Hanji Production: A Slow Work
My body is as sore as if I had run a marathon, even though I have been sitting all day long. My left hand, which wields the knife, is swollen and cramped, and my legs and back ache. I wonder how much longer I will have to sit here, as a seemingly endless supply of unscraped bark keeps piling up next to me. I scrape hurriedly, thinking that once I finish I will get to work on a more exciting task. But something must have been lost in translation, because little do I know that I will be sitting in this position, scraping bark next to this ahjummah, for eight hours a day, seven days straight. [scrape scrape scrape] The sounds of scraping relentlessly and consistently come from across the room, where the 77-year-old ahjummah sits wielding a knife and hunched over a long piece of bark. The bark is dark brown on one side, white on the other, and she masterfully scrapes off the dark brown side, leaving only clean white bark. Her hands work quickly, moving the bark up the raised wooden stand as she scrapes off every bit of brown. From my workstation, I glance up at her occasionally as we both work in silence, save for the sounds of scraping. How did I end up working in the home of this ahjummah, scraping bark all day long? I had come to Korea to research traditional Korean bookmaking, with a particular focus on papermaking and printing. I spent the first several months visiting museums and examining old books at the Kyujanggak Royal Archives in Seoul. In particular, I was curious about the process of making hanji, or Korean handmade paper. I wanted to learn first-hand what made it so special, and why it was on the brink of extinction, like so many other slow, traditional crafts. In order to deepen my understanding of this material, I decided to spend the month of January at Jangjibang, a small hanji mill located in Gapyung, Gyeonggi Province. I had learned about Jangjibang from a former Fulbright researcher named Aimee Lee, who apprenticed there in 2009. My teacher was Jang Seongwoo, fourth-generation papermaker, whose father, Master Jang Yonghoon, was designated an Important Intangible Cultural Property holder in 2010. On the first day of my apprenticeship, after I got settled into the motel where I would stay for a month, Mr Jang dropped me off at the ahjummah’s house, and I barely saw him again for a full week. [scrape scrape scrape] When people think about traditional papermaking, they might imagine the process of dipping a screen into a vat of pulp and water, lifting the screen, shaking it around, and voila! A piece of paper. Indeed, when I made my very first sheet of paper, it felt miraculous, almost effortless. So when I first started my apprenticeship at Jangjibang, I expected to dive right into papermaking, spending long days next to my teacher at the vat. But little did I know, and little do most people suspect, how much of papermaking, particularly Korean-style papermaking, requires multiple laborious steps of processing fiber, long before you even get to the vat. Hanji is sometimes called 백지, 백 meaning one hundred, because they say to make a single sheet requires 99 touches by the maker and one final touch by the user. Hanji, which comes from the inner bark of a mulberry tree called dak, first requires the cultivation of these trees, which are harvested during the fall. Once the dak trees are gathered, they are steamed in bundles in order to loosen the skins, which are peeled off of the inner core. The cores are discarded, and the dak skins are dried. The dak skin contains three layers: an outer brownish-black layer, a middle green layer, and an inner white layer, containing long bast fibers. One reason that hanji is so incredibly strong is because of these long fibers. Traditionally, only the inner white layer is used to make hanji, and the only way to separate the outer layers from the inner white layer is to manually scrape them off with a dak knife. [scrape scrape scrape] Every morning when I arrive at the ahjummah’s house, I am met with the slightly sweet stench of soaking dak. I peel off the layers of jackets that I had been wearing during the frigid 10-minute walk from the motel to the ahjummah’s house. I greet the ahjummah, who had already started scraping at the crack of dawn, long before I had arrived. I go to gather a bundle of dak that had been soaking overnight in a large plastic bin of water in the bathroom. The dak is damp and slimy, and I lay it down in a pile to my right, before sitting down at my workstation. I put on my work gloves, pick up the dak knife, and select a piece of dak to begin my scraping work for the day. I work as quickly as possible, trying to keep up with the ahjummah, who already has a nice big pile of scraped white dak next to her. Around mid-morning, the ahjummah gets up to gather her pile of white dak and hangs it outside to dry. I watch as she lowers the clothesline with a pole and slings the cleaned dak over the line. The sunlight both dries the dak and provides a natural bleaching effect. After the ahjummah comes back inside, she gives me a few tangerines or tomato juice and encourages me to take a break. We eat our snacks in silence. [scrape scrape scrape] As the days go on and my body begins to adjust to the position of sitting and clutching a large knife, I become more curious about the ahjummah sitting next to me. I ask her how she came to be employed as a dak scraper. Serious and kind, with small bright
Grass Then Sky
The students think I’m lying about a Dallas horizon. No mountains? We Google “I-35” and they are repulsed. No curve? In a school in a pit in a town in a valley I can’t blame them. We are nothing if not nestled. Is it like Mad Max? I laugh and mime the spray-paint-mouth boys but silently recall 8 p.m. sun, road rage out a window, barreling toward a line flatter than an Ellsworth Kelly, blue and green cutting each other off. The opposite of coziness is a standing invitation to sprawl. Teacher, another picture? I click on the dried-up Trinity River and their heads tilt again. I tilt mine too and think of absorption and expansion, of horizontal defiance, all the swimming pools and football fields and drive-thrus and 8-lane intersections. How about it? Jenna Jaco is a 2015-2016 ETA at Changpyeong High School in Damyang, Jeollanam-do.
After School
The school guard is getting ready. He opens the door of his warm office and steps out into the cold winter air. It’s mid-afternoon and the sun is at its brightest, but all he can feel is the frost biting his cheeks. He observes the school in its quietest moments. Three pale yellow buildings stand strong against winds that have been beating them for almost a hundred years now. Most windows are closed, barred against the wind, trying to keep in what remains of the heaters. A few are open; an attempt to get out the bad air. The neatly manicured evergreen bushes and trees as bare as bones. They shiver but do not bend to the wind. Litter scatters across the red brick road and lodges itself under cars and against the cold metal grates that separate the school from the rest of the town. The courtyard is quiet, picturesque even. The guard tugs on his vest, and opens the gates to the outside world. A moment later the music begins, marking the end of the school day, and the start of after school. Before the last notes of the ending bell ring the students come. They race out of doorways and down uneven stairs; they fill the courtyards with screeches and laughter, the sound of soft soled shoes slapping on frozen ground. The courtyard is filled with one big group of students which slowly divides into smaller groups, pausing now and then to wait at the gate for friends. Three girls, taller than the rest, intertwine their arms together, blending into one being. They walk towards the far building, singing K-pop songs amid squeals of laughter and the sound of friendly bickering. They can see their breath in the air, puffing out in short bursts, mingling in the cold. Past two buildings and up another three flights of stairs they go, and into an unused classroom they stumble, still latched together. The classroom is filled with older students, girls and boys who will move to middle school in a month. At the front of the class a tall girl with short black hair zippers up her sweatshirt, and turns facing the students. She calls out in Korean, stretching her arms far above her head, then down to the floor. The three in the back unlace their arms and follow instructions, still giggling. More students come filing in, dropping their bags, and lining up, doing their best to catch up to the rest of the students. Once they have all arrived someone attaches cheap dollar store speakers to their cellphone, and the dance class begins. First, there is the shimmy of the hips, arms poised outwards, then the full turn towards the front. Three exaggerated steps forward, before turning sideways, and dropping the hip, shoulders slanted, eyes towards the front. They are just beginning their second turn when laughter makes them look towards the door. Three boys stand there, watching from the open door, grinning. The short haired girl shrieks at them, another girl stops and music, while one of the tall girls slides the door closed with force, barely missing the last retreating fingers. The three boys keep laughing, until they hear their names being called. Up the stairs they can see one of their teammates holding their sneakers. They dash up, nearly knocking over a shorter classmate coming down the stairs. The boys shout an apology back to him as they keep going. The small boy barely notices, turning to enter the classroom at the end of the hall. This room is brightly lit and warm. Heat blasts from the ceiling, and the students cluster themselves around wooden table and plastic chairs. Jackets are thrown into a pile in one corner of the room, while bags are lined up neatly along the wall. Students of all ages are here, mostly doing homework, or artwork, or even just playing card games together. At one table a group of the smallest kids sit, snacking on crackers and juice. At another table, a little girl pushes her long black hair back from her face, being careful not to smudge the paint from her half finished project onto her cheek. The teacher greets the small boy as he enters the classroom, motioning for him to sit. The small boy does so, reaching into his bag and taking out a few battered notebooks and one brand-new looking pencil case. The case is colorful, bright orange with yellow cartoon characters laughing up at you. It has a small backboard on the top where the boy has written “몰라.” The teacher smiles at this as she joins him at the table. Glancing through a worn yellow folder the teacher sees he has math homework, and he needs to finish something from Korean class. She asks the boy to get a pencil, but when he opens his pencil case there are no pencils. No pencils, no erasers, nothing but the chalk that came with it. She lends him one of hers. It has “교육복지실” written on it. The boy takes it and begins to write on the math paper. His notebook lays unopened beside him; he wants to save the last few pages for class. As the small boy begins his math work, the after school teacher sticks her head out the door in time to see three sheepish shoulders slouch their way up the stairs to the waiting Taekwondo coach. She smiles at them all, before looking down the hall in hopes of finding a few more students walking toward her door. But the only students in the hall are the small figures of second grade boys, returning freshly clapped erasers to their teachers before turning on heel and racing down the stairs and out onto the dirt field. On the field, the soccer team has started practice. Standing in a big circle, they stretch. Each boy is dressed in black pants with brightly colored dashes down the sides. They shout out numbers while their