Tag Archives: Korea

March 4, 2013

The Great, Terrible Stone Circle – Fantastic Travelogue #8

Sometimes you have some amazing adventures you just have to tell everyone about. Read the rest of this account here. From now on, I’m going to include a short synopsis at the beginning for those who haven’t read the previous episodes and don’t have the time. Skip it if you know the story.

Synopsis: I was hiking in the mountains of Korea when I got lost at night and came out in a strange valley. I met a young woman sweeping a stone circle. She was friendly but then she and some other women locked me in a room; for my safety, I found out later. That night I heard weird sounds and noises coming from the woods. I escaped into the forest and saw a creepy woman standing on the stone circle. She mesmerized me and I went over to her. She couldn’t speak my language, but brought me to a building with a golden dome and showed me a map of the area, which wasn’t Korea. That scared me and I managed to get away. I met up with the young woman I had first met and through Chinese characters, we were able to communicate. Her name was Ain-Mai and her brother was Sing-ga. The creepy woman was named Hengfel and came from another world. She came there to eat a certain fruit called gaan-shi and also kidnapped all the men she found, which was why they hid when she came. The brother and sister tried to help me escape but Hengfel’s guards overtook us in the woods and captured us.

The woman known as Hengfel walked towards me, smiling in triumph. She ignored Ain-Mai and Sing-ga and came right up to me. She said something to me, very slowly and deliberately, enunciating every word. Of course, I didn’t understand any of it, but I replied, very slowly, “You’re a hideous old crone, who walks like an arthritic baboon.” It was childish and it wasn’t true, but I also knew she couldn’t understand me. I was about to keep going when she slapped me and walked away. I guess my tone was clear enough.

They sat us down together at the edge of the clearing, surrounded by four guards. The other two—Ain-Mai and Sing-ga—looked dull and defeated, but I wasn’t going to give up yet. If I could get away into the woods—even with restraints on my hands—I could still make it up the valley by nightfall. I hadn’t really looked at the guards closely before. The night before, it had been dark and when they grabbed us, I didn’t really have time, but now that I looked at them, I saw they were different from the other women I had seen. They were definitely female, but muscular and very serious. They weren’t paying attention to me; just staring straight ahead.

I inched my way backwards, and then in a moment of breathless apprehension, stood up slowly. Still, they didn’t notice me. I looked down to see Ain-Mai looking up at me, a tragic expression on her face. I motioned with my head for them to come with me, but she just looked back at the ground.

Well, I was going. I took two steps before my foot cracked a dead twig on the ground. Then I was off, running for all I was worth, not looking back. As long as I could lose them in the woods, I could make my way back up to the ridge.

I had gone about 200 feet when a guard appeared among the trees just ahead of me.

You got to be kidding me! She has guards out this far? I thought.

I changed direction , but another one appeared in front of me there as well, pointing her spear at me. I tried another direction, but the same thing happened. I stopped and the guard stepped back into the trees. A moment later, I felt a spear point in my back. It was the same guard and with an impassive expression, she led me back to the clearing. Sure enough, there were only three guards there now. But how could they be so fast? Unless it was just an illusion. We got back to the tree where the other two were and the guard suddenly hit the back of my legs with her spear, knocking me flat on my back.

I wasn’t ready to give up, but the hopelessness of the situation began to dawn on me. Two of the four guards remained facing us with their spears leveled. So instead, I watched the activity in the clearing. Women from the fortress village were bringing baskets of the yellow gaan-shi fruit and putting them next to the stone circle. Hengfel wasn’t in sight, but she appeared as the sun was setting.

The guards got us on our feet and moved us closer. I started to get a feeling of apprehension deep in my stomach and all I could think of was what Ain-Mai had said about them taking men and them not coming back. I was getting frantic to get back home. I thought of my wife back in Jeonju, not even knowing that there was a problem yet. My plan had been to go for six days and although I usually called every day, she would just assume I was out of range or that my battery had died. I had left my phone back with my backpack and I wondered if she had called.

Hengfel stepped onto the stone circle. The clearing had darkened and I could barely see her, until a glow started to form around her. It grew stronger until it lit up the whole clearing and cast strong shadows. A pillar of white light formed around her and she held her hand straight up. I saw that she was holding a medallion, with a complicated, snaky pattern on it. Ball lightning formed on the medallion and shot out into the forest. A sound like a scream began to build to an ear-splitting pitch. My hands were bound in the front and I put my fingers in my ears. I saw that the women from the town were doing the same. The guards and Hengfel herself seemed unaffected.

The scream built into a high, shuddering roar. The light seemed to thicken, however that’s possible, until it enveloped Hengfel. Then she was just gone, just like that.

The guards nudged us forward.

As I looked at the column of pure light and felt the sound reverberate inside my body, I felt like I was approaching a guillotine. Sing-ga finally found his spirit. He sprinted to one side, but it was far too late for that. A spear shaft caught him on the side of the head and he crashed to the ground. One of the guards stooped and picked him up with one arm and motioned for us to follow. Watching a woman carry a stunned man in one arm like a rag-doll gave me a very strange feeling inside. I looked over at Ain-Mai and saw that she looked terrified.

A spear jabbed me in the back, going through my fleece and breaking the skin. I lurched forward, staying just in front of the spear until I climbed slowly onto the stone platform. Light surrounded us, taking us into itself, until the rest of the world disappeared.

12 Comments | tags: capture, escape, Fantastic Travelogue, fantasy, fiction, fortress, Korea, old woman, other worlds, travelogue, woman | posted in Travelogue

March 3, 2013

Mirror Ball – Visual Fiction #21

By David Stewart

This week’s visual fiction is a bit different than most. It’s a bit longer and darker. I hope you like it.

taken in Changwon, South Korea

They say you can’t see yourself in the mirror ball in the park, and for once “they” are right. I don’t know how he did it–the anonymous artist who designed it–but no matter how close you get to it, you’re invisible. You can see everything else around you, skewed and stretched along the curved, reflective surface, but never yourself. I see my friend, he sees me, but neither of us sees ourselves. Weird science, I guess.

They also say that if you go the park at midnight and look into the ball, you will see how you are going to die. Nothing weird about that; it’s the kind of thing “they” say all the time. Everyone says it, but of course, no one does it.

Except I did once, with my girlfriend at the time. I took her for a walk in the woods at midnight for the same reason guys bring their dates to horror movies. Girls who are scared cling closer to you and there’s nothing wrong with that.

We came out into the clearing with the mirror ball and my girl stepped closer to me.

“I hear that if you look in that, you see how you’re going to die,” she said.

“Oh yeah? Should I try it?” I asked. False bravado in front of the ladies.

“Come on, let’s just go,” she said.

But I wasn’t finished showing off. I stepped away from her and walked towards the ball. I saw her behind me in the reflection, stretched and contorted and standing alone in the moonlight.

Then my watch beeped.

Midnight.

In the space of a heartbeat–barely enough time to react–I saw a car appear in the circular reflection. It hit a tree and a body was flung through the windshield and towards me. It lay, unmoving, at a twisted angle that was exaggerated even further by the convex mirror. Still, I saw without a doubt that it was my girl. A figure lurched out of the driver’s seat and came towards her. It was me as I had never seen myself before: older, bearded and holding a bottle.

Then the image was gone and all I saw was my girlfriend standing in the moonlit forest, hugging her arms around herself. I turned back.

“So, did you see how you were going to die?” she asked, a teasing smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “I’m going home now.”

“What? You brought me all the way out here just to bring me home?”

“Sorry.”

And then I brought her home and went straight home myself. I broke up with her the next day, no explanation. She never forgave me for that.

“I thought you were the one,” she said.

I think I was.

13 Comments | tags: creepy, fantasy, fiction, flash fiction, Korea, photograph, visual fiction | posted in Visual Fiction

February 28, 2013

A Long, Disjointed, Enlightening Chat – Fantastic Travelogue #7

By David Stewart

Sometimes you have some amazing adventures you just have to tell everyone about. Read the rest of this account here.

I woke up with a jolt and an incoherent exclamation, which is about the least dignified way a person can wake up. I had been dreaming about that horrible woman and her weird stare and creepy smile. In the dream, she had been searching for me everywhere, until I had nowhere to run. Waking up was not much better, since I realized that it was mostly true.

I was still in the small room by the secret gate in the fortress. The young woman was not there and what I could tell, from the light coming in from under the door, it was full daylight outside. I was just wondering what I should do when the door opened and the young woman stepped inside, followed by a man.

A man! It was the first one I had seen in the last two days. Not that I minded being around women all the time, but it was nice to know men existed here. The man seemed pretty surprised to see me too and he and the woman had an intense conversation back and forth. Finally, I got up and with my finger, I wrote “Who are you?” in the dirt, the best I could (誰是你). It was a mixture of Japanese and Chinese characters and I didn’t know the right syntax, but at least it got their attention.

They knew Chinese characters, and began writing some in the dirt as well. What followed took several hours and a lot of miscommunication. They knew characters that I didn’t and I knew ones they didn’t and dirt isn’t the best medium for making lots of tiny strokes. There were a lot of dead-ends and a lot of good-natured frustration, but here is the gist of our conversation. I’m going to present it as if we spoke it all, just to make it easier to read.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am Ain-Mai,” the woman said (she wrote it as 安美). “This is my brother, Sing-ga (石鋼)”. (I only learned later that they were brother and sister. At the time, I had no idea what she wrote and the whole thing was very confusing.)

“I am David. I live in Korea. What is this place called?”

“This is Dwengshink (東山). How did you get here?” Sing-ga asked. He kept staring at me in curiosity, especially my beard.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I was walking in the mountains and I lost my way and came here. Who was that woman?”

When they understood who I meant, it sparked a lot of what seemed like angry cursing from them. “She is like a queen,” Ain-Mai said finally. “She has magic and lives in another world. Whenever she finds a man here that she likes, she takes him back with her and they don’t come back. So when she comes, all the men hide in the mountains.”

I asked them more, but they did not know anything about where she came from or who she really was, at least not that they could express through writing in the dirt. They called her Hengfel, although I didn’t recognize the characters they wrote. As far as they knew, she had always come, since the time of their parents, at least. The golden dome was her residence in Dwengshink and no one else used it.

“She comes every six months or so,” Sing-ga said, “and stays about two days.”

“But why does she come here?” I asked. “Is she the queen of Dwengshink?”

“No, she is not our queen,” they said. “She only comes to this valley. She comes to eat gaan-shi.” That was how they pronounced it. They didn’t know how to write it, but I gathered that it was a kind of fruit.

“I want to go back to Korea,” I said. This sparked a lot of discussion between the two of them, presumably about how.

“Hengfel goes back tonight,” Sing-ga said eventually, “and I think it would be good if you went before then.”

I couldn’t agree more. I never wanted to see that Hengfel woman again and I could only imagine what was happening back at the sanjang where my backpack was. I had been gone almost two whole days and they probably thought I was dead.

Ain-Mai left for an hour or so, while Sing-ga sat there with me in mostly awkward silence. He tried to talk a bit, but gave up when I clearly didn’t understand. Now that Ain-Mai wasn’t there, he did not seem to have any interest in writing in the dirt.

Ain-Mai came back with a basket of food, mostly fruit and flatbread. There were grapes, apples and things that looked like really long persimmons and finally one thickly wrinkled yellow fruit the size of a baseball that Ain-Mai said was a gaan-shi. They let me eat most of it. It was sweet and tart at the same time; really good, although I don’t think I’d travel across worlds to get it.

After we had eaten, Sing-ga said we should be going and they led the way out, on the inside of the fortress. It was mid-afternoon and the sky was blue. Ain-Mai led the way along a small path through the woods, while Sing-ga kept us fifty feet behind her, presumably in case she met anyone.

We gave the clearing with the stone circle a wide berth and kept climbing up the slope. The trees were mostly evergreens and the smell in the warm air was wonderful.

After another ten minutes, Ain-Mai stopped and motioned for us to come closer. I saw that we had reached the main path, which I had taken the day before. The old woman’s cottage, where I had gotten a drink, was right in front of us. We were approaching the house when the woman appeared at her gate. She looked scared and when she saw us, she started making motions with her hands, warding us away.

I got a sick feeling of fear in the pit of my stomach and turned to to run. Ain-Mai and Sing-ga were doing the same. I saw two female guards appear on the path, up the valley ahead of us. We turned to flee, but more appeared out of the trees below as well. There was nothing to be done. I could tell that Ain-Mai and Sing-ga had both given up; I could see the defeat on their faces. As for myself, my upbringing hadn’t involved fighting multiple spearmen (or women) unarmed, so I didn’t try to be a hero. One of them clipped metal restraints around our wrists and marched us back down the valley. I heard Ain-Mai crying behind me but when I turned, I saw that it was actually Sing-ga who was crying. That freaked me out more than being handcuffed and escorted at spear point. What on earth does this woman do to men?

We went around a bend in the path and came out into the stone circle clearing. There she was, the woman they called Hengfel, standing in the middle of the clearing, with her animal skins and purple veil and her creepy, creepy smile.

11 Comments | tags: capture, Chinese characters, escape, Fantastic Travelogue, fantasy, fiction, fortress, Korea, old woman, other worlds, travelogue, woman | posted in Travelogue

February 26, 2013

“Well, I’m back,” he said.

By David Stewart

As you probably know if you saw my Sunday post, I was away last week on a trip. I went by myself to a couple of small islands in the southwest of Korea, called Heuksando (흑산도) and Hongdo (홍도). They’re part of a national park, which is not surprising, considering all the natural beauty there. As promised, here are some pictures I took there. It’s very visual, although not fiction; it’s a travelogue, and actually was pretty fantastic. Enjoy~

I left here on Sunday and went down to the port city of Mokpo. The next day I took this ferry. It was very fast and the water was very rough, making it fun for me, until other people starting getting sick and throwing up. The guy behind me kept saying, “I’m dying. I’m dying. I want to live. I should have gotten off at the last island.”

On the first island, I took a bus around the island on a road that wound up and down mountains on hairpin turns and steep grades. Between the cliffs and mountains, were tiny, idyllic coves with fishing villages.Here is one of the roads. This one is famous on the island and has twelves switchbacks in a row. It was quite something going up this in a bus.

The next day, it was crazy windy so I walked along the beach to see the waves crashing up on the rocks.

After a while, I hiked back inland, through the forest and through pastures. I came across a lot of cow dung, but only 4 cows the whole time. This was a bull, a cow and a calf. The calf was very cute, but I didn’t want to get close, since the cow kept bellowing at me, even when I was out of sight.

The forest on the island was almost all broad-leaf evergreens and there were vines and ivy everywhere. It is much different from the rest of Korea.

This is a view of the harbor looking back across the peninsula where I was hiking. I could easily have stayed there for a long time. It was so peaceful.

At sunset, I went back to the harbor where my motel was. It was the off-season for tourism, so I think I was the only one in the hotel. I never ate at a restaurant with any other customers; just the owners eating their supper.

Then I climbed up the hill behind my hotel, where I was rewarded with this view:

The next day, I took a ferry thirty minutes to the island of Hongdo, which has some of the best craggy rock formations I’ve seen. Just like on Heuksando, I was one of the only tourists there.

I climbed up the mountain and had a beautiful overview of the whole southern half of the island.

The only problem with this island was that it was quite inaccessible. A lot of cliffs, like the one below, were off-limits, with no trails or safe ways to get to them. Which is too bad, since I would really liked to climb up on some of them.

The day was absolutely beautiful. As opposed to the previous cloudy and windy days, this day was sunny, warm, and serene.

I found a hotel, then struck out to the south side of the island and fought my way through the forest of vines and thorns down to a small beach. This island was just offshore from there.

A lot of where I walked was quite close to the edges of cliffs that plunged more than a hundred feet straight down to the ocean. I was careful, of course, but I’m sure my wife would have had a heart attack if she’d seen me.

Hongdo is much smaller than Heuksando and everyone lives in one village in the middle of the island. Probably half the buildings are hotels or restaurants, the vast majority of which were closed for the season. Here is a shot of the harbor as I was coming back in late afternoon.

I walked down to a dock on the far side of the island to see the sun set behind the island.

The next day I got up way too early for the ferry, so I went down to the harbor and watched the sunrise.

Then it just better and better as I waited.

I hope you enjoyed the tour. Now that I’m back, I am slowly climbing the long, winding steps up into the Green-walled Tower to see what other fantastic worlds I can spy. More fiction coming up tomorrow.

P.S. Bonus points if you can name the reference in the title. It doesn’t count if you’re related to me, since I KNOW you know. 🙂

23 Comments | tags: cliffs, ferry, Heuksando, hiking, Hongdo, island, Korea, mountains, ocean, outside the tower, photograph, sunrise, sunset, travel, travelogue | posted in Uncategorized

February 24, 2013

Where I sat and wrote – Visual Fiction #20

By David Stewart

This is not really a visual fiction, in that there is no story with it, but this is a shot from where I went this past week. I went by myself and hiked around, reading and writing as well. This picture was taken on the island of Hongdo, in the extreme southwest of Korea. It was the off-season for tourists, so I was totally alone on the paths, in the restaurants, in the hotels. Here, I sat on a bench and looked out at the Yellow Sea stretching out to meet the sky. The weather was warm (for February in Korea) and there were even insects out. I sat and wrote a bit here in a leather-bound blank book my parents gave me for my birthday. It was a good time.

Taken on Hongdo, Korea

28 Comments | tags: Hongdo, island, Korea, outside the tower, photograph, travel, writing, Yellow Sea | posted in Visual Fiction

February 18, 2013

Fantastic Travelogue #6 – Enough of This

By David Stewart

Sometimes you have some amazing adventures you just have to tell everyone about. Read the rest of this account here.

There are times in life when something happens that changes everything. Like if you’re arguing with someone and they pull a gun out, or if you’re in a restaurant and find a mouse in your food. They’re kind of deal-breakers. That’s what it was like when I saw that map, which apparently showed where I was, yet was nowhere that I recognized.

That’s it, I’m done, I thought. I wanted to get some air. I wrote the word “air” (空氣) on the paper, but the woman didn’t seem to understand what I meant. So I just stood up and walked out. She came too, of course.

I had no idea what time it was, but it must have been pretty late. The moon had set and the sky was dark. One door of the gate had been shut, but the other was open a crack. I walked around a little, as if admiring the architecture, and then when I got close to the gate, I just took off running. The old woman shouted after me, but I was already through the gate when the two guards wheeled out of the darkness towards me. They lowered their spears to block my way, but I was too fast for them and a second later, I was running and stumbling back up the valley.

It was exhilarating to break social convention that way and just run away. Once when I was in Korean city with my cousin, a man came up to us and wanted to guide us around. Nothing we said could make him leave and eventually we ran away as he was getting a taxi for us all. It was that same feeling, a mixture of adrenaline and relief, spiked with the fear of being followed.

I left the path to avoid being caught again and started blundering blindly through the underbrush. That place may not have been in Korea, but it sure had the same amount of thorns on every living thing. My jacket was torn and my hands were scratched and bleeding before I had gone very far.

I was out there a long time, maybe hours. All I know was the sky was just beginning to lighten in the east when I came out of the woods and found a tall fortress wall in front of me. I didn’t see the gate anywhere. I had left the path on the left side, and so I now continued left along the wall. My plan was to walk around the fortress and then back up the valley where I had come from.

I was really tired by this time. I hadn’t slept all night and the last time I had eaten was when I was locked up in the room in the fortress. I kept stopping to lean against the wall and close my eyes. Maybe twenty minutes later, I came to what Koreans call an ammun, or secret gate, built into the wall. The tiny door was open and all I could see inside was darkness. I was about move on, when a lantern was uncovered and a woman stepped out of the gate.

I was about to run, when I saw that it was young woman I had seen earlier the day before; the same one who had helped to lock me up. Still, she beckoned me in and smiled so joyfully, that my legs moved on their own and followed her inside.

Just inside the gate was a small chamber, probably designed for guards. There was food and water there, as well as a bed. I had a drink of water, but before I knew it, my eyes were closing and I couldn’t keep them open. The girl saw this and helped me lie down on the bed and covered me with a blanket. Within a minute, I had drifted off to sleep.

I know I usually draw pictures, but I didn’t have time this week. This is a secret gate close to what it looked like.

7 Comments | tags: ammun, escape, Fantastic Travelogue, fantasy, fiction, fortress, Korea, night, other worlds, secret gate, travelogue, woman | posted in Travelogue

February 17, 2013

The Broom – Visual Fiction #19

By David Stewart

It seemed to tremble under my hand when I first touched it in the market, which was one of the reasons I bought it. I am just a groundskeeper at an elementary school, but I take care of my tools. I buy them carefully, and use them the same way.

The more you work with tools, the more they gain personalities of their own. I can hear their voices as we work together. The high, ringing voice of the hammer; the dull mumble of the snow shovel, grumbling querulously as it bites at the icy buildup on the steps; even the acerbic snip of the pruning shears as it cuts back errant branches.

But the broom speaks softly. It whispers to me as I pull it smoothly over the brick path. In the fall, I hear it speaking every day, murmuring softly to the fallen gingko leaves as it pushes them into piles. It, more than any other, seems to take pleasure in the work we do together and so, when we are finished for the day, I let it rest for an hour or so in the sun as a reward for its hard work.

taken in Soyang, Korea

5 Comments | tags: anthropomorphism, broom, Korea, photograph, school, visual fiction | posted in Visual Fiction

February 13, 2013

The Wrong Tourist – Friday Fictioneers

By David Stewart

Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for choosing my picture for this week’s Friday Fictioneers. This was taken in Jeonju, South Korea. Pungnammun, the historic south gate of the city is in the background.

He nodded when I pointed to the gate and proffered my camera. I walked towards it . . . and turned to see him take off running.

He picked the wrong tourist.

I screamed like a berserker and tore after him. He was almost at the road, a patch of wet cement between us.

That Nikon was two weeks old.

I made a flying leap and grabbed his ankle, just before crashing into wet goo. He flailed frantically but I death-gripped him ten minutes til the cops came.

We made the evening news.

I hear they put up a statue to commemorate it.

112 Comments | tags: camera, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, funny, Jeonju, Korea, photograph, quirky, thief, tourist | posted in Light

February 11, 2013

Fantastic Travelogue #5 – Inside the Golden Dome…sigh

By David Stewart

Sometimes you have some amazing adventures you just have to tell everyone about. Read the rest of this account here.

Have you ever done something that you knew was a bad idea and then as soon as you did it, you realized it was a very, very bad idea? That was how I felt as I stood in front of the stone circle in the clearing, with the strange woman in animal skins and a purple veil smiling creepily at me. I must have been mesmerized, since I sure wouldn’t have gone out there on my own. Even my adventurous spirit was whimpering in the corner, asking for mommy.

The woman walked to the edge of the stone disk and stepped delicately off. As she did, the soft glow that enveloped it faded. A few of the women took out lanterns and held them up as the woman walked towards me. We were about the same height—over six foot—which was rather intimidating. She said something to me and when I didn’t respond, she something else in what seemed like a different language. She went through almost a dozen languages, and all of them sounded foreign to me.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally, in English and Korean. “I don’t understand.” I gave her a sheepish smile and shrugged.

She burst out laughing and then shrugged her own shoulders. She kept saying things and shrugging her shoulders as if it were a huge joke. I was starting to blush with embarrassment and the other women were looking distraught and studiously avoiding looking at her.

The woman stopped and barked a few orders at the women. Then she linked her arm through mine and we all started walking back down towards the fortress village.

Seriously, what would you have done? I would have given quite a large amount of money not to have been in that situation, but I felt trapped. There seemed no way of escape, short of punching and pushing them all out of the way. So, I let myself be led along, just a big, dumb lamb to the slaughter.

We reached the fortress town but to my surprise, the women didn’t stop. The fortress gate was open and we went right through and continued down the valley. I looked around for the pretty young woman I had met that afternoon—not that I liked her or anything, I just wanted to see a familiar face. She was nowhere to be seen though.

The woman kept looking over at me and smiling and saying stuff, as if she expected me to understand.

I don’t understand you at all, Your Royal Battiness! I thought. I admit, it wasn’t very clever, but I was desperately trying to cope with the situation. Unfortunately, calling her that made me smile, and she thought I was smiling at her.

The next twenty minutes were an ordeal of awkwardness I’m going to pass over quickly. She thought I understood a little of what she was saying and kept speaking slower and louder. I would have gladly gnawed my own arm off to get away.

Just when I was seriously considering punching her and making a break for it, the forest path opened out into a wide clearing and the tower with the golden dome loomed up in front of us. It was surrounded by a low wall topped with torches. The flickering torchlight glinted off the golden dome, making all kinds of effects with light and shadow.

The gate was open and guarded by women with spears. We went into a room with a low table in the middle and surrounded by lamps, so that it was fully lit. The woman sat down on one side of the table and motioned for me to sit opposite her. I decided to try to communicate: the old woman in the forest had understood Chinese characters, so it was possible this woman would too. I traced out my Korean name in Chinese characters on the table and I could see instantly that the woman knew what I was doing. She barked a few more orders and pretty soon a woman came in with paper, a brush and an inkstone. I’d never written with a brush before, but I did my best and wrote my name again (大成).

“Di-sheng?” she said. My Korean name is Dae-Sung, so close enough. I nodded. She grabbed the brush and started to write quickly, which I couldn’t read at all. After a few minutes, she caught on and wrote it all again, very meticulously. I didn’t recognize it all, but I saw the word for “come” (來) and the one for “place” (場) so I figured she was asking where I was from. I’m from Canada, but I don’t know how to write that in Chinese characters, so I just wrote “America” (美國).

“Mai-gog?” she said and burst out laughing. She was really getting on my nerves. She pointed at me and said, “Mai-nan” and then pointed to where I had written America. I didn’t get it until she wrote down some more, but when I did, it didn’t make me feel any better. “America” in Chinese characters literally means “beautiful land” and she was saying that I was from there since I was a handsome man. Evidently she didn’t believe such a place existed and thought I was just playing with her. I wished my wife was there. She wouldn’t have had any problem punching a creepy old woman who was hitting on me. I, on the other hand, was too much of a ~~wuss~~ gentleman.

After she got over the hilarity that is the word “America”, she gave a few more orders to the attending women and they brought in a map. I could tell that she wanted me to point out where I was from. She pointed to one place and I realized it was our current location. It even had a tiny picture of the dome.

The problem was, it wasn’t a map of Korea. It wasn’t even a historical, rough approximation of Korea. I don’t know where it was, but I got a sinking feeling as I stared at it that, all the same, I was there.

7 Comments | tags: Fantastic Travelogue, fantasy, fiction, fortress, Korea, other worlds, travelogue, woman | posted in Travelogue

February 11, 2013

The Ghost Town by the Shore

By David Stewart

I staggered onto the rickety wharf after floating for two days on the open sea. My ship and comrades were in the watery depths and I had given up hope until I spotted land.

Coming into a secluded bay, I had been overjoyed to see a village ahead of me. Now I saw that the buildings were like none I had ever seen before. Everything was eerily quiet as I made my way forward.

I walked among the building in bewilderment. The entire place was deserted, yet nothing was damaged. There were no signs of war or fire or disaster of any kind. Everything was open, as if the people had simply evaporated.

I began to wonder even what country I was in. The roofs all held a singular symbol: a stylized yin-yang swirl above a fish. The carving was amazingly intricate and I wondered if I had stumbled onto an artist colony.

I entered one of the larger buildings and found the first signs of serious industry. It looked like a forge or a refinery and when I advanced a little further, I saw that there was still molten metal in the bottom of the crucible.

I looked closer and got the first real shock since arriving in this ghost town. All the nagging apprehension came back to me in a rush. The molten metal was not real. It looked red, but the surface was cold. I touched it, tentatively. It was glass.

I ran outside and down another street and found myself in a market. As I looked around, I saw the one sight I longed to see more than any other: food. There were stalls filled with fruits and vegetables, with no one in sight. I rushed over, but to my dismay, I found all the food to be mere imitations made of a spongy white substance and totally inedible.

As I continued on, I found a weapons shop, loaded with enough swords, spearheads and bows to equip an army. I picked one up and found it as light as a feather. Even the weapons were not real.

I passed through street after street of shops selling cloth, medicine, animal skins, dishes, and a multitude of other things. Everything sat out as if for sale, but no one attended them. I began to wonder if ghosts inhabited the silent town, like some weird necropolis where the dead roamed after nightfall.

I was becoming thoroughly uneasy and kept looking over my shoulder. The sun was close to setting and now I was terrified of being trapped in this place overnight.

On my way back to the shore, I found myself in a large room with items displayed on each side. I caught sight of a large portrait and stop to stare at it in wonder. It showed a beautiful girl, dressed as a soldier and wielding a sword, but what was so amazing was the skill of the painter. It was completely true to life and even when I looked closely, I could not detect a single brushstroke. I fled, lest the magic that hung over the place trap me there forever. Surely that silent, unreal town could not have been made for human habitation.

* * *

Hi, David here. I guess you could consider this post a sort of Visual Fiction extravaganza. It’s based around a place I went last Friday, in Changwon, Korea. It’s a set village for filming historical dramas and is unique because the buildings are a much different style than most you see in Korea. During the off season it is left open with all the props still there and on display. When we went, there was no one there at all, which made it a very cool place to poke around and explore. And just to prove I was actually there and didn’t just find pictures on the Internet…