a restaurant for stinting. Accompanying the main course we had the most perfect of sautéed Chinese green leafy vegetable.  This was querquedular paradise.

I shall spare the calories and not rehearse other meals, but they were honeymoon night caliber. Our Korean won was worth about 65 cents on the dollar in China, and a dollar was 66 cents. The exchange rate was frightening at first and we ran to the bank, but the prices were so low we ate like the top 2% of Rich Americans at home and returned to Korea without spending very much.  Hall of Fame surprise!

Everyday in Seoul, still, someone is nicer to us than the day before; hosted meals abound, and we heard some simply outstanding jazz  the Friday night after returning from China, in Hyewha, two Metro stops over from our neighborhood amid an audience of almost entirely young people in their early twenties, a far cry from the know-it-all grayhairs (guesswho) who frequent the NYC clubs. There is such a difference in where the arts are at here. A young Korean woman singer joined a four piece blues group for the second set, leading off with a rendition of Nora Jones’ “One Flight Down,” a poignant country & western piece whose performance would have brought Nora to tears, and then did two gospel/blues numbers that would have had Aretha Franklin & Ray Charles going out of their minds. The performance rapport between performers and the audience was so comfortable; they truly appreciate each other almost in a family way.

Bobbie’s students are crazy about her, and she herself is being featured in some serious art department promotional materials, photos and all. The art department people exude camaraderie and receptiveness. This could be the Land of the Lotus Eaters for a serious expatriate, but I have too intense an identification with Odysseus not to want to come home, despite the diversions and seductions.

Happy Thanksgiving Day to you! This, the 25th, is also my wife’s birthday, and she is pleased to have discovered that she is 14 hours younger in America. Our son Luke is with us for the week, totally flabbergasted by being so close to the border and the incident.

We dined last evening at Sanchon, a Buddhist restaurant, owned and operated by a former monk turned restauranteur some decades ago, with the traditional vegetarian meal. We took my son for the dancing, drumming, and chanting performance. With us, were Luke, and Teresa Zyung,  coordinator of exchange programs at Sungshin, who deserved  to be treated for all of her support of us. You will recognize her from the photographs I am forwarding in a separate email. This is the second time we have been at Sanchon; the performance varied from our first visit; this one requested audience performance, something I usually shy away from in great haste, but I am so enchanted by the percussion in Buddhist music, that when I was handed a gong/cymbal and a mallet, it was an offer I could not refuse.

Back to reality: The latest belligerent North Korean act took place on Wednesday, November 24, and we have had friends and family wondering : orwhat?  We were aware before we came to Seoul that North Korean artillery is aimed right at Seoul. Take a look at how close it is to the border; my dear friend and colleague at Lehman, Professor Young Kun Kim, has been invigilating our safety and advising us since well before we left NYC.  Luke arrived just after the shelling incident, and since he has never been this close to something this hot, I think he was a little jumpy…but there is nothing that a ginseng rice stuffed chicken couldn’t effectively tranquilize, not to mention the velvet hammer of soju. So we got through it. It did sell newspapers in the US though.

This has got to be the most bizarre geo-political situation in world history, although some of you are far more knowledgeable about parallels than I. I think that the population must be starving up in the north. Italian colleagues of ours at Sungshin who are professors of music have performed in North Korea, and they report that it is like stepping back two hundred years.

Bobbie and I had an incredible tour of Seoul yesterday, Friday December  3rd, carefully planned, chauffeured, guided and narrated by one of her colleagues, Professor Park (pronounced “bak”), chairman of the western painting department at Sungshin and a mensch. It was royal treatment: several museums and galleries, lunch – an endless buffet – at The Hyatt, every dish you could imagine, western and eastern, and then to his home and studio on the crest of a high, high hill overlooking an entire neighborhood at twilight.

The city is immense, as you know, and varied with mountain roads around the outlying urban but very sylvan areas of Seoul, and that’s where we were.  The paintings in Professor Bak’s studio were stunning, with deep inspiration coming from the location and more so from his hearty engagement avec le monde and his socio-philosophic view of life.  He is a powerful personality with a fascination for world historical figures from Adam to Spinoza (blew my mind) to war and antique automobiles in his commanding canvases. He has six daughters; we met five. His wife, they met in the art department in college, was also a painter. Now she qualifies for a being a national treasure for her contribution to motherhood. She was not the first talented female artist we have met whose creativity took a decidedly procreative turn. There  are still leagues to go here in gender struggle.

In mid-afternoon Professor Park took us to a famous shirt tailor, Mr. C.K. Yang, and told me to choose two fabrics from a thick swatch sampler and paid for the shirts which were then custom fitted. What did I do to deserve that? I don’t want to know, but it was simply astonishing, and the custom is to refuse nothing the host offers.   The tailor is located in a section of Seoul known as Itaewon, very close to the main US military base here in Josan, and there were photographs all around the shop, signed by generals and other American and international officials for whom he had made shirts,  and I think that this is the true meaning of the expression “Far Out!” In fact, my shirts reached me within five days, and I am not putting them on until I am home in NYC, to deal with my Korea saudade.

We are rolling into the last quarter of our time here. We will have one more jaunt, commencing tomorrow 12/9 to Jeju Island, Korea’s largest island, off her southern coast, flight time 65 minutes. It is one of the important seats of Korean culture, with great natural attractions, and local delicacies: mackeral, black pork, honey, and citrusfruits.

Jeju was wonderful, as predicted, and worthy of many days longer than we could spend there. We rented a car and drove to the eastern coast, climbed “Sunrise Peak,” listened to the women divers chant and submerge themselves, and lunched on the treasures of the deep. The woman who served us was certain we were French because my wife is so slender that we couldn’t be Miguk. “Fat” Americans seem to be like “Fat” Germans used to be in the global stereotype. I will post a final blog entry this week, but I will never be able to catch up with everything we’ve seen and done. The food in Jeju was superb everywhere from the restaurants at the Hyatt Regency, featuring an insanely Hyatt lobby centered around a huge fishpond adorned with three ducks, two of them  in big love, inhabited by a superabundant university of the largest carp we had ever seen, to the local restaurants. Almost every Korean meal is holy communion. Tangerines grow and are sold in every location on the island.

Our best lunch was mackerel steaks stewed in a thick hot red pepper sauce with a stunning fragrance and a dark rich flavor, right across the street from the water on the southern mid-coast tiny town of Soesoggak.  This was one of the many on-the-floor meals I thought, at the outset of our stay, I’d never be able to do because of a permanently out of kilter right knee, but I have been limbered by my daily ingestion of kimchi which has been much easier than trancing out in a faith-healers tent for the same results.  This seaside town has a long, deep and narrow cove with honeycombed rock walls carved by water and wind.  Jeju is in the same rank of mysterious island worlds as are Madeira and Krete.

This brings us to our final days here which are “running over the hills,”  in the words of Charles Bukowski,  “like wild horses.” Professor Park has volunteered to drive us to the airport next Friday morning. Teaching has been a huge part of our experience, aside from the moments of travel, and our daily immersion in this city of delights and diversions, but it’s too immense to just kiss and run with. I taught a total of 30 classes and Barbara 45, and the challenges and satisfaction from the process will have a life of their own which will not be fully appreciated for a long time. In the vernacular: awesome — ta choayo – [we] enjoyed everything. Michael Ondaatje has poignant words about stones skipped into water, their ripples and the cast of time in the final pages of his The English Patient; the ripples never stop as long as one chooses to remember or cannot do otherwise.

Thanks to Professor Young Kun Kim, all the Korean students who have passed through the Lehman Scholars Program beginning in the late 1980’s, my amazing and talented friend JJ Ko, originally a student at Lehman in the same period, Lehman/Macaulay Honors College students Dennis Kim, and Seon Hye Park, Jenny Yi, a 2010 graduate of the Lehman Scholars Program, and Jae Eun Mae, LSP 2014, all of whom made me think that I had to go to the land of morning calm, Korea.

The entire expedition would not have been possible without Dean Michael Paull of Lehman College, CUNY, who, legendary for his passionate devotion to adult, worker, individualized, and international exchange education programs, masterminded the numerous details necessary to make Barbara Siegel and myself the first faculty to be exchanged between Sungshin Women’s University and Lehman.

President Ricardo R. Fernandez and Provost Mary Papazian of Lehman College, CUNY, graciously approved and supported this maiden voyage.