Yanbian

That’s Korea-in-China. The area extends into Mudanjiang toward Harbin if heading northwest from Tumen, southeastward to Dandong by the Yalu and Tumen rivers in Liaoning and Jilin from across Chao Xian (NoKor, Chosun Gul) to Hanguo (SoKor, Hanggul) in what used to be Koguryo where the word Goryeo came from, birthing the English word Korea. OK, ’nuff geography and language lessons already. 

A former resident of Saipan was from Hun Chun in Yanbian, Dong Bei. I delivered a laptop to her daughter and husband in Tumen once, bidding her zai jian in Yangi where signage is solely in Korean and Chinese, leaving this alien lost in a foreign land!

We do not generally trust foreign lands. We hang on to the comfort of the familiar. A ward in Saipan precedes each pronouncement with In China though he spent most of his life only in the Northeast. The mindset provides security against the foreign nature of his new surroundings in Saipan. Everything is bounced over the In China of his familiar.

I kept reminding my ward that China is a vast country with the sovereign boundaries set by Chiang Kai Shek in 1947, dittoed by Mao Zedong in 1949 that included the salty waters of Nan Hai, aka, South China Sea where the Spratly locates, with 56 recognized ethnic groups, including some that gathers disparate ones.  

Top on the ethnic list are the Han, a varied group that traces its history in China’s vaunted dynastic rule of Zhongguo, the Middle Realm, not “China” which was mistakenly labeled by the Persians from the people of the Qin on the Silk Road. Zhonggou includes the Mongols and the Manchus who adapted to the ways of the Han, while Chang-an in Xi’an flourished as the Han was resisted by their sisters and brothers from Shanghai to Hainan, eastern shores of Zhejiang-Fujian-Guangdong, which includes Hakka (Han “guest families”) in its number, like Sun Yatsen (Sun Zhongshan) and the Soong sisters.

I tried dissuading my ward from the image of In China so he can look at the rest of the world from the Earthrise rather than from a citizens’ view south of the Great Wall of his mind. This came home dramatically to me when one of my students, while I has in Shenyang in July, kept using the phrase in everything he said; got defensive when I suggested that I probably know more of China than he did since I had covered more geography than he had.  He could not fathom a foreigner more knowledgeable than he was.  “I am Chinese,” he said. 

A little Chinese-ness. Eating with chopsticks reveals an understanding of not touching food (as opposed to the Indo-Malayan-Arabic method of eating with bare hands), but in places where water is at a premium, washing hands is a waste of the precious commodity. To spit out refuse is practiced and accepted; catching it in the palm is gross. Someone cleans the floor and table after each meal, so there is no worry of trash.  It means that when food is properly prepared, picking it by the chopsticks does not involve spitting out anything at all! 

These are matters of choice more than externally prescribed manners; our ward can adapt to new behavior by choice rather than fall back to practices at home without much thought.  Many colleagues in China just drop their refuse on the table or on the floor, discouraged as unhygienic in western meal ambience. 

What brings this up in thinking of Yanbian is the preponderance of la ba chai smell (pickled spiced cabbage known as kimchi in Korea) that permeates the atmosphere of people and Situ in Shenyang.  Pretty kimchi-breath ladies in Korea took some getting used to, and when confronted in the same way in China where the Han do not have body smells (until Chanel’s Coco madamoiselle came to the scene, or, should one say, to the scents of the French brothel in the winter), Yanbian girls are better at being restaurant waitresses than bedtime hua lu shui (flower dew) providers. (The comment is meant to be descriptive rather than sexist.) 

Yanbian as Korea-in-China close to Chaoxian (NoKor) is Zhongguo of mixed ways.  Koreans in Yanbian move out of the ethnic corral fast and spread out not only to the rest of China, but in other parts of the world like Saipan wearing the Han identity rather than Yanbian.  

The Mongol in Nei Menggu constitutes only 17 percent of the population so numbers do not determine ethnic autonomy. The five Autonomous Regions of China are: Guangxi Zhuang, Xizang (xi=west, Zang is an ethnic group, Xizang is thus the western Zang) known as Tibet, (the Semitic name for the plateau Tubute adopted into British English), Xinjiang Uyghur (pronounced, Wee-gher), Ningxia Hui, and Nei Mongol (Inner Mongolia) Autonomous Regions.

The Kim Ilsung Juche of self-reliance is denigrated in the West, which tells us more about Korea western fears than actual realities.  Russia’s shapka and Mao caps are already out of Chaoxian but GI Joe’s PASGT (Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops, pronounced pass-get) helmet still smarts south of Panmunjom in Hanguo.  Need I say more?