禮: Daejon to Gyeongju

“Deference unmediated by observing 禮 is lethargy; caution unmediated by observing 禮 is timidity; boldness unmediated by observing 禮 is rowdiness; candor unmediated by observing 禮 is rudeness.” - 8.2 The Analects

On the train from Daejon to Gyeongju, I wrote the following in my pocket notebook:

Fields and fields of algea-green rice shoots. Grid-like, planned green. The air-tight quality of trains makes the outside seem soundless: blue mountains far off and close-up, immaculate, deserted black roads. Far from Seoul. Reading Confucius now is like drinking at a still table. Again and again I see this word. What is 禮 (li) and why does he consider it the iron-wrought key to almost everything?

Then the door between the cars opened, and a pretty young attendant entered. She closed the door behind her with stiff purpose, moving her hand by twisting her hips in a contrived and clearly practiced motion. She turned to face the car, bowed, then walked quickly down the aisle, never stopping, before exiting and beginning again the same routine in the next car, and I imagined the car after that, and the one after that.

An oft-quoted truism is that Korea’s stiff formality comes from Confucian doctrine. Korea is the most Confucian culture on Earth, a truth born out by the Confucian colleges, detailed ceremonies, and the fact that only in Korea has the school of thought affected the trappings of a religion. I knew all this going in, which is why I brought The Analects along as my road book; I hoped to see first-hand what that reputation actually meant.

The other oft-quoted Korean truism is that Koreans don’t like Westerners, particularly Americans. The reasons are many and obvious - the shockingly misunderstood (by most Americans) Korean War for a start. Regardless, throughout my trip I was presented with a medley of dirty looks from strangers outside Seoul (the EXACT opposite of life in Taipei), and inside the cosmopolitan bubble, concerted disregard from almost everyone. The fact remains that Korea is not an easy place to travel in - Barret, a man who has trekked across at least three dozen countries, said of the difficulties getting train tickets, and traveling in general, that it was worse than in India. People weren’t rude - they just made no accommodation. At every turn, we had been expected to simply, and automatically, understand.

The pretty attendant made her way through the car again, stopping to shush the three of us, yet again debating in a great, free-for-all scramble. We were loud, but no louder than we thought was polite. Again, we seemed to miss the mark.

A major compounding factor of the real (but still wholly exaggerated) anti-Western bias is the foreigner’s total ignorance of the roles that govern all courtesies and even simple manners. Time after time, in paying for the check, asking for a light, being lost, or just talking to each other, we ended up pissing someone off. Anyone who hasn’t traveled extensively might be surprised to learn that manners aren’t universal. We were experienced travelers, though, and even to us it felt like the odds in Korea were stacked impossibly out of our favor. We all looked at the attendant with shock, and she graciously pulled herself back up, without another word leaving the car with the same wooden bow and exact motions.

禮 (li), the cornerstone of civilization for Confucius, gets translated in my version as ritual propriety. I, for one, have no clearer idea what that means than the Chinese 禮 or its romanization. Only when considering the way it is mentioned, again and again, as the necessary component to one’s social interactions, as a mysterious x-factor that balances all the columns, did I begin to realize that while to my American ear, ritual sounded arcane, we actually live detailed rituals everyday. Shaking hands, blowing out birthday candles, or blessing someone after a sneeze are all rituals, and those, not hours-long Sunday masses or tea ceremonies, makes the difference between a boorish person and a refined one.

So is the breaking of bread, the marriage proposal, the playing of taps, and even saying grace before a meal. It’s obvious how important these things are - even I, an atheist, take a moment before eating to be grateful for the food. I believe I’m a better person for it than I would be otherwise, too.

I doubt that any culture anywhere would expect a stranger to lock in step with their religious or formal rituals. The problem is oftentimes the tiny rituals, like how we should shake hands or conduct ourselves in a debate (rituals we don’t even recognize) are just as important - and totally taken for granted.

Whenever we are obliged to put on a public face or deal with strangers, we rely on a default mode - an intricate sequence of tiny rituals meant to put everyone in their proper place and see that business gets done. Which questions you ask, which you don’t, the words you use, your tone of voice, your posture - we deal with public affairs in an almost scripted way. I like to think of li as the way we greet a cab driver, deal with the stranger in the elevator, even make it through a first date. And all of us in these situations, we must admit, expect a equally scripted response.

In Korea, however, they did their best in the 1300’s to define all interactions in Neo-Confucian terms (Neo-Confucianism being the one man’s handful of theories being extrapolated to fill every corner of life), and what that means is that while in the West someone who doesn’t conform to social graces is at best eccentric and at worst a jerk, in Korea it’s a failure of the social contract. This is a serious thing: one false step and you come across as unlearned, discourteous, a disaster. I’ve felt first hand the anti-Western sentiment in Korea, and it’s not that bad. I can tell (in the way I have after more than three years of gauging the nuances of near-communication) that just one or two sentences of well-spoken Korean would banish the foul taste in the mouths of people I met as surely as any minor misunderstanding. It’s harsh, but without having made any attempt to assimilate or blend in, what can we expect?

Regardless, foreigners without knowledge of Korean culture and language will invariably come - and I’ll never learn Korean. Another page from my notebook:

I can go anywhere in Asia and be treated with sunny favoritism. The steadiness of Korea - the tepid, green regularity of the rice paddies - has its perks. I’m one step closer to understanding Confucius, for one thing, and at least I can tell the folks back in Taiwan that I’ve seen this all for myself.