After nine months here Yecheon is now a true home. I can't say that impression came to me during my first weekend here. I arrived in the town after being in Korea only a week and was dropped off at a temporary flat that had belonged to the previous foreign teacher, where I would stay for a few days while my new currently-being-finished apartment was ready to move into. I was left to explore the town freely for the next few days before my upcoming first day on the job. At that time I naturally had no idea where anything was (except for a big yellow building I had been told was the grocery store). I ate some of the food left in the cupboard by the previous tenant and then ventured out to explore, mentally mapping my route of wander carefully in order to make it back to the black iron gate that was the only identification of my building's entrance. The first thing that struck me was the oldness of the place. I don't mean this in an ancient sense, I mean it in the sense that everyone on the streets seemed late middle aged to elderly. Old women (adjumma) squatted on the sidewalk beside baskets and trays of vegetables, fruit and fish. Old folks hobbled slowly up the street in front of me and towards me. I didn't know it at the time, but I was on the main street of the town. It was awash with spring sunlight and on that first stroll everything appeared monochrome and washed out with that sunlight. The color was all there, I just wasn't seeing it yet. I wasn't really looking at buildings, just the road and sidewalk, feeling stared at and trying not to trip over or crash into anyone's stalls, boxes or baskets. I wasn't used to such narrow or narrowed sidewalks. In front of some building aquariums sat out in full view, displaying their close quartered eels and fish for the world to see. I couldn't read hangul (the Korean alphabet) yet, and I saw absolutely no English written anywhere on that foray. Eventually I wound my way back to the grocery store I had been shown earlier. Here the hangul struck again. Any time you go to a new grocery store you need to orient yourself to its particular lay out. In a foreign country, with foreign foods packaged in unfamiliar containers without any English on them this becomes a bit more daunting (fortunately hangul is extremely easy to learn).
About four years ago there were no foreign teachers living in Yecheon... in fact, perhaps no foreigners at all. Now there are about twelve or thirteen foreign teachers here, stationed in the schools of the town. Some of us also travel to the villages in the surrounding counties. It's easy to meet people, particularly older folks, who have never met a foreigner before. This makes for stares, shyness, giggles and other to-be-expected reactions from time to time, but despite some of this and the more conservative nature of the town, the people are great--warmhearted and hospitable.
It's been easy to come to like Yecheon as much as I do. Though I'm often on a trip to a city or some other destination on the weekend, I'm satisfied living my week in the peace of the town. It's quiet at night and just like Japan I can walk anywhere, at any hour, with no worry about safety. Additionally, it's easy to form a feeling of community in a place small enough to recognize faces just about anytime I go anywhere. The countryside around the town and all through the county is quite beautiful. The hour long bus ride back from the small farming village I teach in on Fridays takes me through narrow rolling hills, small valleys filled with crops and rice paddies, and even tinier villages that dot the countryside. In the warmer months I was able to go biking around the outskirts of the town into the low hills.
One thing I was really glad to find were the trails stretching back into the mountains behind the town. One of my favorite haunts in Shizuoka were the mountains that rose up and cut through the back of the city behind the Sengen Shrine. These paths were always quiet and seemed removed and distant from the streets below. Hiking through them one could pass bamboo groves, green tea plantations high in the hills, small vegetable gardens, and eventually orange groves. The hike through the mountains behind Yecheon has its own features. Old family tombs, characterized by a mound of earth and usually some form of grave marker can be found in cleared, grassy areas of the woods out here. They seem to sit alone and contented in their little groves and hillsides off of the paths.
If you walk long enough in these hills there's also a resident Buddhist temple to be found tucked away in seclusion. Though I took a wrong turn at a fork one day when I set out to find it, I could hear the early evening bell being tolled there in the distance. As I reached a clearing, the temple came into view on the side off another mountain opposite me across a narrow valley, perched there like a hidden secret.
Yecheon has a few things to boast about: an international archery range (Jinho International Archery Range), an insect museum (and upcoming insect expo), temples, a pretty traditional village called Hoeryong-po surrounded be a river hugging its ovular border in a sharp curve, but what I (and I would guess others) like best about it is the relaxed pace of life, the natural sense of community in a place where, for better or for worse, everyone seems to know everyone (and just about anything gets around quickly), and the friends and acquaintances I've made in that community that to some extent we all become a part of just by living and working here. From my schools to favorite cafe to Taekwondo class, that sense of community permeates everything, the antithesis of being that anonymous body lost in the shuffle of the metropolitan streets of the world. Such is life when flowing with Yecheon.
No comments:
Post a Comment