He watched me situate my bag and pull out The Opposite of Fate, by Amy Tan. Shamelessly, he peered over my shoulder as I held the book in my hand. Aware of his interest, I turned it unopened toward him as a silent offer of kindness and wondered if he could read the cover. As I opened it to the bookmarked page, I tried to casually hold it out far enough for him to catch a glimpse of its English contents. We stood this way for several minutes, me peeking at him from time to time as interest to communicate glimmered in his eyes. I tried getting back to my book and ignoring his desire for conversation. He finally broke the awkward stalemate with a faltering voice. "Hi. Where--where you from?"
"Where am I from? I am from America," I said slowly, careful to enunciate every syllable. "From Texas."
"I am from Chinese," he offered in return. So that explained the rounded face. "Ar-artist," he faltered again, painting in the air with his hands. "Computer. Building design."
"You like artists?" I asked, unsure of his meaning. I thought he garbled the name of a famous Asian artist of whom I was unfamiliar.
He nodded his head toward the book in my hand. I thought that meant he was trying to read it. "Can you read?" I asked, holding it further out.
He nodded his head regally. "Jin, Jin Yong-chun," he said and tried to air-scribe his name in hangul. The white noise of the screeching subway car and its occupants covered up his words. The only thing I recognized from his pantomime was the "n" shape at the end. "Kim?" I suggested, at a loss for the rest of his name. I volunteered mine. "Jen-i-fer," I articulated.
"Chinese name," he said. I was sure I'd never remember it right. Only later when he handed me a small black-and-white slip of paper that served as a business card did I catch his whole name. The name itself was curious: It was printed in hangul, with its romanized counterpart only appearing as part of his email address. The hangul read "Kim," but the email address confirmed his self-introduced family name as "Jin." If the name was Chinese, I wondered why he transliterated it K-i-m instead.
"How long have you been in Korea?" I asked as he stared blankly at me, unresponsive. I quickly realized there was no way to hand-gesture my way to the meaning of the phrase.
He then started volunteering more information about his life. "English, Chinese, Japan," he counted on his fingers.
"Do you know Korean?" I asked. Again, no response.
"One," he started. "One and half year."
"You have been in Korea one and a half years? I have been here for eight months," I offered, purposely accenting the ths on the end.
"Thirty," he thought for a moment. "Thirty-eight." Twelve years older. A surprising age, given his childlike mannerisms up to this point.
"I am twenty-six," I volleyed back.
"You," he said, pondering me for a moment as if he hadn't understood my last comment. "You forty." He subtly reconsidered. "You thirty-five," he asserted. It was as if he wanted me as his peer. Okay, I thought. I can be thirty-five if you want.
As we bantered back and forth, I remembered Amy Tan's statements about her Chinese immigrant mother's unpolished English skills. Tan noted that, while growing up, others treated her mother differently because of her poor English. In turn, Tan herself began to limit her own thoughts toward her mother. "I believed that her English," she wrote in The Opposite of Fate, "reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly, her thoughts were imperfect" (274). I tried not to impose those same imperfections on Jin Yong Chun. It wasn't that he couldn't think, I reasoned; he just couldn't think well in English.
Even with this word to the wise in mind, I began to notice a certain air of, shall we say, immaturity about this man as our time together progressed. Throughout our exchange, he had been unnaturally trusting, innocent, and shyly timid, but genuinely interested in communication with me. Just like a child. At first I chalked it up to an idea that my friend Emily had shared the night before: that Korean men (and perhaps this applies to other Asian nationality groups) are coddled and taken care of by their parents for so long that even at 26, 27, and 28 they still lack a sense of adult maturity or independence. Because of this, young men in this country don't usually "grow up" until well into their thirties. As I continued to ponder this thought, it occurred to me that surely by thirty-eight, the age that my new companion confessed to being, a man would have grown out of any such mama's boy complex. Surely.
While we continued to stand and chit-chat, a seat opened in front of us and, in impeccable English, he offered it to me: "Sit down please." Moments later, the seat next to me became free and he took it as well. Now properly seated, we continued our chat.
It was here that he handed me his "card" and here that he clarified his profession. I discovered that he works with computers in Osan designing interiors for buildings (though I'm not sure what kind of buildings). He considers himself an artist, the same one that he had mentioned earlier, though I'm not sure if his profession is what makes him an artist. Here, too, he asked for a means of communicating with me. "I don't give out my number," I apologized. I told him the same was true of my email address. When I wrote my first name down for him on one of his cards, I refused to give him my last as a precautionary measure.
Again attention turned toward my book. I pointed to the woman on the front and we read her name together: "A-my Tan." He tasted her surname in his mouth for a moment, then reformed it. "She's Chinese," I offered and his face lit up. I then flipped through the book to show him different pictures of Tan's life.
"Here she is my age," I told him, pointing to a professional portrait.
He pointed to the mustached and bearded man with shaggy, receding hair, her husband, seated next to her. "Old," he said.
"No," I countered. "They are the same age."
I took him to other photos, pointing out her mother in them. "Mother," he tasted. I then asked about his family and he told me he had a father, mother, and one brother in the mountains of China. I revealed that I had two brothers and his countenance rose instantly--he was so surprised that he was incredulous. "Two brothers," he smiled with awe and envy.
Again, he remembered his three languages. "English, Chinese, Japan," he counted on his hands again.
"Can you read Chinese?" I interrupted him and he nodded.
"Only English and Japan I speak." So he doesn't read English. "I want to have English book," continued, "so that I can read it." I toyed with the idea of giving him the book in my hand, what he had been eying the whole train ride. Though he could connect to the Chinese references inside it, evidence from our earlier conversation led to the judgement that he wouldn't have been able to understand the book's complex language. It might have done nothing but frustrate him.
"This is my stop," I tried to say. "I have to go."
He looked back at the Korean marquee and nodded. "Mine too. I take bus to home. Twenty... twenty-four I think." So he would be catching a bus at Geumjeong and not transferring subway lines, I reasoned. It would give me some alone time on the train ride to my place and a chance to get back to my book. We exited Line 4 together and stood for a moment at the bottom of the steps leading out of the station. I waved at him to say goodbye.
He shook his head and indicating he was transferring, too. "But aren't you taking the bus?" I asked.
"Osan," he said. "I take bus at Osan."
Oh great, I thought. Now there surely wouldn't be respite. My only hope was that the approaching subway for Line 1 would be destined for Byeongjeom or Seodongtan. As he was going several stops farther down than that, he would be forced to wait for the next available train. I secretly groaned inside when the PA system announced the destination was Cheonan, the last stop on Line 1 and a perfect fit for any persons going to both Byeongjeom and Osan. In concert, the two of us stepped onto the train.
Just after transferring to Line 1, Jin Yong Chun took initiative and consulted the subway map mounted above the car's exit door, counting the stops we each had to go. "Five," he said as he reached where I was standing, indicating my number. I thought that was odd because I knew that there were seven stops from the transfer at Geumjeong to my arrival at Byeongjeom. And then I remembered: I had told him I lived "in Suwon" as a precaution and he took it as fact. I debated whether I should now reveal my true location.
I remembered my father's advice about dealing with the mentally handicapped: "We should be nice to them." I wanted to do that for Yong Chun. I looked at his face, trying to memorize every detail. I imagined it was something Jesus would have done. I wanted to remember it--a face that Jesus loves and longs to comfort and make new.
"You my best friend," he said suddenly as we stood looking at each other in the subway car.
I smiled at him kindly. "Yes" was all I could say. Then I began to feel concerned. What does it say about someone if his best friend is a stranger that he meets on a subway? "Do you have friends?" I asked gently.
He counted three digits on his hands, then put one finger down. "Ja-Japan," he said with a timid smile.
"They live in Japan?" I asked. "Do you have any Chinese friends?"
He smiled broadly at this. "Chinese," he nodded, this time with three fingers up. I wanted to ask if he had any Korean friends. "You my best friend," he said again. It reminded me too much of the moment my mentally-handicapped mother leaned into my face with her forehead touching mine and her forearms resting on my shoulders. Peering intently over her glasses and into my eyes, she whispered the same. "You're my best friend."
By this time, my stop--Suwon station, at least--was quickly approaching. Yong Chun had been asking about food for some time now on the trip and he deftly asked again. "Eat?" he asked. "Drink? If have time, I pay." I was cautious. Besides needing to guard my own heart, I knew how exhausted I was from my time in Seoul. I had been away from Frankie (the cat) all weekend as well and needed to get back to him. I told Yong Chun as much as the train pulled into the stop.
His face fell as he prepared to say goodbye. He mumbled something unintelligible and then in Korean managed a feeble, "Anyangikaseyo." I felt I couldn't play with his childlike emotions and stay on the train when he had made such an effort at closure. I quickly got off the train so that he wouldn't think I had lied about my destination. He waved at me as I walked toward the platform's exit and I waved back. His loneliness struck me as I watched the train pull away. I pondered whether I should have stayed and taken him up on his offer.
Though Scripture doesn't expressly state "thou shalt talk to thy neighbor on the subway line," it does state that I have an obligation to "live at peace with all men," "do good to all," and "be all things to all [people]." I felt I fulfilled that tonight. Outsiders will know us by our love, the Scripture says. What else but love would venture to step me out of my comfort zone so that I show the kind of interest in a man's life that Jesus shows? I can't shake the feeling that what I did with Yong Chun tonight was really done to Jesus. I know that the LORD looks down with a heart of compassion on him and I have the privilege to do the same. "Assuredly I say to you," Jesus says in Matthew 25, "inasmuch as you did it to one of the the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me."
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