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Last weekend I hopped on a bus to Daejon to meet Jen and Bianca, and the three of us headed down to beautiful Geumsan for the NATIONAL GINSENG EXPO. There was some serious ginseng happening in this city, which is renowned throughout Korea for having the best ginseng in the world. (Koreans seem to make it a specialty of having world-renowned food, musicians, poets, etc. that only they have ever heard of...). I mean, we’re talking several 20-feet high, rotating ginseng characters sculpted out of pansies. Also, men dressed up as ginseng in puffy, friendly costumes roaming around (like Pluto, only ginseng). There were also a few of what appeared to be the festival’s mascot, a turtle, wandering around, though what turtles have to do with ginseng was never made totally clear. We were lucky enough to have been stopped within three minutes of getting off the bus by a Korean student studying English in the Philippines who was anxious to keep up his English over break and offered to be our translator for the day. His name? Um, well, it’s either Francis, Sky, or Choi....our choice. Our first stop was at the big Ginseng Industrial Expo tent, where we treated ourselves to free samples of red ginseng tea (good), two varieties of ginseng candy (very good), healthful ginseng extract (absolutely foul, couldn’t even finish the tiny little paper cup), and some ginseng alcohol (better tasting than the healthful stuff). One of the oddest booths the industrial expo was one selling noni, a fruit consumed by people in the tropical areas of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands in times of famine. (It was generally agreed by our party that a fruit consumed only in times of famine might not actually be the most delicious food ever). According to one doctor, though: “By my own experiences and my own eyewitness, I can say with certainty that noni is a miracle fruit.” What exactly noni does wasn’t really explained, but it was made apparent that the best way to absorb “noni efficiencies” into the body is through: alcohol. Short of injecting noni right into the bloodstream, apparently one of the healthiest things you can do is chug noni wine by the bottle.

The tent next to the Industrial Expo was an exhibit called “Ginseng: the Root of Life.” This tent was way cool, and HUGE. The whole thing was kept in the half dark, and you had to wind your way through a maze of lit up displays to get out. It opened with a huge hanji (Korean paper crafts) diorama of wild ginseng diggers in the mountains. These are no ordinary farmers, but men who give up everything to devote their lives to hunting wild ginseng. These men live by a strict code, which includes giving up all sexual relations with women. There were also a series of dioramas illustrating the tale of the ginseng boy. In the story, a boy is taken in by an elderly couple. They notice, though, that he disappears every night and only comes back just before dawn each morning. One night, then, they tie a string to the boy and follow it when he leaves the hut. When they come to the end of the string, they find that it is attached to a ginseng root buried deep in the ground. Overjoyed, they dig up the ginseng, take it home and eat it. Moral, as Bianca said: ginseng is better than children. By far the best part of the Root of Life Exhibit, though, was the display of ginseng look-alikes. That is, the trunk of the ginseng root often splits into two about halfway down, making the root look like it has two legs and sometimes almost human in shape. The ginseng look-alikes were roots that particularly resembled a certain type of person (akin to finding the face of the Virgin Mary in a sweet potato). There was the ballerina, the walker, the lovers (kind of a dirty one, actually), and my favorite: Shall We Dance?


Also, I saw my first Korean pop star. Yessssss. Her name is Harisu; she came stalking out on stage with three backup dancers and lip-synced to catchy dance music like nobody’s business. About two minutes into the performance Francis told us, “You know, Harisu is a transsexual. He....uh...she....is very, very beautiful.” Later, when I told Yong Ju about seeing her he also said, “Oh yes, Harisu is a very beautiful singer.” You know, for as much as Korea seems to be very closed to homosexuality or differences in gender identity and America seems so open about it, I can’t imagine most American men saying that a transsexual pop star was very beautiful. If we were to have a famous transsexual pop star in the first place, that is.

SOME GINSENG PICTURES

Ginseng is people!


Fresh ginseng.


Inside the Industry Expo


"The Tunnel of Special Plants." Those long green things hanging from the top are zuchinni.


Deliciously refreshing.


Inside the health tent, on some shaking beds meant to improve circulation (I think, or reduce cellulite, or both).