Korean Sweets, and Ginseng
There are few every-day sweets in a Korean child’s life. This has had the happy effect of developing each child into a nature-student as well as a nature-lover.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Korean Sweets, and Ginseng” from When I Was a Boy in Korea by Ilhan New, 1928.
There are few every-day sweets in a Korean child’s life. This has had the happy effect of developing each child into a nature-student as well as a nature-lover. Each boy and girl knows the exact time of season to seek a tidbit in the mountains. Like their elders, they think nothing of walking five or six miles in search of the berry they know to be ripe.
In early summer, when the days are long, these little figures may be seen on the roads hurrying home with their small baskets filled with wild strawberries. A month later, they are found climbing trees loaded down with the native date, a small greenish-brown fruit that has a pleasant sweet taste and, when dried, is used in soups, puddings, and fancy cakes in the winter months.
Still later, their pockets are found bulging with a bright orange-colored fruit that is also sweet. The pulp is eaten carefully, without breaking the contour of the skin. These skins the children then inflate until a sharp report announces that the pseudo-balloon has reached its limit in size. In early fall a few chestnuts in their green burrs are taken home so the children may watch them burst their bonds; but the crop is allowed to ripen on the trees. Even in winter the boys and girls know where to look between the rocks for a certain long slender succulent root that is as sweet as sugar-cane, but most tender.
Being in the mountains so much has its advantage, for there is seldom news that a child has been lost. In the most remote regions one will come upon a small figure with a little jiggy upon his back. In one hand he carries a bamboo rake, and we know immediately that he is out gathering fire-wood for the family fireplace. There are no dead branches underfoot in these mountains. Even the pine-needles that have been shed have been raked together and carried away for fuel. Where there are no schools or the family is too poor to send the children, the little ones spend their entire time, from early morning right after breakfast until supper-time at dusk, searching for fire-wood. It is small wonder that these children can tell where they will find the delicate pink azalea which they consider such good food.
The greatest find, however, is that of real ginseng, and the quest is such an art that no child has ever brought it home. The ginseng plant is, above ground, an unobtrusive shrub of few leaves. It is the root that is valuable and, although the likeness is hard to be seen, it is supposed to resemble the human form; the more it resembles a man, the more precious does it become. All the nations of the East prize this herb for its supposed life-giving properties, and much of the export trade here is of cultivated ginseng.
Occasionally men as much as eighty or ninety years of age may be seen going about their daily routine in the severest of winter’s cold with no heavy outer protection. Invariably these men will give a history of poor health in early youth that was entirely overcome by the use of the herb, which must be “genuine” to have real powers. The cultivated species is used widely as a tonic, but no marvels are accredited to it. A return of good health attributed to it is supposedly enjoyed for only a period of from two to three years, whereas the effects of “genuine” ginseng are said to cover at least thirty years.
Those seeking the precious native species usually devote their lives to it. It becomes almost a religion, for often the hunters are not compensated adequately for the privations which they so often must bear, and a fanatical zeal must actuate them. The mountains are still inhabited by tigers and other dangerous wild animals, and not infrequently these men do not come back from the search.
Before going into the mountains these men renounce everything worldly. They then cleanse themselves as thoroughly as is in their knowledge, in mind, body, and dress. Never during the search are they contaminated by contact with man and his lowly life. Food consists of such berries, roots, shrubs, and nuts as can he found; drink is only that from the cool streams that abound. They sleep in the open, learning to endure temperatures that others could not stand.
Morning and night they offer fervent prayers to the gods, asking that they be made worthy of such a mission. Such men may live in this manner in the mountains for as long as ten years before they have made their find, and it is not peculiar that, after such solitude and concentration of thought on clean living, they have about them an indefinable atmosphere of peace of mind.
The ordinary mountain-climber or casual visitor has no means of even identifying this herb, and it is probably only the long living with the shrubs of different kinds and the closeness with which they study each one that enable the seekers to find the precious ginseng root.
Not all of these men are successful, by any means. Some, after devoting as many as twenty years to the search, give it up, feeling that they, in some way, have not been worthy and on this account have not succeeded. These men become very often the sages of their communities, they have so learned the tolerance of living. It would seem that since the genuine root is so powerful, the finding of it would mean success in everything. As a matter of fact, after such a find is made, the man is in as much trouble as he was in starting on his search.
On account of the ever-ready market for the real, there are always impostors who are stocked with clever imitations selected from the cultivated supply. These tricksters are very shrewd and, with their silver tongues, are able to convince the buyer that there is none more real. For their pains they often receive as much as five thousand yen. The truth is known, however, after the medicine is taken and such an experience makes the buyer more wary. The interesting thing is that these herb-believers never for a minute lose faith in the efficacy of the herb that has been sold them; if it falls short of expected results, it is simply not the grade it was supposed to be.
It is to this suspicious market that the man who has spent the best part of his life in hardship comes. Often he trudges through hundreds of villages unable to convince any one, for, unlike his shrewd brother, his long separation from man has made his speech less cunning, and, in the end, he sells for a mere pittance to keep from starving. On one occasion that we knew of, the man who purchased was a poor man and he regained his health so miraculously that the rich of the village who would not believe offered a great sum for the discoverer to start another search. His faith in mankind gone, he refused and soon died from the exposure he had suffered going from village to village.
Ginseng, in Western medicine, is not supposed to have any value, and yet when one sees the faith and apparent well-being of the users in the East, one wonders if the method of preparation can have any bearing on its reputed efficacy. The root is grated carefully and steamed with a squab, a pheasant, or a particularly tender bit of venison. Like all Oriental medicines, it is not taken in concentrated form in small quantities, but in abundant quantities like an effusion. One of the favorite uses of the dried date is to accompany bowls of dark bitter teas, for few herbs are given in as palatable form as the ginseng.
New, Ilhan. When I Was a Boy in Korea. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1928.
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