Interlude: Undiscovered Korea -- Incheon's China Town
Shelton Bumgarner
area today. --LSB]
By SHELTON BAUMGARTNER
Ahssa! Editor
Because the Ahssa! staff is painfully, extremely poor (Hmmm, what is
the nutritional value of finger nails? -- Coy) and we all have the day
off because of Chinese New Year, we decided to have cheap, adventurous
fun. (Sounds like you went to Itaewon -- Eve)
We made sure our T-Money cards were safely in our billfolds and
randomly picked a direction. Today, we went towards the sea, but not
before we made a quick stop at Juan, site of the Stockyard.
Now that we know how to get there, expect a full report on the
Stockyard at some point in the near future.
Once we discovered the Stockyard's location, we headed back to the Juan
Subway Station and studied the huge cartoon map of Incheon before us.
It struck us that we had enough money to go to the Incheon Subway
Station, so that's what we did. (Although Soju mentioned that he would
like to go to Bucheon at some point in the near future because it has a
growing reputation as a cutting edge "party town" in the greater Seoul
area.)
We to arrived at the Incheon Subway and Coy struck up a conversation
with a lovely expat woman from Manchester, England. She didn't not
really look all that pleased to talk to us.
"So, where ya from?" she asked after we said "Hi."
"Uhmmm, our two countries are supposed to have a 'special
relationship,'" Coy said, coyly using "air quotes" when he said
"special relationship." (Sounds like he was being 'cloyingly annoying'
to me. -- Eve)
"Where's that? Canada?" she asked.
"America."
Suddenly, her body language changed dramatically, with her folding her
arms across her chest.
Not a good sign.
"Well, I guess you don't think we have a "special relationship" given
your body language," Coy said somewhat meta-conversationally.
She stared at us blankly.
Whenever any of the Ahssa! staff refer to the "special relationship"
between the US and Britain with a British expat, they don't act like
they think there is a special relationship at all (and especially with
us, personally as an individual). In fact, one time, a Brit quipped
that, "Yeah, Coy, we have a special relationship with you, we don't
like you!"
Coy, feeling frisky, then started being all meta on her, joking that he
realized that he had used air quotes at least twice during the
conversation and then stopped himself midway through the fourth time
using air quotes. He thought he was being innocently charming in an
Ellen- DeGeneres-on-a-first-date-with-Portia-de-Rossi kind of way. (He
would -- Soju)
The young lady was not amused. Didn't even crack a smile. Her eyes did
bug out of her eye sockets just a little bit -- but that may have been
indigestion.
After we parted ways with her (we didn't even bother getting her name)
we headed towards the big Chinese gate that we assumed was the gateway
to Incheon's China Town -- which, oddly enough, is called, well, China
Town. Some people go to Hong Kong for Chinese New Year's, we go to
Incheon's China Town.
What we really wanted to do was see the big bronze statue of Gen.
Douglas MacArthur, but we got really lost and endup seeing the big
memorial to the treaty signed in 1882 which established diplomatic
relations between the Kingdom of Corea and the U.S. of A. We did find
what looked like a really nice Italian restaurant along the way. (Hmmm,
an Italian restaurant in Incheon's China Town. Nothing odd about that,
nothing at all. -- Caleb)
At some point, we found ourselves smack dab in the middle of Incheon's
China Town and we realized we were on to something special. China Town
is really, really cool and exotic. Soju told us that he was totally
going to bring Zelda there at some point. We did muse that the place
will probably be spruced up a bit once China becomes a unified Korea's
dark lord. (You worry way too much, dude -- Caleb)
We walked around some more and ran into someone taking a picture of a
building. Something about her told us that she spoke passable English
so we struck up a conversation. We were right and we looked at the old,
non-digital camera she was using.
She told us she was a writer of some sort and after a painful process
of pulling English words out of her, we realized she was scouting
locations to film a movie. She said the script was a "love story" but
would be a lot like Pulp Fiction. (Did she use air quotes? -- Eve)
Uh...Ok.
She quickly grew tired of us and started to act like she didn't know
all that much English afterall. When we mentioned how special we felt
the place was, she tried to convince us that it wasn't as special the
second time you come.
It took us a little while, but we realized that maybe she was trying to
hint that she wanted this little secret corner of Korea kept that way
so one day expats wouldn't say, "Oh, Incheon's China Town? No one goes
there any more, it's too crowded."
We walked around some more and finally found the bronze statue we were
looking for. Some security folks were playing what we first thought was
horse shoes, but turned out to be "Throw the coin on the cement square
for fun and profit."
They looked at us sheepishly and we all grinned at each other once we
realized what they were doing.
We recorded all of this in our memory banks for future reference,
kicked out selves yet again for not having a digital camera and thought
about what other cheap fun we could find. Upon reflection, we decided
we wanted to go to Wolmido Island. We had no idea if we were going the
right way but we headed a direction and ended up there. (Did we mention
it was horribly cold as we did all of this?)
Wolmido Island rocks!
It's cool for a number of reasons, among them the board walk reminds of
Virginia's Beach's boardwalk in some respects. You feel like you're
somewhere that hasn't been discovered yet by the outside world. (That
will all change now. Brahahahahahahahah -- Coy)
The most tender moment was when we realized we were standing on Green
Beach, one of three beaches involved in the Sept. 15, 1950 invasion of
Incheon by U.N and American forces headed by Gen. MacArthur. Something
about the winter cold, the quiet lapping of the waves against the
nearby brick and the light of the sun bouncing off the wake of the big
ferry in front of made us think romantically of that fateful day.
(Don't get all first-twenty-minutes-of-Saving-Private-Ryan on us, dude.
-- Coy)
After a moment's reflection devoted to all potential stories to be
written about this part of Incheon, and walked back to the Incheon
Subway Station and headed towards home.
Happy New Year!