Interesting encounters in Busan
A couple of days ago I was in Busan, which is the 2nd largest city in Korea. It's massive with lots of tall buildings and bussy streets; it's located on the East Sea; parts of it remind me a lot of Toronto.
I stayed at a new hostel, Zen Backpackers, which is in a cando appartment on the 29th floor ... the view and conditions here are awesome. June, the guy that owns this place is pretty cool ... very laid back. He used to work for Nike, but quit cause he didn't feel comfortable working for a company; so he travelled for a while and then came back recently to open this hostel.
For a couple of nights that I was there, there were few other travellers, so we hanged out a lot ... watching Korean movies at night and chatting beforehand. Turns out that June has been studyng some Korean traditional cultural things; he has been learning Fortune telling through a famous master in Busan, Acupuncture as part of Korean traditional medicine - turns out this is free to learn in class, one just needs to buy the books, and several other things.
Turns out all of those traditional things are based on the Yin and Yang philosophy, from Wikipedia; Yin is passive, dark, feminine, downward-seeking, and corresponds to the night ... whereas Yang is active, light, masculine, upward-seeking and corresponds to the daytime.
As he told me, even the food that is served in Korea has a balance that has come through the ages, even though most people today don't realize it (eg. chicken and kimchi is Yang, water and some vegetables are Yin). The fortune telling that he is learning is similarly based on those principles, not at all like the western psychics you may find in North America. Fortune telling is hugely popular in Korea ... you can see many tents and places offering Tarot card reading, and more sophisticated stuff.
June taught me about Chi, which is also based on Yin/Yang. I was able to push away a cigarette without touching it and make it roll on the table. It takes a little bit of practice, but after a couple of minutes I was able to do it more and more regularly; here is a video on someone potentially more advances (hopefully it's real :) )
He also showed me some Korean acupuncture; according to which, apparently, it was shown that points on your body correspond to points in your palm and thus you can apply accupuncture to areas of your palm and make some basic pain (eg. headache, stomach ache, soar throat, etc) go away. He has used it many times before with great success; fortunately for me, but unfortunately for my learning I didn't have any significant pain at the time.
He offered to read my fortune, but I refused as I'm quite sceptical and also a bit affraid of this at the moment.
I really like Korean movies, so watched a couple of movies with June; Memories of Murder - which I highly recommend and Secret Sunshine - which was OK and won some awards, but was not as interesting for me.
I stayed at a new hostel, Zen Backpackers, which is in a cando appartment on the 29th floor ... the view and conditions here are awesome. June, the guy that owns this place is pretty cool ... very laid back. He used to work for Nike, but quit cause he didn't feel comfortable working for a company; so he travelled for a while and then came back recently to open this hostel.
For a couple of nights that I was there, there were few other travellers, so we hanged out a lot ... watching Korean movies at night and chatting beforehand. Turns out that June has been studyng some Korean traditional cultural things; he has been learning Fortune telling through a famous master in Busan, Acupuncture as part of Korean traditional medicine - turns out this is free to learn in class, one just needs to buy the books, and several other things.
Turns out all of those traditional things are based on the Yin and Yang philosophy, from Wikipedia; Yin is passive, dark, feminine, downward-seeking, and corresponds to the night ... whereas Yang is active, light, masculine, upward-seeking and corresponds to the daytime.
As he told me, even the food that is served in Korea has a balance that has come through the ages, even though most people today don't realize it (eg. chicken and kimchi is Yang, water and some vegetables are Yin). The fortune telling that he is learning is similarly based on those principles, not at all like the western psychics you may find in North America. Fortune telling is hugely popular in Korea ... you can see many tents and places offering Tarot card reading, and more sophisticated stuff.
June taught me about Chi, which is also based on Yin/Yang. I was able to push away a cigarette without touching it and make it roll on the table. It takes a little bit of practice, but after a couple of minutes I was able to do it more and more regularly; here is a video on someone potentially more advances (hopefully it's real :) )
He also showed me some Korean acupuncture; according to which, apparently, it was shown that points on your body correspond to points in your palm and thus you can apply accupuncture to areas of your palm and make some basic pain (eg. headache, stomach ache, soar throat, etc) go away. He has used it many times before with great success; fortunately for me, but unfortunately for my learning I didn't have any significant pain at the time.
He offered to read my fortune, but I refused as I'm quite sceptical and also a bit affraid of this at the moment.
I really like Korean movies, so watched a couple of movies with June; Memories of Murder - which I highly recommend and Secret Sunshine - which was OK and won some awards, but was not as interesting for me.
Labels: Acupuncture, Asia, backpacking, Busan, Chi, South Korea, Tradition, Travel, Yin and Yang
posted by Alex Pilchin at 5:58 AM
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