Generally speaking, Korean people care a lot how they look. Because of the prosperity of entertainment industry. Korean people are highly influenced by how the actors and singers dress. My friend told me a story of himself. He is a Korean but raised in the States, so he is rathe casual about what he is wearing. One time he went back to Korea to visit during summer, because the temperature was too hot so just put on a tank shirt and went out. He told me people are giving him weird looks wherever he goes. After that, he always spends a lot up dressing up before going out.
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My friend told me in Korea, High school and Middle school, even Elementary school students face huge academic pressure. Because of the population of Koreans and limited amount of good schools. Young students face severe competition to get into a good college. I was told that Korea has the highest high school student suicide rate in Asia.
I find the Korean bowing culture really interesting. Not like in the states, bowing is a very common courtesy in Korea to greet elders and to show respect. Especially when a young boy/girl meet someone in his/her father age, they bow 90 degrees to show respect, and the longer you bow, the more respect you show. In some very traditional areas if you do not bow, you even get yelled at.
Here is a conversation I had with a Korean friend, Brenda.
Basically we are chatting randomly. She asked me “How are you doing.”. I replied “Doing alright, I have a test tomorrow.” Then she said “What test is that? ” “Math” I replied. Then she wished me good luck.
On the first day of class our language partner Evelyn showed us how to write my name in Korean. My Chinese name is 段博文 (Duan Bo Wen). Evelyn struggled when trying to translate my name into Korean, she told me that my name sounds a bit weird in Korean, people rarely use this name. The meaning behind my Chinese name is “Reads a lot and knows a lot”.
Our class went to new grand market for dinner. Here is what I ordered: 떡볶이. It is a traditional Korean dish with rice cakes and noodles. Kinda spicy but really tasty! Korean food culture and Chinese food culture share something in common, I found a dish named Mapo Tofu, I was surprised because the name and the way it is cooked are almost similar in my hometown.
Blackpink in your area!!!
It is impossible to not talk about K-pop when talking about Korean culture. K-pop has been trending in the world. And Blackpink is one of the most popular girl groups in recent days. To be honest one of my motivations to learn Korean is the interest in Blackpink. They have released many hot singles that went viral on youtube. One of the four members, Lisa, is especially popular. She left her home Thailand at a very young age and came to Korea alone for training. I can’t image how many struggles she had. Fortunately she made it through and achieved what she deserves.
Lecture on week 13 is interesting. We talked about some tourist attractions in Korea. All of us wanted to visit Korean but none of us have ever been, so we were excited throughout the class. Actually I was going to visit Korea in my Junior year of High school, but some disease bursted so the trip was called off. Some of the top destinations we picked are Invading Shopping District in Seoul, Evelyn told us it is the biggest commercial center in Korea, it has everything you can ever think about. Besides, Insadong is attracting to us because it has a lot of antique shops and tea places. The other location is Gyeongbokgyn Palace, it is an important cultural landmark. With in the complex, there are two big national museums, you can acquire an overview of Korean history by watching the artifacts.
In the last week of class we discussed the age system in Korea. The system is quite different from how the western world does it. Here the calculation is simple because your age is only determined by your birthday. However in Korea, the age is determined by the first day of the year. Besides, you have to add one extra year. Therefore, people are older in Korea. For example, if you are born in 12.31.1997. Your current age in US is 20. While in Korea, your age is 22.
In Week 11, we watched a Korean movie, Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds. It is a really popular movie in Korean, based on statistics, one quarter of the nation have watched the movie. While we are watching, Evelyn sometimes will pause the movie and teach us something about Korean culture. This movies talks about how a fireman who sacrificed his life saving people survived his journey in the hell. The plots are interesting and very touching.
Week 12 is Thanksgiving Break! Yeah!
We touched on some cultural aspects in week 9, we talked about some major Korean holidays. Korean also celebrates Lunar New Year, I found a lot of similarities between the rituals and practices in China and Korea. Both of Chinese and Korean people have the ceremony to worship ancestors. I am not surprised because I have learned that China and Korea has a lot of cultural interactions in ancient times, so it is reasonable that we share some similarities. There are some differences in the practices too. Koreans usually wear formal hanbok during the practices while Chinese people nowadays do not wear traditional clothing. Because cultural revolution has erased some tradition cultures.
In week 10, we continued to learn about the numbering system. As we have tabled in the previous week, there are two different types of systems used for different purposes and in different scenarios. Sino-Korean, or China Syste and Korea system. China system is inherited from Chinese culture so words sound very like Chinese numbers. People usually use this system for talking about money, times, phone numbers. While Korea system is more modern and complicated. People usually us it when talking about age and counting.
In the seventh week, we are done with learning vowels and consonants. We start to learn some phrases that are useful in a real life setting. We learned how to order food in a resultant. Evelyn wrote down some simple sentences on the board and let us try to read it with the aid of the alphabet table. We learned sentences like “What food would you recommend?”, “That is delicious” and “I ate well” and some other ones. After that, we watched a food documentary of numerous street food in a Korean city.
The next week we went to a Korean restaurant with in New Grand Mart. According to Evelyn, this restaurant is pretty authentic. I ordered the food in Korean and the waitress understood me well.
In the fifth week, we continued to learn more Korean words. The main focus of this week’s class the how to count numbers. In Korean, it is kind of different from English and Chinese, there are two different systems of count numbers. To be honest it is really hard for me tell which one to use in what scenario immediately. Besides, we learned how to count days in a week, how to describe basic emotions, and basic phrases how to introduce myself. Writing a complete sentence is much more challenging than writing the words. I have to differentiate from different sentence structures. It is really difficult to remember.
In the sixth week, we were given a short quiz on what we have covered so far. On the quiz Evelyn gave us some phonetic translation in English, and we were asked to write it down in Korean. After she graded the quiz quickly in class, we continued our learning of vowels and consonants.
In the second we we continued the learning of Korean alphabets. We learned the alphabets by matching one alphabet with its pronunciation and writing them repeatedly. This method is indeed effective, writing them down helps us to memorize much better than only reading them. We also watched Korean talk show with English subtitles. In this episode, people from different nations (Russia, China, France and so on)talked about their experiences in Korean, most of them work in Korea and plan on staying for a long time. They talked about the phonetic differences between their mother languages and Korean. Those from Europe complained the Korean phonetic patterns were too different while some from Asia found that similarities.
In the fourth week, we are done with learning with alphabets. We start to use the consonants and vowels to write real characters. We were surprised to find that we actually can write simple character easily. It is a really rewarding experience for us after only four weeks of learning.
In the first week of our Korean class, our language partner introduced herself showed us a short powerpoint of they city she is from. Then she asked us to set up our learning goals for this semester. Individually we came up with a list of ten goals that we want to achieve by the end of the semester. Besides, we talked about why we are interested in taking this class, apparently all of us have plans to visit Korean someday in the future.
The second week, we touched on the Korean alphabets. Evelyn told us once we have memorized the alphabets it would be really easy for us to do the writing and readings. Because they phonetic formations of a character is very easy. To make the process of learning alphabets more interesting, she taught us by playing board games.
On the first day of class our language partner Evelyn showed us how to write my name in Korean. My Chinese name is 段博文 (Duan Bo Wen). Evelyn struggled when trying to translate my name into Korean, she told me that my name sounds a bit weird in Korean, people rarely use this name. The meaning behind my Chinese name is “Reads a lot and knows a lot”.
While researching music in Bali during the summer of 2017, I reached out to Andy McGraw, the ethnomusicology professor at UR and my research advisor, for suggestions about what to learn. He suggested that I learn all the parts to a Gamelan Gong Kebyar piece entitled "Gambang Suling" so that I could teach it to the UR community gamelan group upon my return to the US. I loved the idea, so I began to work with I Wayan Sudirana, a member of the faculty at the Bali Arts Conservatory (ISI Denpasar) and my host in Bali, in order to learn the piece part-by-part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ui0a-LrPBM
In the traditional method of teaching gamelan, Sudi sat on the opposite side of the gangsa (an instrument that plays fast interlocking parts and makes up a majority of the instruments in a Gong Kebyar ensemble) while I sat on the normal side, and he played the harder interlocking sangsih part while I played the more basic polos part. I began by learning the gangsa parts, then learned the simpler melodic parts on the same gangsa. I learned the parts throughout 2 months, culminating with the kendang drum part.
Back in the US, I worked together with Andy to teach the piece to the ensemble to add to our performance repertoire. Although I made notation for the backing instruments, we made it so that the most difficult gangsa parts would be learned by ear. Here's a recording of a Balinese group playing the piece:
This is a typical piece of dance music played by a Gamelan ensemble in the village of Peliatan in the center of Bali, the island immediately east of Java. As you can hear, this style of gamelan is worlds away from the slow, quiet, contemplative gamelan of central Java. The gong ageng that is struck once every ten minutes in long Javanese gamelan pieces here occurs every eight beats, accentuating the short gong cycles and adding to the energy evoked by the rapid, buzzing gangsa instruments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dtF9v7MNtM
"Kebyar", meaning 'flowering' or 'explosion', refers to the large sound ("byar") produced by all the instrumentalists in the ensemble playing at once. This style of music originated in the north of Bali around the turn of the 20th century, descended from older sacred music forms. This exciting new form of music took the island by storm, and many villages melted down the metal from their older gamelan sets to create new Gong Kebyar sets.
Today, this music is synonymous with Balinese performing arts, and once a year, the best groups from around the island converge on the capital city of Denpasar for the Bali Arts Festival for Gong Kebyar competitions and showcases of traditional and contemporary musics from all over Indonesia. I was able to attend several Gong Kebyar competitions while in Bali, of all-male, co-ed, and all-female Gong Kebyar groups. The venue is a large Greek-style outdoor amphitheater with bench seating; vendors selling Quail eggs, small fried snacks ("gorengan"), and grilled chicken skewers mill about the packed venue throughout the performance. See a performance from this year's arts festival here:
I have been practicing using common phrases with other native speakers.
This is a recording of Gamelan music from Eastern Java which, while sharing a lot of the instruments featured in my first cultural post, "Ketawang: Puspawarna", has several distinctions that highlight the complex region-specific map of traditional musics in Indonesia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCv4TlnpzYQ
The piece opens with a "pathetan", a short, rhythmically free introduction opened by the rebab (the melodic leader of the ensemble) and accompanyed by the "cengkok" instruments, the quieter instruments of the ensemble that elaborate the melodies played by the louder instruments. Following this, the rebab plays the "buka" or opening to the piece, and the drum comes in to lead all the other instruments to start at the strike of the gong ageng, the largest and lowest-pitched gong.
Immediately noticeable is the relative complexity (read: funkiness) of the drumming compared to Puspawarna, and the sharpness of the rhythmic slowing down and speeding up of the tempo. Eventually the tempo settles to a pace at which the singer can join the ensemble and recite verses of sung poetry called "kakawin". Not long after, the drum speeds up the ensemble once again, and the other instrumentalists follow suit.
The gong ageng, the prominent and very low-pitched noise heard intermittently on the recording, marks the beginning and ending of a gong cycle. These cycles are circular in shape, and the melody's position within this cycle are marked by smaller, higher pitched gongs; this is easier to hear at the end of the piece, when the drummer continually speeds up the tempo to mark the upcoming "suwuk", or ending.
American and Korean makeup and fashion have subtle differences that helps us understand a lot about the cultures and how people like representing themselves in different societies. American makeup is more bold -- with darker eyes, sharper eyebrows, etc.; whereas Korean makeup is more natural and tries to focus on healthy skincare including healthier eating habits to have better skin. Everyday American style is more focused soon comfort with a lot of athleisure clothes. Korean fashion is more girly and formal. In general, Koreans dress up more for day-to-day wear than Americans do.
Here's a video that highlights the differences between Korean and American makeup:
