The Peace Correspondent (5 page)

Later, at the entrance to the famous 9th-century Zuiganji Temple that Date rebuilt in 1609, a marker mentions Basho's visit more than 300 years ago. Now a national treasure, the temple is set in a large park with giant, rough-barked cedars, the tall trees in front of the temples acting as lightening rods.

The temple, made from the same kind of white cedar, shows Chinese influences such as an elegant golden screen with exotic peacocks. Delicate, ornately carved peonies, chrysanthemums
and melons grace the enormous door. “These magnificent and glorious images seem to take us to JODO (The Pure Land of Paradise),” a sign says.

Outside, I contemplate the stone garden with its gracefully raked patterns, like the one in Kyoto, until a foreign tourist spoils my revery: “Why do they have the rock like that? It makes it hard to stand there.”

Again, I sample the distinctive local fare. Many famous Japanese temples have restaurants serving the priests' type of food. In the Zuiganji Temple's Ungai (Out of the Crowd) Restaurant, the Buddhist meal is all vegetarian except for the squid sushi (the best part) and some oysters baked in their shell. Taro, coconut, seaweed, shredded mushroom, sago (which, they explain, approvingly “is like rubber”) complete the pious repast, along with several small cups of hot sake, the Zen priests' favorite beverage.

It is an authentic experience, unlike the short, instant tea ceremony that follows, which seems about as real as the Kodak hula show in Honolulu. Outside in the garden, it starts to snow, beautiful fluffy snowflakes swirling around the temple rooftops.

Back at the pier, gaudy, over-embellished boats shaped like dragons, or like peacocks with prows of giant heads and fantails of feathers, wait for tour groups. The contrast with the simple, minimalist Zen temples on the island behind is striking.

Avoiding these kitsch craft, I take a large, modern tour boat, with comfortable swivel seats set before huge windows in the upper deck lounge. Right on time, we pull out of Matsushima harbor trailing a slipstream of gulls for a one hour tour of the unusual archipelago, like a Japan Sea miniature. The sight of these phenomenal, rugged islets eroded into bizarre shapes like some modern sculptures, is marred only by the power station with its gigantic smoke stacks on the far shore.

“Tall islands point to the sky and level ones prostrate themselves before the surges of water,” Basho wrote. “Islands are piled above islands, and islands are joined to islands, so that they
look exactly like parents caressing their children or walking with them arm in arm,” he added with imagination run wild. “The pines are of the freshest green, and their branches are curved in exquisite lines, bent by the wind constantly blowing through them.”

Basho was so awed by Matsushima, he did not compose a single haiku to its beauty. He did, however, quote an appropriate work by his companion, Sora:

Clear voiced cuckoo,

Even you will need

The silver wings of a crane

To span the islands of Matsushima.

Or, in our case, the silver hull of a sleek tour boat.

ALL that gloomy day on Korea's Hongdo Island in the damp mist and drizzly overcast, I felt sorry for myself. But a young woman on the hydrofoil back to the mainland set me right.

“I came here before, but it was sunny so I did not see it at its best,” she said. “I had to come back to visit in this weather.”

I am baffled.

“We Koreans believe the wet, grey scenery is better,” she explains. “It is closer to Genesis, to true nature.” So I am wrong to let the nasty weather spoil my visit. I am, in fact, lucky after all. It is better to see Hongdo in the rain and fog.

With a few spare days to spend in Korea after a visit to Seoul, I searched for a pastoral excursion. A man of extremes, I have stood on the southernmost tip of Africa (Capetown) and South America (Ushuaia), the western extremity of Europe (in Portugal), the westernmost part of the U.S. (Hawaii) and the easternmost (American Virgin Islands), the western edge of the North American continent (the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia) and the easternmost (Newfoundland). On a previous visit, I traveled to Korea's far east -- Ullungdo island.

So from the map, I pick out Hongdo, the farthest southwest piece of the country accessible by public transportation. From the postcard and coffee table book photographs, it looks like a bright, sparkling place.

Considering its remoteness, the island is remarkably easy to reach -- the only sacrifice being waking up at 5am after a night of sampling Seoul's vaunted hospitality. But the taxi driver taking me to the Seoul train station has never heard of Hongdo, an ominous sign.

“What's that, an island?” he asks, because of the “do” suffix.

The train, which leaves right on time at 7:05am, provides a leisurely transition from industrial Seoul to the tidy Korean countryside. Further south we pass ancient stone houses and agrarians in traditional costume, the women with baggy pants gathered in at the ankle, and a bright blouse or jacket, in different, mix-and-clash paisley or flowered patterns.

After the hothouse warmth of Seoul, Mokpo (the port for the Hongdo ferry) is cooler and decidedly grey, with the fresh, natural smells of strawberries and seaweed. Hundreds of outdoor tour group types in bright hiking jackets and rucksacks pack the spacious, modern catamaran with its comfortable airline-style seats. A TV set at the front shows a video of sunny Hongdo, which a crew member peddles to the passengers.

The little island, a rocky outcropping 115 kilometers southwest of Mokpo, was designated as a Nature Reserve in 1965 and became part of the Tadohae (Sea of Many Islands) Maritime National Park in 1981. Large groups of Koreans come on organized overnight tours, or even day excursions, but foreign visitors seldom make the trip.

Guidebooks even a few years old say that the only way to reach Hongdo is by a slow ferry, but these modern craft make the crossing several times a day in two-and-a-half hours. So, soon after the second showing of the video of Hongdo sparkling in the bright sunshine, the island looms in the haze ahead like a menacing, jagged piece of granite. Only mountain goats and a few rugged
Korean fishermen could survive on this steep, rocky island.

We drop anchor and a small, open motorboat shuttles us ashore. Stepping off on the old pier slippery with moss, I pay 1,200 won national park entry fee at a small booth, and here I am, the only non-Korean on the whole island, where no English is spoken.

There are no hotels on the island, but elderly ladies meet the ferry, offering rooms in their homes. I follow one up a steep, rocky path, through the little town, across to the far side of the island.

We pass some bright, inviting inns, with sparkling, modern toilet facilities, but I discover I have chosen unwisely. The woman's old house up on the hill is untidy (unusual in Korea), with a grubby bathroom, but it is too late to change, and it is only 10,000 won a night.

There is not much to Hongdo. In the otherwise somber village, huge, brightly colored plastic water-storage drums sit on most buildings, and garden hoses run down the steep streets like squid tentacles.

Aged women in traditional costumes squat in the doorways, sorting out fishing lines and cutting up sea creatures. Small stores sell the local delicacy, sheets of paper-thin, blackish seaweed, bundled up like small mattresses. Other souvenirs are dried fish and squid, gaudy seashell wall decorations and chandeliers, and videos of Hongdo in the sun.

On a steep path up from the beach, I encounter a bevy of rugged women in shiny black wetsuits, some quite young, others middle aged or as weathered as grizzled sea otters. They are haenyo, women who dive for abalone, crabs, fish and other sea delicacies, which they now carry home on baskets atop their heads. Suddenly, a long, slithery eel wriggles out of a basket, and the diver struggles like a Medusa, fussing with her hair, trying to put it back with one hand, while balancing the basket and giggling at the strange foreign apparition on the path ahead of her.

At the top of the hill, the only English sign on the island, under
the title “Natural Monument No. 170 Hongdo-Ri (village),” explains that the island is 6.4 kilometers north to south and 1.6 kilometers east to west, with a total coastline of only 20 kilometers. The 545 kinds of plants in the reserve include big-leaf orchids and white camellia (Camellia japonica), and there are 170 species of animals. Since a Mr. Ko first settled here in 1679, the population has increased to 250 people in 141 households.

All 250 are now at home, and the streets are already deserted, with the only sign of life a small place decorated with bright, Christmas-like lights. Inside, what looks like a bleak karaoke bar is abandoned.

It is cold and blustery now, so I escape into a simple restaurant overlooking the dark sea. The woman proprietor produces a large OB beer, then through sign language I order a basic meal of rice, seaweed soup, kimchi and a plate of tasty little wriggly things that I hope are dried noodles.

We struggle haplessly to communicate through sign language, then the woman's husband invites me to the adjacent living room to see a video of the island in 1960. It is fascinating, like a National Geographic special from an earlier time, with stone houses, women with large wooden tubs diving for fish and seaweed, and no apparent sign of modern dress or implements. Having exhausted the possibilities of Hongdo nightlife, I walk back to the guest house through the narrow streets, buffeted by the stiff wind howling from the sea.

Back in the traditional room, I watch Korean news on TV, then drift to sleep, my head on the hard, wheat husk pillow, feeling the comforting warmth coming up from the ondol floor (heated underneath), while a storm rages outside.

Dawn comes, chilly, grey, drizzling and so foggy I can barely see across the little harbor below. My proprietress fetches me to join her other three guests. The breakfast we eat seated on the floor is the same as dinner, along with black wafers of seaweed taken from a bag like a bale of hay in the corner. Over a warming instant coffee, another guest tells me with sign language about
the morning round-island boat tour.

Passing village storekeepers out on the street early, greeting tourists and offering their wares, I head back to the pier. On the beach, people bow as they pass several Buddhist monks in broad straw hats and baggy traditional garb, and a nun, her shaved-head topped with a straw pith helmet. They are tourists like us. Clumps of visitors in matching yellow, blue or clear disposable rain jackets stand around chattering happily in the drizzle. Koreans travel not so much for the “where” but for the “who with.” For these Confucians, travel is a structured social occasion, so they are unfazed by the dismal weather.

We all board several wood-hulled boats with about 50 or 60 passengers each, and disappear into the mist for the round-island tour. For several hours, we circle the island, the long boats nosing forward into caves or running close along bizarre rocks shaped by the elements. Like so many other “end of the earth” places, it is a dramatic setting. A tour guide chatters on about the rocks and all their stories, and maintains an energetic sales patter, hawking the Hongdo video and Polaroid photos.

The only words I understand are “Ko-ka Ko-la.” The overhanging rock with a cleft in it does look like an old-style Coke bottle. It is frustrating, missing the commentary, until a young Korean, part of a Presbyterian Church group from Seoul, asks me in good English if I can understand what is being said. Then he translates for me, and I can appreciate the Korean imagination, applied to these geographic oddities. There is the Number 1 Rock, the most beautiful in Hongdo, and Sad Rock, which is separated from the island when the tide comes in. He points out the Pregnant Monk -- hastening to add it was a virgin pregnancy.

With a little imagination, I can now make out The Perfect Couple, Candle, ET Rock, Squirrel Rock, Tall Rock, Kettle Rock and Lucky Turtle Rock, lucky because turtles represent longevity. Birds' Apartment Rock is named for the many birds living there. My unofficial guide and rock guru points out a white mark high on a cliff. Long ago an old man fell asleep while fishing there. He
woke suddenly when he caught something, pulled it up quickly, and it made that impression.