What would get the world’s laziest blogger to post his second entry in 9 months? Nothing short of treason against the Republic of Good Taste.
‘Culture shock’ is a term bandied about too easily over the years. It's lost a lot of its kick-in-mouth appeal. It's lost its shock. Brief tremors maybe, but shock, no. There are the pet complaints I've heard from many foreign teachers: the shoving on trains, the tyranny of the aged, spitting in doors, and a definite if unspoken sense amongst the natives that they are in fact superior (because why? “because Korea No 1.”) And yet, for the most part, we've gone about our jobs and recreational activities unperturbed by the kind of things that would send the culturally sheltered running. I think this is largely because Seoul is 16 subway lines shy of a one horse town and so has the capacity to accommodate many parallel universes within its sprawling reach.
In general, it hasn’t been the experience of things completely absent from 'Western culture' that have seen my toes curling in my boots. For one, consider the widespread affectionate tendencies of otherwise perfectly straight and staunchly homophobic adolescent boys to stroke each other’s inner thighs, perform affectionate little shoulder rubs and nostalgically play with each other’s hair for extended periods of time on trains and in classes. These behaviors are so far off my normal-radar I find myself resigned to a shrug and a lack of opinion. But then, every now and then (and by ‘now and then’ I mean ‘once a week on Fridays’), there are a number of small things (and by ‘a number of small things’ I mean ‘one thing in particular’) that really delineate the ‘us’ and the ‘them’ in my narrative; a difference so intractable it makes a clash of civilizations seem inevitable: The composition of a Korean fruit salad.
Four days of the week my school lunch routine resembles that of any devout Buddhist monk. Like them I have found solace in the simple things; a bowl of steaming rice, a few crunchy sprouts and a selection of green weeds of which I don’t know the names. It’s more than fine. I bless the kitchen staff and their unborn grandchildren for the odd serving of soft tofu charitably bestowed. I am never disappointed. I am never offended. But Fridays I drag my feet to the cafeteria, shoulders slumped low, bracing myself for the inevitable disappointment, anticipating the charade that will follow and the lie that I’ll be forced to perpetuate. As we round the corner to the staff buffet my dear co-teacher spots the weekly fruit salad and turns to me with an excited “See! You can have!” It takes that much extra to feign an excited “Yes!” I feel like a ball of gustatory sense data recoiling from the bad-taste equivalent of kryptonite. I take my stainless steel dish, my chopsticks and spoon. I dish the rice. I dish the miso soup. I dish the kimchi. And then I reach the dreaded trough. As I drive the ladle into the motley mess I feel the muscles in my fingers inextricably intertwined to nerves that ultimately terminate in an itch just inside my left nostril. This triggers the set of muscles in my face whose sole purpose is to pull the ‘Not this. Not again.’ face. But what can be more appetizing to a vegetarian in Asia-land than a simple, fresh, fruit salad. Yes: a lovely medley of apples, bananas, strawberries, oranges… and tomatoes. All smothered in a few liters of something approaching mayonnaise.
Next to nuclear proliferation I concede there are more important things to worry about on this peninsula in the orient, and yet my life has come to this: This is the pet hate I’ve come to fear most. Nobody's faulting the Koreans on their reasoning; the logic is flawless. But adding tomatoes to fruit salads is a lot like adding 가위바위보 (rock-paper-scissors) to the Olympic Games because, hell, if it aint a game, what is it? (No guesses as to who would carry off the gold in this event). Putting aside my political correctness for once (OK maybe not for once); ignoring that in many practices a certain cultural relativism obtains that can’t be questioned; absconding from my allegiance to A.J. Ayer in that there really is no disputing matters of taste; I’ll say the following to Koreans: The composition of your fruit salads offend me deeply. If there was an international Good-Taste Police they would have you locked up. How many fine strawberries have been forgotten under dollops of bad mayonnaise? How many have been horribly paired with a plump tomato in the mouth of an unsuspecting waygookin? Who arranged this marriage? Well, you’re dead wrong. Your sense of taste is all muddled… and wrong.
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