Teja R Buddhavarapu - Finding My Post Chapters 1 & 2
A story of one family’s survival and their struggle to preserve tradition during the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910.
Foreword
My intentions for writing this piece of historical fiction stemmed from my love for creating worlds and shaping experiences of real-life people that I see and read about. For this piece, I took my inspiration not only from Pachinko, but also from a yeot farmer featured in a documentary about Korea. He would say that life during this time was difficult and I found many commonalities between the items he discussed, and the difficulties mentioned in Pachinko. This story follows a boy who was kidnapped to serve the Japanese army especially on the Chinese front when Japan invaded Manchuria. This practice was seen to happen much more frequently during this period of time when Japan annexed Korea and only after WWII did Korea gain some independence from Japan. I hope that by reading through this story, readers are able to get a clear picture of the lives and experiences of everyday people that history tends to forgot, but whose stories are just as fascinating as everyone else’s.
Finding My Post
My grandfather, Bong-Seok Kang, used to tell my siblings and I a story of how he found his pulling post. He would say, “eolin-i, the day I found my pulling post was a day like any other.” He would tell us about how he would go roaming in the woods searching for wild bellflower and ginger roots, but I can’t remember what those times were like. A time when I wouldn’t be scared leaving my home. He would recount such insignificant details about the woods each time he told us this story and each time we would learn something new about what it was like back in Chungju, before Japan had anything to do with us. He was strolling down his path when he came across the tree. No matter how inconsistent grandfather’s story was, he always made sure to mention the tree. He would stand up and fall down, mimicking the way that the log toppled in front of him on that path. He would always light up during this part of the story when he remembered his post. He used to say that every tree in the forest was special, in its own way, yet we would never notice them until they fell. We would never understand their true beauty until their story came to an end. I never truly missed grandfather until now, when I look at the small portrait, we have of him and halmeoni on the wall in our small apartment, I think of the exciting times I had with him and his immortal stories. I am sure that he had more to tell, but it is my turn to tell the greatest story of them all. The story of how we became the best yeot producers in the land. The story of how our candy went from being trashed to being eaten by kings. The story of how a small beggar boy from Chungju made his family proud.
Chapter 1
It was a cool morning in 1910 and I had nothing better to do than to find sugar for my grandfather. There was no doubt in everyone’s mind that I was a misbehaved child but even I would not disobey him. Grandfather liked to think of himself as a retired farmer, but we all knew
that he worked just as hard then as he did when he was “working” a job. He still tended to his fields and every so often he would go to the market to sell his harvest for a few extra won. Unlike many others in the village, grandfather never wanted us to work as children, he would always say that a child only had two responsibilities, to learn and to obey his elders and to an extent I fulfilled one of those. On this occasion, however, my motives weren’t all selfless, I knew that grandfather was making yeot and I couldn’t wait for a piece. Every time he would make it, he would add a mystery ingredient and ask us to guess what it was. And every time we would look back at him after tasting it and say, “hal-abeoji, how would we know, all we can taste is yeot.” He would laugh and tell us the secret anyway, but we wouldn’t understand. At night, when the sun was just about to set, he would tell us a new story so that we wouldn’t get bored. Although my siblings would love the fantastical tales with dragons and princesses, I would always request for him to tell us his pulling post story since it was my favorite. On my way into town, I was thinking about which story he may tell us that night.
The market was fairly empty around this time of the year since no one could afford any of the things they wanted let alone needed. I strolled in and took the long way to the sugar ajummas near the end of the line of shops. I stopped at Jae-jin’s store; we had known each other as kids, and he would sometimes give me a small parcel of white rice to take home. He and his mother owned the only rice shop in town, but it was getting harder to supply white rice anymore. I could tell that my grandfather was troubled, but he would never show it. Everyone knew and loved our yeot, but it was getting harder to make as the shortages continued. This time when I stopped by at his shop, he was nowhere to be found but his mother was sitting inside sobbing. I decided to move on since I didn’t want to get into trouble like I used to when I would get to involved in other peoples lives. Last year, grandfather slapped me for talking back to the traveler
who stopped by and gave a look to my sister. I knew that I had to help Jae’s mother, but I couldn’t risk bringing shame to my family. I moved along and visited the other stores. I didn’t expect to get anything for free, but it was worth a shot sometimes.
Lastly, I found the sugar ajumma who was a sweet old lady who would sell her stock of sugar in the market almost four days a week. Our conversations were never more than a few sentences long, yet I feel like I have known her my entire life. Today was no different in this regard, I walked up and asked for the regular brown sugar parcel and I told her that my grandfather would pay her back at the end of the month. After the first week, there was nothing we could do to pay back the venders until we made the first batch of yeot to sell which happened during the third week or so. Like normal she grimaced and went about her day, mumbling about how she wouldn’t ever get paid although we made it a priority to keep her a supplier.
Walking back, I reflected on my younger years when we made yeot with white rice and white sugar. Back then, the yeot would look like an angel’s wing coming out of the pot and it would be fascinating to watch grandfather pull the yeot on the post. It was around the time of the “invasion” that the ajummas started selling off their stocks to prominent Japanese families in the region to make sure they didn’t call the police. First it was white rice that we couldn’t find, and gradually white sugar left the picture too. Gladly, we still were able to keep the yeot business, but business became very slow and it’s been a pain to pay off our debts. As I turned around to walk back home, I could tell something was wrong. All the ajummas started closing shop and everyone else who had come to the market after me started turning their heads. My hair was standing on end and I was about to turn around when I felt a sharp knocking on my shoulder from behind.
Chapter 2
Grandfather made it a point, since a young age, to pass on our family recipe for yeot. By our fourth birthdays my siblings and I were able to recite to him the process to procure yeot and how long and at what temperature to cook it. It was at age six that he started letting us into his factory. He would lead us out to a little shed behind the house and show us his post for pulling, the pots and pans he boiled the rice in, and the fire pit he used to melt the sugar. Before the shortages it was really quite easy to make yeot. We would first wash and cook the rice until it would be “as soft as a cloud,” he used to say. Then we would create the malt by washing barley and adding it to the rice with some water. We would boil this for hours until the mixture ferments into saccharine and then we add the sugar. After a couple more hours, grandfather is able to take out the yeot batter and pull it on the post. We were never allowed to do this since grandfather considered pulling to be the most important part of the yeot making process. He used to say that yeot can be made without a post, but it can be perfected with one. Once he has pulled the yeot, we would watch as he poured and stretched the batter as he cut long thin pieces of yeot and covered them in corn starch so they wouldn’t stick. We were taught to recognize good yeot from bad yeot from taste, color, and texture but at that young age we considered any treat to be good and we couldn’t be uncorruptible critics like grandfather.
Our most favorite part would be when we could taste the yeot and the flavor would fill our mouth with the taste of bellflower or ginger or even sometimes pumpkin if we were lucky. Grandfather drilled into us from an early age that rewards only come through hard work and he made it a point to make us sell the yeot for a fair price in the market the next day after it was made. Standing outside in the cold for hours on end made us realize that we weren’t the wealthiest family that lived in Chungju, but we weren’t poor either. We had to work hard with no
doubt in our minds, but we always had the consolation that we had a home to go back to and our grandfather to make yeot for us. It was that tap on the shoulder that made me live through my experiences with my grandfather for in reality, the chance that I would see him again were slim to none. I had heard about these things happening from halmeoni, but I never thought that I would be the victim of it too.
I always had bad eyes and I was never athletic, but I guess they were taking the weak ones too. I had not seen nor experienced the violence of the Japanese in my life off in the countryside of Korea and I thought I never would. Those shoulder taps were the last feelings I remember from my life in Korea as I was swept away never to see my family again, never to embrace my siblings or be kissed by my mother. I was taken, like the other men of Korea, I was taken as a boy and chiseled into the man that Japan needed to fight their battles for them. It was bad enough that they had invaded our homes but now they were taking us from our homes. This is the story of how a boy from Chungju, now a man by Japan, made it back to see his family in Korea. A story of how a soldier for Japan made it back to see his grandfather on his death bed. A story of how a legacy lived on through me, the legacy of making yeot.