Busan Journal, Day 11

Culture Shock of the Weird Kind

We have had a number of cultural adjustments in our four weeks in Busan.

We have slept for weeks without a top sheet. We have learned to manage a shower without a tub edge or a curb to keep water from running across the whole bathroom floor. We have learned to expect greetings from the invisible electronic elevator lady when we leave our floor.

We have learned not to jump when the PA system beeps into our dorm rooms for important announcements that we do not understand. If there is ever a fire warning, we hope "the voice" will actually say the English word "fire!"

We have begun to make sense of the non-English layout of the grocery store, although we have a long way to go. We recognize categories -- fish, meat, vegetable, fruit, and so forth -- although finding familiar items is more difficult. And reading ingredients will remain a mystery.

On the positive side, every time we have eaten out, one friend or another will tell us "this is healthy, this is good for you." We have begun to recognize it as a kind of national refrain.

We are learning to manage without an oven, which is an immense obstacle for the chef, who uses her oven daily at home. Neither microwaves nor toaster ovens suffice. Sorry, the oven is just necessary for some things.

On Thursday this week, I had a different sort of culture surprise.

I left my classroom following a fun discussion of poems from Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind. Four or five doors down I passed the English office and looked in because the door had been propped open. [I note here that doors in my building are never propped open. In fact, none of them even have windows; they are all solid steel, close fitting fire doors.]

Consequently, a trip down the hall usually affords no sense of who might be in the building or what might be happening within. The offices and classrooms can be fairly "buzzing" with activity while the feeling in the hall is that you are alone, abandoned.

At any rate, the door was open and a group of students had gathered around something on the office counter. Several students I know waved me in.

The gathering parted to reveal a Smith-Corona typewriter.

Did I know what this was? Had I ever seen one of these?

These questions were as interesting as the fact of the typewriter itself.

Yes, of course, this was an old manual desk model typewriter. I originally identified it as "portable" like the ones we used in high school in an earlier century. But I realized later that it had an extra-wide carriage of the sort once common in offices.

These students had been trying to make it work. Joo-yub, the department's administrative assistant, who can solve any problem that comes his way, had no expertise to offer either. One of them had set a piece of paper sideways on the roller. The paper, naturally, would not hold still for the keys, which sent it sliding away when they crashed down.

The scene reminded me of the cooking sessions around our stove in Houghton. Everyone -- Chinese students usually -- took a turn in front of the stove, adding something, tasting, offering advice, stirring, reaching in to change this or that. Cooking is the ultimate group project!

The students were delighted that I recognized the machine. That is, I think they were delighted. They immediately switched from the English they were using for my benefit to excited Korean when I said, "Oh, yes, a Smith-Corona typewriter." I took this animation as encouragement to continue. Maybe it was simple admiration, who knows. Or maybe it was commentary on my age or the backwardness of American technology. It might have been anything.

As if I had done this just yesterday, I rolled the piece of paper into the machine and began to type away. I would like to say it was easy to do, but I have been spoiled by the ease of computer keyboards. I had forgotten how much physical force manual keys require, and this one was sluggish from disuse.

How old do you think it is?

Eun-jeong, who had brought the typewriter, no doubt as an alternative to discarding it, said her mother had used it twenty years ago.

Oh, fifty years, I should think. My quick answer. Likely your mother used it long after she needed to rather than switch to computers. To cement my place in their admiration, I went on to type a little note on the paper I had properly rolled in.

"Dear Joo--yub," I typed, "Thank you for the opportunity to relive my childhood."

Instead of the ground-swell of wonder I had expected, Eun-jeon gasped. "Oh, no! Don't use red," she informed me. "We would not use red unless he's dead."

Whoops! Sorry, Joo-yub!

Clearly, even the typewriter master has a lot to learn. In Korea as everywhere living is a continual lesson in humility.