[FEATURE] Homecoming || No. 18 (November 12, 2017)

Six hundred years later, the tendrils of the state religion still weave their way through this mountain like roots beneath the earth. Except for Eun-seo, who is still in middle school, all twenty of us going up the mountain were male descendants of the same Lee family patriarch. The women had joined us for the early morning meal—an 8:30am combination of spicy cutlass fish, 갈치, with boiled radish and spicy soft tofu, a shellfish and vegetable stew, and a litany of colorful side dishes, 반찬, that stood in stark contrast to the usual western morning fare of dried cereals and continental breakfasts I would have in America.

당행이네요, What a relief, one curious relative in her late-fifties or so had said, sitting behind me on one of the other plastic stools. They had been briefly worried of my foreign eating habits, but I’d long adjusted after almost five months in the country. The empty dishes in front of me spoke louder than my reassurances.

The town hall meeting at nine had interrupted me mid-bite, and thus began the family-related announcements. Job changes here, baby born there, and other unintelligible tidbits that I strained to understand.

One young couple stood up to introduce themselves midway through. The young man in his late twenties to early thirties stood and explained where he was on the family tree and that the woman beside him was his new wife, married in late May. Like me, they had both come to pay their respects to their ancestors.

Or at least, to his ancestors. Tradition dictates that the man introduces the newest addition to the family, but his newlywed isn’t related to anyone else there by blood. And so the cycle continues; Lee men marry and return here, and the women that marry into the family are generally excluded from the tradition of visiting our burial mounds in person. These are not their ancestors, after all. They are related by marital bonds, not birth.

From what I can gather, the women born into the Lee family are not present for these annual rites either—it seems to be the male duty to march up the mountain. The women seem to know their expected place—there is no questioning of right or wrong, only a implicit acceptance of what is and what has always been.

The is and has always been logic of the Confucian-grounded tradition stretches beyond gender relations, however. Hyeok-hee, age 63, is the first to bow at our first gravesite of the day despite the presence of Seung-bin, my grandfather’s younger brother, age 79.

Noticing my confused expression, Hyeok-hee explained that he was the elder son of a firstborn ancestor, thus bestowing the highest bowing position upon him. His tone was matter-of-fact; there was no doubt as to the correct order of things, no hesitation. I imagined the reaction that many friends back in the States would have to ritualistic birth order expectations and tried to put on the exact opposite face I envisioned them having.

Such is the result of tradition neatly passed down the generations. What was once a relatively gender-equal and largely Buddhist region transitioned to a new patriarchal Confucian society, which then rooted itself deeply over the next few dozen generations. Ideas were expressed as doctrine, doctrine practiced as ritual, and these rituals crystallized doctrine into the facts of life.

What is, what was, and what has always been.

Over the years, my frustration of the many aspects of the country that Westerners might call ‘backwardness’—such as persistent gender inequality, gender roles, and age hierarchy—has migrated towards a begrudging understanding. Not acceptance, but not a complete rejection either.

To invalidate the old way of life would be to deny the validity of six centuries of ancestors; to attack it for its modern faults would be to forfeit a key piece of knowledge and understanding of our family’s history.

And so I took my first steps out of the car at the base of the mountain, pushing aside conflicting thoughts for the time being. This is not the time for looking back, I thought to myself, even as we stepped into the past.

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While we ascended the mountain early in the morning, persimmon trees and squash patches gave way to pine trees and a thick needle underfoot that gave a satisfying scrunch under the weight each step. Save for one main route, these were not oft-traveled paths through the mountainside, and safe footing was hard to come by.

After a few minutes of brisk walking along the beaten path overlooking the south, Hyeok-hee veered right sharply without warning. If his memory served him right, the first set of graves should be a hundred meters or so up the ledge facing us.

이 길 맞니? Are you sure this is the right way? One of the relatives called out from behind me. Hyeok-hee simply grunted in response and continued his climb upwards.

We had already passed a handful of nondescript mounds lining the path that could have passed for abandoned dirt piles. But these three in the clearing were different—neatly lined up, stone markers half-buried uniformly at their foot.

Almost two centuries separated us and the ancestors buried here, Hyeok-hee explained as the others began to set up the first offering at the furthest mound from where we entered. Technically, this was the second spot; the first had been offered to the mountain spirit on the grass beside one of the mounds, but the seven other older men present had treated those bows with much less gravity.

Eun-seo and I opened the plastic carton, unwrapping the 떡, Korean rice cakes, and laid out the dried fish and squid on a rectangular styrofoam plate, waving at the flies that had immediately descended upon learning of our presence.

Apples, chestnuts, persimmon, and tangerine were left in the plastic and set on the stone along with the other ‘dishes,’ accompanied by a small paper cup that would soon be filled with 매실술, plum wine. An incense stick stuck out of the grass, ignited by the same lighter that one of the men had used to light his cigarette a half hour prior.

We were ready.

The person of the highest generational position—Hyeok-hee—was the first to bow. Two hands placed on his forehead, he knelt and bent his face to the ground in supplication, briefly pausing before rising to his feet for another split second. Then he repeated the same action, but this second time he remained on his knees after the bow.

One bow for someone alive, two to honor those who have passed, and four to a king, Sang-hee, 상히, one of my second uncles, whispered in Korean in my direction.

Another relative knelt on the ground directly to Hyeok-hee’s right and poured a bit of the plum wine with both hands into the paper cup Hyeok-hee held in two hands respectfully. Hovering the half-full cup above the gravestone, Hyeok-hee silently drew four circles in the air with his libation before dousing the front side of the stone with the wine.

This grave was the mother of a male ancestor who had lived eight generations earlier and came from Gyeonggi, a region not far from modern-day Seoul. The grave marker with hanja, or Chinese-Korean characters, etched into its front had apparently been shouldered a few hundred kilometers on a different relative’s back all the way here to this exact spot.

Each parchment paper contained different identifiers specific to each burial mound, but the words printed in the second half of the message were always the same:

계절이 바뀌어 서리와 찬 이슬이 내렸나이다. 묘역을 성소하오니 추모의 마음 간절하와 삼가 정결한 찬수로 시사를 드리오니 잡수시옵소서.

As the seasons are change and the forest frost descends, we clean this burial site, recording your name in remembrance of your passing and leaving food behind for you to eat. Please accept our sincere offering.

The last syllable echoed through the trees as we knelt, waiting for the ancestor to spiritually consume the meal.

I imagined the fall breeze to be her approval.

At last, Hyeok-hee reached for the cup of wine and drank half of it before dousing the rest on the front side of the stone once again. He stood up, but we weren’t finished—a few of the other men repeated the same process, following Hyeok-hee once he rose.

일동제배—Everyone bow twice, he said firmly, and we followed his lead. Thus ended the first of the day’s many ritual ceremonies.

“Even five or ten years ago when we did this, many more people that would attend,” Hyeok-hee reflected, crouching beside me beneath the pine canopy. “But now there are fewer and fewer of them.”

He was right: this year, there were just two dozen, and the number was shrinking even as the average age of the attendees rose. Back in the early 1970s, when my father, his younger brother, and parents came to the same ceremony on the first Sunday of November, there was at least 40, maybe over 50, if his recollection served him well.

In those days, relatives playfully jived my grandfather for packing up his bags and shipping off to Kansas on a Fulbright Scholarship and then moving north to teach first at the University of Toronto and then as a fully tenured professor at York University.

Why don’t you come back—you could be a full professor at Seoul National University, they had said, half jokingly and half seriously. It had been less than a decade since he had departed.

These days, the front line struggle seemed to be convincing much closer relations to come again.

“These days, young people don’t feel like they owe their ancestors debt—debt is the right word, isn’t it?” Hyeok-hee sighed. “They are so busy—even Sang-hee (my second-uncle) had to drive here all night after work as a reporter. 많이 고생했네요—He went through a lot just to get here.”

Hyeok-hee was right; Sang-hee had finished work as a lead city beat editor in Seoul at 8pm, picked up his daughter Eun-seo, drove three hours pick me up in Jeonju (전주), then survived another three behind the wheel to get here to Miryang. We had arrived after three in the morning, only to wake up again at 7:30am to arrive at the morning meal in time.

Many in the family had become extremely successful—a former MBC television chief executive here, a head of a design firm here, the chief executive of one of the largest Korean banks there. But even for them, the ones still living in Korea, the past in Miryang is fading as quickly as the ink calligraphy hanging over the threshold of the family’s traditional home.

Time is a commodity, one running dry like a weak stream that was once a pulsing river. Families, jobs, and other life obligations of the now push the past further into the past. Even the burial mounds become tougher to find with each passing year; one we searched for this time was completely obstructed by a farmer’s field expansion and another took a 30-minute hike just to find.

The grave of the grandfather and grandmother from four generations ago.

The mound of my great-grandmother, whose barrenness necessitated hard decisions for the family. Despite her infertility, she is still honored as the true great-grandmother.

The mound of the second wife—the biological great-grandmother—of my great-grandfather. Perhaps concubine would be the more accurate term.

The burial site of my grandfather’s older brother and the hanja etching of my father’s brother, my own 작은아버지, or younger uncle. In 1972, he had visited this mountain for the first time at the age of 8, calling out “조금 아버지”—a little bit grandfather—instead of correctly saying “작은 아버지”—younger grandfather. But I never had the chance to meet him, my own 작은아버지, as he passed away just a decade later of a sudden heart attack. But he is still recorded on this gravestone.

Eventually, they will all fade into the mountainside, grassy mounds dotting a forested mountain, remembered by few and visited by fewer.

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As Hyeok-hee and I descended the mountain one last time, we passed a new set of burial mounds neatly lined up in twos and threes. All facing a somewhat southwestern direction, these grave sites were grouped by generation and separated by different levels divided by knee-high stonewalls, clearly designating a single-family line.

“Are these relatives too?” Without being able to read the hanja Sino-Korean characters etched into the stone markers, it was almost impossible to know whom I was looking at.

“Yes, I think so,” Hyeok-hee replied, pausing to double-check his recollection. “They are distant relatives, related at my grandfather’s level.”

“Look over there—there is more space below that they have reserved for the future,” he added, pointing a bit further ahead. Indeed, there was indeed an empty narrow grass plot—long enough for one or two more groupings of grassy hills.

And so we continued on, passing the thick grass that would be uprooted for the next generation.