Bodh Gaya & vipassana meditation

Today has been a rough day, which truly tested my vipassana skills...- i'm only writing this because I've missed my train with my friends but i'm also grateful for an opportunity to write about the past 2 weeks which have been amazing in so many way (both solo time & ensuing group time with some really cool people (we're a team of a Dutch, Danish, Brazilian & Korean:)...

'India can make you both lose yourself and find yourself,' Kunming Katie wrote me in an email, and i've definitely come out changed after 10 days of vipassana meditation (which is also obvious as nothing is permanent). In short, in the midst of hours and hours of sitting and meditating (and many times observing my mind wander), i've become more sensitive and aware of my sensations and mind (as well as ego), had a brief glimpse of nirvana (total dissolution of the body) on the sixth day, discovered one of Buddhism's noble truths that nothing is permanent experientially, and now i see all solid matter as vibrations and waves (which is also supported by modern physics).

When i decided to go in, i did not know what to expect. I was a little scared of not being able to talk, read, write or run, and when i saw the daily schedule which consisted of over 10 hours of sitting meditation everyday that started at 4am, i was pretty seriously worried that I would come out schizophrenic as my friends joked about. Or if not schizophrenic, i was afraid of coming out a changed person- i liked having an active mind and i did not want to lose my characteristics such as intelligence, personality, sense of humor and drive. Nevertheless, these worries were unnecessary, as i've come out reasonably sane (or i hope so...:). I've learned that havnig a calm mind is compatible with living a passionate life and can even promote it, as equanimous mind helps one engage actively with the world rather than react to the stimulations from the world.

The first day flew by. I was told to just focus on my breathing and the sensation in a tiny space between my upper lip and the nose, and although it was boring and my mind wandered everywhere, it was novel thing to do and when the end-of-the-day bell rang at 9pm, i collapsed onto my day reasonably happily. But the second day was not so easy. Realizing that i was gonna be living this routine for the next 10 days, i just wanted to get out. So i got all my bags from the locker and got ready to go. But i wanted to be polite to the teacher and went to talk to him to inform him that i'm gonnna be leaving, but then he urged me to stay on, as it will be good for me. He told me the second day and the sixth day are the hardest, and soon my misery would pass. Immediately after the conversation, i was pretty mad at the teacher- who's he to tell me i can't leave- but then now i'm grateful. But from then on, my life became a little easier, as I regained all the temptations (books, notebook and pen) i had locked up away from my room and i watered down the course a little bit meditating for only 6-7 hours a day and spending some time reading & writing.

On a side note, i had a really productive & creative time during the course. I secretly practiced my harmonica, developed this crazy exercise you can do secretly in your room that mixes running on the spot, donig jumping jacks, skipping and dancing to your own music, developed a thing for bird-watching (in my next life i want to be reincarnated as a bird), finished a wonderful book (one of my favorites now) called 'Theo's Odessey' that Zoe gave me (Theo travels around the world learning about various religious traditions just as I am this year!), as well as Alan Watts' 'still the mind,' a little bit of the bible, a book on 'designing social website' and 'cartoon introduction to wine' (i guess reading about alcohol was my way to deal with no intoxicant rule...:) . And i've also come up with more than a dozen entrepreneurial ideas that i'm hoping will keep me from having a real job- and after the course i want to provide these services for free as well- i just need enough money to travel for most of the year with a woman i love (note: if you're into entrepreneurship then talk to me and maybe we can create something cool together... :)

Going back to Buddhism, through my meditation and daily one hour evening discourses by my teacher Mr Goenka, i've learned & experienced quite a lot of Buddhism and here are some of the reasons why i like it- (and i think I'm definitely incorporating buddhism into a part of my identity like endocytosis and i think i can call myself christian-buddhist now... :)

Buddhism is scientific:

Although Buddhism has its dogmas, these dogmas are not to for belief but for experimenting through meditation- which in vipassana consists of observing mind's reactions to sensations throughout the body- Buddhism really delves into the question of mind/body connection and tries to approach it experientially. It's amazing that Buddha knew all solid matter are waves by observing himself long before physicists discovered the fact scientifically.

Buddhism is existentialist:

In Buddhism, you are only miserable because of yourself and not because of anybody else or any external causes. Sensations come and go, but if you develop a really equanimous mind, you're not influenced by fleeting pleasant or unpleasant sensations but can always live in control of your actions & emotions. You can't control what life throws at you becuase of your karma (Sartre said one is 'thrust into existence'), but you are free (existentialists love this..:) to react to these and make your own life.

Buddhism is Christian

Jesus would be considered a great 'bodhisattva' by Buddhists- one of the foremost thing in Buddhism is 'compassion' for all living beings. (notice this extends beyond humans). Like Christianity, it also shares paradoxes that i love- Jesus said that the 'first shall be last and the last first' and 'you will only live if you give up your life' - and similarly Buddha said 'if you crave nirvana you will never reach it. You need to let go of all your desires to reach nirvana" and only by 'emptying one's mind does one find oneself.' Buddha loved his enemies just as Christ did- and said they were acting in a hostile way out of 'ignorance' just as Jesus did.

Buddhism is also NOT Christian

It was also interesting to hear a story about how Buddha cured the grief of a woman who lost her son- Jesus would have brought the son back to life- but Buddha told the woman i will bring your son back to life if you get some sesame seeds from a family who have lost one of its members. The woman went around the whole village but came back with her hands empty, but realized that everyone experiences death of oneself and others whom they love- then she was ready to receive dharmma and reach nirvana. And I think another difference is in terms of passion- Buddha did not seem to like being attached to anything and therefore passion was bad- but Jesus's passion, and love for humanity was so great that despite knowing that he would have to suffer a lot if he is too passionate and loves too much (as nothing is permanent as Buddhism says and human beings are the most fickle and rebellious things ever), God still loved humanity so much and was even willing to sacrifice himself (or/and his son). So far I like Jesus's approach of super passion- although I know I'm gonna be disappointed if i care/ love too much, i want to keep loving/caring too much but hopefully I'll also have Buddha's equanimity when I'm upset.

The last night, when our 'noble silence' turned into 'noble talk,' I was curious to see how myself and others around me would have changed. My voice sounded weird at first, but I became used to it. And it was also interesting to see how quickly guys' (guys and girls' residence were segregated) conversation degenerated into girls and s**... :) (but we also had a lot of fruitful and amazing conversation about our meditation experience as well) and then Me, Kenneth (Danish), Niels (Dutch), Alex (Brazilian) snuck into girls' residential quarter and tried to kidnap girls but we went there a little too late and all the girls seemed like they were asleep. And then we smoked some beeties and had some memorable conversation about life, time, stars, mind/body and i went to bed.

When I woke up the next morning (the day we left-I had slept through the morning meditation), I discovered that I got locked inside my room (Almost all Indian doors for some reason you can lock from outside... ). But i wasn't angry. I thought somebody must have been ignorant in one of the two ways- either he didn't know i was alseep, or he thought bringing misery unto others would make him happy which is definitely not true :)

Afterwards, although i had booked my ticket to leave that day, i decided to stay with my friends for one more day in Bodh Gaya- they were 45, 33 and 28 years old, but really fun to travel with. I revisited Mahabodhi temple (where Buddha reached Enlightenment) and there was a huge ceremony with tons of monks so it was really pretty to see all the maroon/orange/crimson/red colors. I also meditated a little in front of the Bodhi tree and i could definitely feel strong vibrations (i think chinese people call this 'qi') around the area, which was amazing. Then we did a little more meditating at the Japanese Temple (Bodh Gaya has temples built by people from all around the world- so it's just fun to temple-hop and see all the different buddhist architecture styles as well)- and that was in zen style so a little different from vipassana (it had continuous drumming, chanting and bell ringing) but it was still exciting. In the evening, we celebrated Niel's 45th birthday (me and Alex secretly got him an Indian cake which was not very good so we cut it up and gave it to all the begging kids). At night, we also went on a hand-powered viking (there was a tiny amusement park near my hotel) which was surprisingly fun.

The next morning, I went for a run and fortunately ran into a Korean monk in the Korean temple (which i have to admit was not very impressive). But we did have some very interesting conversation and he told me that us Koreans didnt' have a fancy temple because we were not a Buddhist country like Thailand, and he also pointed out that Korean buddhism didn't have its own character like Japan or Tibet. Buddhism moved from China to Korea to Japan, and while the Japanese people have developed their own style, us Koreans just imitated the Chinese and our buddhism still resembled that of China. But on the upside, just as vipassana which was created in India was lost for long before it was reintroduced by a Burman (Mr Goenka), Chinese had lost a lot of their Buddhist heritage during the communist era and us Koreans were in good position to reintroduce the Chinese Buddhism.

Then I bought a ton of Tibetan prayer flags and other decorations (as Tibetan prayer flags is one of my entrepreneurial ideas- I think Tibetan prayer flags are cool decoration for rooms/ houses/ gardens and it's good to as as wind blows, it says a prayer for you. I want to set up an organization that links Tibetans with western consumers who are fascinated by tibetan buddhism so i can empower them ecnomically- and it will also satisfy the West's hunger for spirituality and i want to educate people about tibetan buddhism too- and maybe even personalized prayer flags...), and sent them to Korea. My mom was pretty angry by how much tea i had bought and she's not gonna be happy about the prayer flags but oops it's too late.

Soon i'm catching a train to go off to Varanasi, moving from Buddhist holy land to Hindu holy land, and i look forward to seeing the ghats along the Ganges River.

Kolkata & Mother Teresa House

The work began the next day, and I followed Jeff to Kalighat, the first house that Mother Teresa had set up that took care of terminally sick people. Mother Teresa House had around 7 different programs in Kolkata (and over 750 locations around the world- I think Mother Teresa is probably one of the finest social entrepreneurs and when I go to Wharton and learn management, would like to learn more about how the Missionaries Charity organization is run and how it got to where it is today & challenges it’s facing now etc). All the volunteers (there seemed to be around 70) met at the main headquarters to meet for breakfast of bread, banana and chai to start the day at 7am, where we also sing a farewell song for volunteers who are leaving that day and say a short prayer and hymn. I thought about how long I wanted to volunteer and decided to do one and half weeks. As I only had a month in India, I did not want to spend too much time just in Kolkata as I also wanted to hit Bodh Gaya, Varanasi, Agra, Jaipur and maybe Kathmandu and Dharmasala also, but I also wanted to spend reasonable time doing service because even during my Dragons program community service that was supposed to be one full week got shortened to only two days. And I also decided that I would like to do temporal tithing. I think it’s a great tradition that God asked Christians (or it may be Jews) to give at least ten percent of one’s earnings to the church and the community, and I have made it a goal for myself to try to give at least ten percent of my time and energy towards the community as well. Muslims also have a tradition of giving to their neighbors as one of their 5 pillars of duties, but I don’t think it’s as much as 10 percent and hopefully I’ll make enough money so I don’t have to worry about giving to others. Talking of giving to others, there are so many beggars on the street and one woman who hangs out in front of my hotel grabs me every time I go in/out of the hotel and it’s so annoying. I’ve bought her 150 rupee milk powder and two butter toasts because I felt sympathetic at first, but I learned at the Mother Teresa House that I should not be helping these people. Helping these people only makes them more dependent and a lot of them are professional beggars who just beg because it pays better than the money they can earn with more honest work. Even if you buy something for them, they sell it right back to the seller and so when you absolutely want to give to these people, I was told I have to open the package or food wraps so they cannot sell it back to the shops. There are also horror stories of blind kid beggars on the streets being blind because mafias have blinded them with bike wheel spooks, as these blind kids earn more money and when the sun goes down, all the money that these kids have begged goes straight to the pockets of mafias. I would be curious as to see if there are any microfinance organizations targeting these people on the streets. There are just so many of them and as my street has a lot of tourist hotels/ hostels, it looked like they were making pretty good money begging

I decided to do Kalighat, which is a house for the mentally ill, in the afternoon and Daya Dan, which is a house for mentally challenged children, in the morning. In retrospect, it was good to do these because I felt like I had one’s lifecycle covered, with kids in the morning and old men in the evening. For the first few days, I had difficult time adjusting to 7 hours of community service a day and I always felt exhausted throughout the day. But it was also interesting (I don’t know if this is the right word) to see people with terminal illnesses and some of the kids were so adorable. But as the excitement of doing something for the first time soon wore off, work began to feel rather burdensome. I even skipped one morning shift intentionally, but overall, 10 days flew by and by my tenth day I did not want to leave. I did not do anything special with the patients and kids. I do not have any medical skills nor speak Hindi or Bengali, so all I could do was manual work like doing laundry and dishes, and giving patients massage or just walking with the little kids. They told me during the orientation that they often find that volunteers are affected more than the patients after service, and that is somewhat true for me as well. I don’t know what I should feel while doing service, but it surprised me how foreign the concept of service was to me. Even when I was serving others, my own fun was important to me and many people had come to India just to volunteer at the Mother Teresa House, whereas I was giving only one and half weeks of my four weeks for service. I also felt like I did not have the gift of service, as I was often bored and tired. But it was also personal and rewarding experience feeding children and changing men’s soiled pants. In addition to these intense moments, my fellow volunteers were what kept me going as they were some of the most interesting people I have met. I’ve met people from Australia, Holland and Singapore, New Zealand, Italy, France, Argentina, Japan, Korea, the USA etc and have learned quite a lot about various places around the world. It was especially nice to meet Rich Raz, a young, big Seattlite who is the president of nutritional product company Univera which is interestingly owned by a Korean company Nongyang Aloe. We began and ended on the same day, and had the same morning and afternoon shifts so we spent a lot of time hanging out while working and he helped me through the ten days of service. It was also impressive to see the president of a corporation come volunteer at a place like this- he said he came here 12 years ago when he was in college and always wanted to come back- and he was also being quiet about his volunteering here now because he did not want publicity that his service would engender. On our day-off Thursday, I went to the Victoria Memorial with him. And a few days in, I also met two more Seattlites whom I hung out a lot with. (They were actually from NYC and Miami but did their masters program in existential psychology in Seattle together). As one can probably guess from somebody who had done such cool masters program, both of them were really cool also and we visited the Jain temple and the Flower Market together. And Jain temple was one of the most amazing religious architecture I’ve ever seen because it was the most colorful and bright religious buildings I’ve ever seen

Talking of cool people, the Korea writer for the Rough Guide (a travel book- Rival of the Lonely Planet) slept next to me and it was chill hanging out with him as well. He is originally from England but he had been away from home for over 7 years and he described himself as a ‘compulsive traveler.’ Unlike China which has six writers, he said he wrote the Korea book himself and I was told writers get about 9000 pounds per book plus seven percent of additional income after the book sale meets the bottom line. I was also told that guidebooks lose money on 2/3 of their books. Whereas Lonely Planet make books that lose money anyways, the Rough Guide in contrast only makes books that are profitable (ie China India etc) so he had to write a special proposal to get the job to write about Korea. And once he got the job, which he called a ‘dream job,’ he spent more than a year in Korea researching and he even had a chance to visit North Korea for five days (he said it was $1600 but you need guanxi to go in). He got a fake name and fake beard, and he told me he got drunk with the guide every night and pretended that he wanted to join the NK communist party so he could learn more about North Korea. He also showed me the pictures of North Korea and it was interesting to see the huge ceremony they held for Kim Jung-Il and Pyong-yang’s skyline had one of the highest hotels in the world but the French who were building it pulled out when North Korea started their nuclear program so it was also interesting to hear that the huge black triangular building is empty inside. He said in Korea his favorite place is Jejudo because people are so cute there, and he also mentioned that he used to hate Seoul but now he loved it because there were so many different aspects to the city. He also pointed out that the Lonely Planet writer for Seoul had been harsh on Seoul, and he said that bias was due to the fact that that writer lived in Busan. When I expressed my Korean complexity to him- that ‘I don’t think Korea is as interesting as Japan or China”—he responded that although neither Korea nor Japan had as much interesting and magnificent historical stuff as China, it had fascinating contemporary society and he really enjoyed meeting people from these countries. He also mentioned how Korean apartment blocks have no character (which I agreed to) but said Gangnam’s starting to look really cool as we’re getting more and more funkier and cooler buildings. And another fascinating person I met was father Abello, a brother affiliated with the Mother Teresa House who spent his last 40 years in India. We spent four hours chatting with him on our day off Thursday, and it was the first time I heard an intellectual argument for Catholic church’s position against using contraceptives. I don’t remember his exact arguments, but it was something about how using natural rhythm forces men to control their lust and have to listen to women more, and he sent me a ton of articles so I have to check them out sometime. I also enjoyed hearing about Mother Teresa from someone who knew her first hand. She lived such a simple lifestyle, and her room was so simple and she didn’t even have fans or mosquito nets in her room despite the sizzling heat of the Kolkata summer. It was also interesting to hear that she got her first two buildings from Muslims and Hindus for free- as she shared her vision with believers of other religion, they all shared her vision and gave her the resources for free

So as I have to wrap up my life in Kolkata (taking the train to Bodh Gaya in 5 hours), another metaphor to describe my life here may be the Fall from purity… :p. When I first started volunteering, I went to the 6am mass, did morning and afternoon shifts, and even attended 6:30pm adoration. I always thought that Catholic masses were too rigid for my taste but these masses were wonderful and the sisters had a wonderful angelic voice so I really enjoyed the services. However, as I began partying at night on the top of my hotel Paragon till late (with some substance use- and those guys were so chill and loved music and chess so I couldn’t say no), I began to skip the morning and evening masses, and even went to some of my morning and afternoon shifts late. My fall from grace culminated on my second to last night, when I got a massage from a guy and he tried to go anal on me. It was a rather traumatic experience and Jeff told me later 90 % of masseurs in India are prostitutes or something so I’m going to be more careful about getting massages. I’m a little scared about going into my 10-day meditation (www.dhamma.org) where I’m not allowed to talk, eat a lot, read, listen to music nor run- and I love all these and I don’t know if I’ll keep my sanity if I’m not allowed to do all these. But I’m also looking forward to a time of deep self reflection and break from overeating, alcohol and other stuff so it should be good time. And some of my friends and family have been really supportive so hopefully I’ll make it through! My goals for life at this point is student turned (social) entrepreneur turned professor turned mystic and hopefully the meditation will get me started on the last phase of my life

India Delhi-Kolkata

I finally landed in India, the place I’ve been dreaming of coming both because of its diverse and profound cultural and spiritual heritage, but also its economic and political muscle in the global scene. (I love the word Chindia by the way- two of my favorite countries squeezed into one word :) Besides, India was also a suitable place to test out my travelling survival skills that I learned from my Dragons trip this fall. As I pushed my baggage out of the airport, a random old Korean guy who was a high school teacher struck up a conversation with me, and although I did not really want to stay with him, when he asked if I wanted to share a taxi with him and maybe share a room at the hostel, I reluctantly said yes. I tried to find cheap hostels to stay at, but because it was close to New Year’s Day and it was weekend, most hostels had their rooms sold out and I had to stay at a rather expensive hotel (900 rupees a night per person for a double). Then I went out for a little snack and there were a lot of juice places and curry places on the street so I ate curry and juice. One of the rickshaw drivers also treated me to Indian Chai which was nice, but I don’t think India Chai is real tea. I miss my good old Chinese tea. I took my first run in India to celebrate my safe arrival, and I ended up nearly dying. Traffic in India is the craziest out of all the places I’ve been to and ran in the world. In Delhi, there were no middle lines to divide the two directions on the road, and there’s ceaseless honking and shouting that just drove me crazy. Cars, bikes, rickshaws and even cow carts were on the road and there weren’t even marked pedestrian paths- I wonder how many traffic accidents India gets every year. Although I did come close to dying, I know how I survived- thanks to Hindi power! I think God really loves me in terms of allowing me to experience various different expressions for worship. While running, I saw this weird looking (I don’t know how to describe the building- I wish I had brought a camera with me but too cumbersome to run with a camera- but it was a temple with a triangular roof). It was around 6pm on a Saturday night and it was so interesting to see them worship. When I walked in I saw first the main goddess to whom the temple was dedicated too, and there were also a lot of other statues of other gods including Shiva. To the left, there was a little yoga meditation place and at the basement, there were gods made of black marble. People bowed to the main goddess and received a basket of candies and sweet fruits, and I was told I should take it home with me to eat. The priest-like person also stamped a red dot on my forehead, and an Indian guy explained to me that it was a sign of protection from God- which explains how I managed to dodge all the crazy traffic while running. After running about an hour and fifteen minutes, my legs were pretty dead but I did not know where I was. Luckily I found a Delhi metro stop and found my way back to the Karol Bagh Station I was staying at. Indian metro is probably one of the nicest and cheapest way to move around in India. Taxis and rickshaws charge ridiculous amounts (I think especially more for tourists), and it was nice to have a cheap transportation. (But I’d experience later absolutely packed metro in Kolkata where it’s so crowded that I couldn’t even get off at the station that I needed to get off at)

The next day, I headed out to the Old Delhi to visit the Red Fort and an Islam mosque that was the biggest one in India. I got a ride to the city by a rickshaw first, to learn how I can most cheaply get back to the airport and also get more information about travelling in India. The driver was honest and I only had to pay 10 rupees to get to the center of the city, which was about twenty minutes. But the next rickshaw driver was rather obnoxious, as he said 5 rupees initially and later changed the price to 5 US dollars which is about 200 rupees. So I just got off the rickshaw on the road and walked away. The Red Fort was pretty amazing, with its grandiosity and intense red color. I could not help being reminded of the Forbidden City in Beijing, and this analogy is pretty close as the Mughal Emperors lived in the Red Fort. There was also a museum inside with the exhibition of some of the artifacts from the Mughal Empire, and it was interesting to see that under a prominent emperor Hindus and Muslims coexisted in peace (unlike today) and even the architecture of the time reflected this harmony with elements from both Muslim and Hindu architecture. Then I visited the mosque and it was cool to see so many birds hanging out at the mosque as there were bird food strewn all across the floor. It happened to be Sunday and I also said a short prayer of gratitude to God inside the mosque. I had an interesting driver on my way back to the airport, and he told me: “oh we Indians love peace and want to be friends with everybody. US, China, Korea we’re friends with them. But Pakistanis, crazy Pakistanis want to fight and bomb us.” Average Indians’ hatred and fear of Pakistanis seemed just as serious as that of the average Americans’ towards Muslim extremists, and there seemed to be a lot of education left to do. While waiting in line at the airport, I had a chance to talk to an American & Canada-educated Indian in his late twenties and it was interesting to hear from him that even his well-educated parents share this hatred of Pakistan. And then he also told me that arranged marriages were still common in India, and his parents tried to set him up with some girls during his visit in India. Although my flight took off later than the scheduled time, I arrived on time in Kolkata and it was weird to be thinking I’d be seeing Jeff Arias in this far-away land. But as I picked up my stuff and went outside, Jeff wasn’t there. The domestic airport wasn’t that big and I went in circles trying to find Jeff, but I couldn’t spot him anywhere. Luckily, there was an internet café nearby and when I checked my facebook, Jeff had written on my wall asking where I was and wrote down the name of his hostel, and I took a cab down to the Paragon Hotel. When I arrived at the hostel at around 10, Jeff was already asleep but as I went in and took the bed next to his in a dorm-like room with seven beds, he woke up and shouted “Jy, is that you?” We went out for a cup of chai and it turned out he had gone to the wrong airport (international one instead of the domestic one) on the wrong day (the day before I arrived). But it was good in the end and I found him so everything was cool. Although it was late, many of the street food shops were open so I had some toast and stir fry noodles. It was nice to see Jeff and hear stories from him. Among his many adventures, he had been to Dharmasala where he attended some of the classes that Dalai Lama himself gave, and had great time in Nepal trekking for over twenty days.

hong kong

When I last visited Hong Kong, neither my guide Serena nor I were interested in shopping so I barely spent any time at the shopping malls. But when I visited HK again this time en route to India (One-world Alliance doesn’t have direct flight from Seoul to Delhi so I had 21 hour layover in HK), I learned why HK is called the shopper’s paradise. The initial plan was to go to either the Maipo Wetlands or the Wetlands Park with JS and Carol. (Serena left 5 minutes before I arrived in HK- but I did meet her parents and handed her the gifts that my mom prepared- actually, I left the original gift my mom prepared at home so mom had to buy a new one at the airport- first and hopefully the last accident of the trip… :) But JS dropped out for the afternoon because he had to accompany his sister shopping, and Carol and I ate lunch at the mall (at a cool salad place) and headed off to the Peak. It was nice to go up the Peak again. Last time I visited the peak it was in the evening, and although I think all the cities look cooler at night than during the day, HK’s daytime skyline wasn’t bad either. It was interesting to see Kowloon (land connected to Mainland China that is across the river from HK) build another financial center bigger than the one in HK, perhaps a symbol of the fact that China is catching up to HK’s economic prosperity (although this would take a while…). I also figured out the secret behind all of IM Pei’s architecture- triangles! And then Carol had to go attend her parents’ friend’s wedding anniversary, and I took a subway down to Causeway Bay to hang out with JS. It was nice to see JS in HK and his sister was interesting too with un-JS-like in many aspects such as zen-like voice, mature look, reasonable optimism for life, and also reasonable confidence in herself. From going to the Amazon and being at school with JS, I had no idea he was into shopping, but he had a strange soft spot for sneakers. Although he dresses almost the same everyday, he cared a lot about his shoes and we spent three hours after dinner trying to find JS sneakers that he likes. We walked through two malls, and many outside shopping shops, and Hong Kong just had endless forest of shops. I passed by so-called the biggest Louis Vutton in the world, and passed many other fancy designer shops. I have to admit that some of the shops did have a cool layout in how they displayed their products, but it was a long day for me as I cannot stand shopping without purpose but I bit the bullet for my friend JS.

Korea winter break

Although I thought I was done with college apps after last year, I spent bulk of my vacation and especially the New Year’s Day (as college app due dates are Jan 1) reading my friends’ and my brother’s apps. On my last night in Korea on the night of the New Year’s Day, I was reading apps, but some of my friends called me at midnight to save me. They told me they were at a club in Gangnam (one of the hang-out areas for youth in Seoul), as Jan 1 was the first day which we (those of us born in 1990) could go clubbing legally, and told me to come right over. (Korean age works funny in that you don’t age until January 1 regardless of your birthday). So after dutifully editing all my friend’s apps at 1:30am, I took a taxi and went to a club for the first time in my life. It wasn’t too different from what I expected, and it was also weird to be there because my two friends and I were the only eighteen and everybody else seemed like they are at least in their mid-twenties. But I have fun sort of dancing by myself anyways and after downing some beer, my friend told me I turned a little predatory (I disagreed). But I had fun anyways and it’s also true that all men are wolves. The whole club thing seemed like a big courting ceremony with fancily-dressed guys trying to win girls. But it was a good way to spend my last day in Korea with some of my closest friends, and after getting back home around 5am, and reading more apps, I headed straight to the airport with no sleep for my 8:50am flight to Hong Kong

I slept all of my ride to the airport and all my flight from Seoul to Hong Kong, but during the few moments I was awake, I reflected on my last three and half weeks in Korea. It had been busy period. My first memory back in Korea was how depressing it was. Because of the financial crisis, many of the Korean buildings and bridges across the Han River than usually shone brightly had their lights off. It was the first time that I experienced the brunt of the financial crisis, and I heard from my friends in the US that there are Koreans who are taking semesters off or going into the military because the tuition is now 1.5 times more expensive than it used to be. Anyways, for the first week, I had Zoe and Chinese and Japanese students at my place (not together but one after another), and I was being a tour guide in Seoul for the first week. I was looking forward to hosting some people after experiencing so much hospitality in China, but I also realized that it’s not so easy being a host because towards the end I was tired of having guests and wasn’t as good of a host as I should have been. We visited my family botanical garden, DMZ, National Museum, Samsung Art Gallery, COEX and the Buddhist temple next to it, some of royal palaces from Choseon Dynaasty in Seoul, and all the historical places we visited I heard something along the line of:

‘this building was built during early Choseon Dynasty in 15^th century, and then it was destroyed in 1592 during the Japanese invasion and the reconstructed and destroyed again during the Japanese Colonial Rule in the early twentieth century and today only about 10 percent of the structure remains standing”

As much as I love and am fascinated by the Japanese people, it was a little depressing to see my culture destroyed by a foreigner military power multiple times. In addition, Japanese people had used Korean women as ‘comforters’- sexual objects- during the World War II, and also tried to decimate the Korean language (which is so closely tied to one’s culture). Of course we should not dwell on the past, but it upset me that my country had been a scapegoat for superpowers throughout the history. When I went to the DMZ and faced North Korea, it was so weird to think that I was not allowed to cross the river to the other side that seemed so calm. Birds flew across, but I couldn’t. Thanks to the Cold War and Americans and the Soviets vying for power, my country was split in half against our will and I have to give two years of my life to the military that I don’t really believe in. Perhaps I should be grateful that I’m at least living in South Korea and not North, but it still upset me that we’re in two pieces.

This winter break, I also had a chance to go out snowboarding with my uncle- who turned out to be a good person to snowboard with as he had a pretty good form. He also treated me to a nice drink of hot sake (Japanese liquor that is interestingly served hot) which was nice and I felt like an adult J. After that, I had a three-day road trip with my granddad (it was supposed to be longer but we’ve postponed longer one for the summer). It had only dawned upon me recently that I only had one granddad and one grandma left, and one of my priorities this break had been to spend time with my granddad because he always offered to show me around various parts of Korea. My granddad is also a great resource to learn about Korea because he has lived in over eleven locations all around the country because he was an elementary school teacher for close to half a decade. We spent the first two days hanging out with a monk he was friends with, and that monk was really cool. He was also a writer, photographer, painter, an environmental activist and ornithologist with a ton of birds at home. He was so chilled out and treated me to a nice cup of green tea in the lounge, and it was interesting to see Korean tea tradition. He lived alone on a mountainside in a gray container with three rooms- one study, one lounge and one bedroom, and he said he never locked his lounge so anybody can come hang out and drink tea even when he’s not around. And then we went to go crane watching, which was really cool and it was those migratory birds were absolutely beautiful. I don’t remember the details of our conversation one month past our encounter, but I still remember his peaceful aura and he told me how he was just sick and tired of living in this competitive capitalist society, so decided to be a monk. He let me kiss some of his tiny birds (not in a sketchy way- when he placed a little food on my lip, his pet birds flew and snatched the little food. He also told me one of his goals is to build an aviary park with a lot of plants and trees that attract birds, and I told him that perhaps his vision could be realized within my family botanical garden. I gave my parents and the director his contacts, and I think I’ll follow up on him when I spend more time at the garden this summer. Whenever I see priests or monks of any religion, I wonder if they really have all their lust and desires erased. And is this necessary a good thing? At least for now, I want to live a passionate life with a lot of ups and downs and the idea of serenity and peace of mind doesn’t appeal to me too much. I love chaos, as shown by my room and hairstyle. (but my mom didn’t so we had a lot of arguments about that this break as well). Afterwards, I went to a place called Chuncheon where there were some beautiful rivers and lakes, and also visited Morning Calm (another botanical garden that is a rival of my family botanical garden) and Nam-I Island with my granddad. Namyi Island was really cool as the new CEO created a cultural theme park that was a perfect place to hang out for couples. The place also received a ton of visitors from overseas which was interesting

My last week was spent mostly hanging out with the fam & friends, packing and reading apps. Although finding specific flights took a long time, it was not actually that hard to figure out the route for my round-the-world trip. (oneworld.com is the greatest invention by the way- as my round-the-ticket is just over $3000 US (well, I had to pay another $2000 in tax but still cheap). I contacted my friends in various countries and organizations like wwoof that I’d like to work at, and eventually I came out with an itinerary that covers almost all of the places I wanted to hit- which is India- New Zealand- England- France- Spain- Italy- Kenya-Tanzania- Egypt- Israel- USA- Mexico- Japan- back home

On my last night, I also made my dad some tea that I bought from China and he absolutely loved them. I made him Puer, Longjing and Tieguanyin, and he loved them all and kept asking me for more although as a doctor he was also saying that too much caffeine is bad for him. Although the tea demonstration I gave in front of the head chef and other restaurant staff at the botanical garden didn’t go so well as I had not quite mastered the Tao of tea, it was still good to pique their interest in tea and I bought them several books on tea. My mom told me she also received an offer to be on the board for a tea shop that grows & sells Korean, Chinese and Japanese teas so hopefully I can get somewhere with that too. It was nice to have a brainstorming session with my mom’s best friend who has been making documentaries for over 20 years and is an advisor for national heritage preservation office (she gave me a wonderful tour of the Korean palaces during spring break but unfortunately she was sick now). She has also made a documentary on teas in East Asia so that was really helpful to hear from her on my tea-café idea and other entrepreneurial stuff. I was also excited that the new director at my botanical garden is more excited about the idea of mini golf than my parents were. I thought it would be really cool to have a ‘mini golf garden’ integrated into my family botanical garden and I’m looking forward to learning more about designing and constructing mini golf courses when I go to the UK and the US. I have already exchanged extensive emails with some companies and looking forward to meeting them in person. For my online .com start-up ideas, I also received a crash course on website design from my mom’s friend who is a computer science professor (my mom knows everybody in Korea) and that was really helpful too. I’m refining my ideas for a website that connects runners and that allows one to lend their stuff that they’re not using (like bikes) and although I’m postponing my entrepreneurial activities for my Round-the-world trip, I hope I can get started on them soon.

Kunming- Life & Tea (wrong order forgot about this)

During our final banquet with our homestaying families, Mark threw me the question, "so how was your stay in Kunming?" which was awkward for me to respond, as my homestaying family and others were sitting on the same table and I could not condense my 6-weeks of homestaying to a few minutes. So as much as I love Mark, I just ignored Mark and kept competing with my 8-year-old brother for roasted duck. And as I have been bugging my friends about their college and school lives, some of them have asked ME about my own experience here and if the Dragons trip has changed my life in any significant way. So this yak goes to Mark & all you friends I love. As I thought about my experiences here, the first thing that came into my mind was an advice from a friend who went on the 2006 Tibet Summer program and introduced me to the Dragons: "Looking back on it, I can't say that it was life-changing in a radical way (that I am a markedly different person because of it)--a common trap to fall into is that we expect people will go away on a program like this and come back a totally changed person. However, it made me fully realize my love for mountains and the outdoors and cemented a deep interest that I have now in the region and in Buddhism." Despite countless amazing experiences I've had here, I don't think I've had any life-changing revelations that I recognize yet. For most of the group, China was a culture remarkedly different from their upper-middle class American upbrining, and most of them did not even know how to say ni hao when they arrived in China. I had already made three visits to China before the Dragons and had studied a few years of Chinese before I got here. Korean culture is similar enough to the Chinese culture that I don't have to worry about making any faux pas, and unlike many of my friends who complain that they feel like animals at a zoo being stared at by 1.3 billion Chinese people, I could blend in seamlessly with my golden sandy skin color and sometimes be treated in a more special way thanks to the popularity of the Korean dramas here. (That is not to say I did not learn anything about the Chinese culture though. I had a wonderful exposure to some of the 50+ minorities in China and I was lucky to be in Yunnan which is home to more than half of all the minority groups in China.) One of my friends here told me that learning to balance the needs of herself and the needs of her homestaying family and our group was one of the biggest lessons for her here. Although she loved to exercise, she had sacrificed some of her exercising to spend more time with her family and the group. Likewise, many of my friends report that their families were the best part of their homestay. Unfortunately, I was not so lucky with my families. My first homestaying family had a baby (all my other friends had homestaying siblings around their age) and as they had to take care of the family, they had very little time to spend with me. (But it was a good experience as I learned that babies can cry straight for 2 hours and glimpsed the power of maternal love as I saw my homestaying mom playing the same games with the baby everyday and never seeming to get bored or annoyed when the baby was starting to get on my nerves). And my new homestaying family, the tea cafe owner's family, was better but not by much, as both the parents worked from 8am-8pm (mom) and 8am-11pm (dad) seven days a week. (An illustration of Chinese people's amazing work ethic). They also had very little time to spend with me and only my eight-year-old sibling made some occasional outings with me, and even that was rare because my homestaying brother was going to extra-curricular english, arts and other classes and doing homework. (I went to the World Horticultural Garden, the Golden Temple and the Stone Forest all by myself- which was a good practice for solo travel that may happen later in the year- but me & my homestaying brother did have some awesome sword fights as pirates on the Halloween though). But this independence and relative little family time freed my energy for other creative uses- entrepreurship. In the movie Kungfu Hustle that our group watched together, the protagonist's martial arts qi suddenly bursts in his body after years of dormancy. I don't know what triggered this sudden thirst for entrepreneurship in me (in the movie it was getting hammered by the bad toad-looking guy) but probably always jiangjia-ing (negotiatng the prices) for everything (nothing has a fixed price in China- you can always get a discount) and being violated by the aggressive Chinese street vendors (if you buy an apple, they try to sell you bananas and oranges too and would sometimes even put these fruits in your bag) I don't know if I really have entrepreneur gene or if any of my ideas are any good (the protagonist in the movie get his butt kicked many many times over many many years until he finds his true talent), but I think I may have it. Two of the four are directly results of my stay in Kunming- a college massage delivery place, and a tea cafe. As massage was only like $4 an hour here (compared to 15~30 times of that price in the US or Korea), I often went to go get a massage (this sounds weird but I love the tactile sensation) and having an online-delivering-masseurs-to-college-dorm-rooms-service may be really cool although many barriers such as sketchiness of a stranger coming into your room need to be cleared. Having been massaged my a masseur my age (which was sort of an interesting experience as it made me think more about class & priviledge, and realize how useless I was (I had no skills I can make money with unlike him)), I think massaging would also be a cool vocational training for kids my age who don't have any other economic opportunities and would like to work with NGOs to create a business model out of this. And the second idea is a tea cafe- When I arrived in Kunming, I was surprised by the ubiquitous tea cafes that sort of reminded me of Starbucks and ofter coffee shops in Korea and the US. As I studied tea for my ISP and learned more about it, I began to realize (I know this is very biased but try some good tea yourself) that tea is a much superior product than coffee in many aspects- taste, smell, color, history, culture, health benefits etc. It just needed a better marketing and promotion, and as I became a tea addict here, I'd love to start a tea cafe. So I hung out a lot at one of the large tea markets (these giant markets probably had a close to 100 stores selling every tea-related thing you can imagine- and Yunnan is actually one of the first places in the world to grow tea so good place to get addicted to tea!) in Kunming. One day (one weekend I even spent 11am-5pm both Saturday and Sunday drinking & buying tea), I was called by an owner of a tea-shop who called me up because there was a Chaoxian (Korean-Chinese) person sitting drinking tea. This encounter turned out to be a turning point in my tea life, as he became my mentor and partner in visiting numerous tea shops and eventually buying 50kg of tea, teaware, and tea tables. He taught me the nuances of drinking tea while helping me find good tea, cut down prices a ton through his guanxi and avoid exorbitant prices. He even found me a cheap shipping alternative that was half the price of what China Post wanted to charge me and I sent all my things through him. (But I do realize that there is a little risk that he'll cheat me and I'll never see my stuff again- but he seemed like a nice guy and I know where he lives (he invited me to his house) so I think (hope) he'll be trustworthy). But whether he's a huge defrauder or not, I learned about the power of guanxi in doing business in China because I can't even count how much money he saved me (or lost me if he cheats and takes away all my stuff- in which case I may need to do some experiential learning about the complicated law system in China.) Then there are other parts of my Kunming life that I shouldn't forget to mention. Annie, my Chinese teacher, was one of the best Chinese teachers I've ever had and although she gave me a lot of homework everyday that kept me busy on my 50-minute bus rides, my Chinese improved a lot and the classes were enjoyable as we talked about anything & everything. She also took me to cool places including the flower market where I saw the array of beautiful and colorful natural & manmade flowers and the best thing was that they were so cheap! (I probably bought more than 70 flowers to give as gifts including charming blue roses for the group). Zoe's homestaying sister Wei Wei and Kyuri's homestaying sister Longyun have been wonderful to me in that they added a little spice to my almost non-existent family life by taking me on their holiday trip to a cool lake and to old Kunming, as well as KTV (karaoke) that was even more hip than the ones in Korea. I should stop bashing my family by the way, as they did try to make time to take me to various places and took me to the Kunming botanical garden one weekend. But families shine in need, and my family really saved me on the last day when I really needed help packing 50kg of fragile tea stuff into boxes and we went to bed at very late hours after all the last minute rush packing. My family also made me realize how wasteful I am. Although my family owns a tea shop and an English school with over 20 staff, my homestaying mom almost never eats out and is always taking the bus despite the inexpensive taxis. As cool is environmentalism is around the world, my family save energy more for economic reasons than for environmental reasons. Apart from that, I've also enjoyed forced vacation from my Christian heritage (at home I go to church with my family every Sunday and I attended church most Sundays at school as I lived right across from the church and the Sunday church bell always woke me up) and that may be a spiritual break I needed as my spiritual mentor at school recommended. As I'm in Xinjiang hanging out with the Muslim Uigyurs right now, I look forward to immersing myself in Islam and examining my spirituality more. Overall, although nothing revelational happened, there were myriad mini surprises, delights and inspirations that arose out of my stay in Kunming. As we embark on our 5-week travelling portion of the program, I look forward to doing more treks like the ones in Nujiang Valley and more rural home-stay and service like the ones in Bai-bi-cun. I love the mountains and the kids- and I think I'll love deserts, Terra cotta Warriors, and colder China too as we head north.