Down and Out in Dog Eat Dog Asia

It's not easy to come out and be perfectly frank and honest in, or about, Asia, you know. After all, honesty isn't exactly expected or appreciated in this part of the world. Especially because the Truth can make Asians lose face. And they really don't like to lose face. And who in the world really does, right? Well, in East Asia, they really hate to lose face. I know. Because I lived in Taiwan for 5 1/2 years, Shanghai, China for 6 months (which was all I could stand), and have been in South Korea now for more than a decade now. I don't go out much. And when I do, I have to carry a trash bag with me, because I just can't stand the litter anymore.

You see, Chinese and Koreans litter something fierce. And they don't even bother to put out public trash cans in most cases. So if I were to make my own list of things that I can't stand about South Korea (because I could also make a real doozy about Taiwan, too), it would include the casual attitude that most Koreans (and Chinese) tend to have about litter.

Cigarette butts, wrappers, cans, bottles, you name it. Koreans just seem to think that it's somebody else's job to pick up after them. There are a variety of reasons for this, but I think their long history of indigenous slavery has a lot to do with it. I've read accounts that said at some points in their history, more than 70% of the population were slaves.

So I think that's why so many (though certainly not all) Koreans and Chinese seem to have this notion (without actually thinking about it) that everyone has their job, their chore on the plantation, so to speak. And cleaning after oneself? Well, that just ain't the chore of most Asians, it seems. For some odd, horrifically inexplicable reason.... So proper waste disposal apparently just isn't the job or concern of most Koreans -- unless, that is, it's their own homes that are getting littered up, and it affects them directly.

Which is really dumb when you think about it. Because the Korean peninsula actually is the home of Koreans, and not just the inside of their noisy, thin walled, little shoe box apartment flats - that are typically just one more cubbyhole sized dwelling unit stacked up on top of thousands of others, inside all those stuffy, unimaginative, ugly high rise buildings that increasingly block out the sun in South Korea.

But then, indiscriminate littering is also a Chinese cultural thing too, I've noticed. It's just even worse in China and Taiwan. And any which way you slice it, casual, even downright ignorant Asian attitudes about pollution are just plain disgusting. Not to mention not real good for the environment either. Because, here's the thing, kids. "Culture" doesn't excuse all bad human habits and traits. It just doesn't. After all, the Nazis had a culture too. It grew out of thousands of years of the darker side of German culture. And we all know how that ended.

So yeah, I want desperately to eventually get out of Korea and never ever have to come back. It's a long story, but after I couldn't take living in Taiwan any more, I went back to the US for a while, and then... well... let's just say that I didn't exactly get a lot of help from my folks in trying to re-acclimate. Then the Obama economy hit, and the only jobs I was getting offered were to go teach in Korea because I'd taught ESL/EFL in Taiwan for so long. That was even more frustrating than Korea has been (or I wouldn't have made it for this long), but I was trying to pay off my student loans at the time.

At any rate, these days, everything and anything gets a person accused, tried and convicted (in the court of public opinion) of "racism." Or, especially, if you happen to be a "Trump supporter." Which seems to be great sport for a lot of fancy, virtue-signalling folks who usually haven't even been outside of the comfy confines of the idealistic, spoiled, little Western world that they inherited from their often much more truly deserving forbears who actually fought wars and settled a nation.

But me? Heck! I grew up on Star Trek, and the whole "diversity is our strength" thing. So, believe it or not, idealistic fan boys and girls, Gene Roddenberry's grand, Utopian vision of a future, where everybody just all gets along on the good ship Enterprise, unfortunately just did not prepare me at all for the Real World. It certainly didn't prepare me for the ugly, "racist" things I overheard the Chinese of Shanghai and Taiwan say on a regular basis, when they thought I hadn't bothered to learn their language.

I certainly was not prepared for the dogs I was forced to see butchered for meat in public during my first month here in South Korea. But then... some Jewish girl from New Zealand (and originally I really liked her because she was Jewish. Because, in fact, having grown up in a small town in the American Midwest, I'd never met a lot of Jewish people before.

Even worse, she and her "African" American friend from the US led me to that market that day. On the way in the subway car, I stood in shocked and awed rapt silence as the two "ladies" cracked jokes about me being the preferred piece of foreign meat for the Korean "whitey wranglers." But then, I guess I'm not supposed to think that was "racist" of them, huh?

20090123 - Definitely Not My Kind of "Kennel"

Either way, I had no idea what was going to be there at that market that day. Those two "ladies" didn't tell me a thing. But they had been in Korea for a while, so they both must have known fully well what I'd be forced to witness. I was horrified when I saw the fresh dog meat, and the sad looking dog waiting dutifully by the butcher's table to be the next one in line.

I took photos of the dog meat and the dogs in pens waiting to be slaughtered on demand. Then, for some odd reason... God know why, of course... those two gals just disappeared into the crowd that day. They abandoned me. I didn't even know exactly how to get back to the subway. I eventually made it back, but it took a while on my own. And if I hadn't been lost a few times in Taiwan a number of years prior to that, it might very well have taken me a whole lot longer to find my way back to my apartment that particular day in Seoul.

20090123 - A Very Painful Memory of Seoul, South Korea

Dog eating was a thing in Taiwan and China too, of course, though I always just heard about it. There weren't any open air markets that butchered dogs on demand that I ever saw in Taiwan (though there was Taiwan's infamous "Snake Alley," which I always quite purposely avoided. There were/are a lot of three legged dogs in Taiwan though. They get hit by cars, I saw firsthand, quite frequently, I'm afraid. Then... I suppose somebody comes out with a butcher knife and hacks a busted limb off. Maybe... cauterizes or sews up the wound? If they're real nice, I guess. Makes good soup, I was told quite frequently in Taiwan.

Yuck.

20090123 -  House of Korean Horrors

But yeah, it's not easy to find true foreign expat "friends" in Asia, I've noticed. Most of the expats just get drunk together on the weekends. But then, misery does love company, as they say. But that just ain't my kind of misery. Life is hard enough without shocking your body into having a skull smashing hangover the next day, just for the "fun" of being able to suck down bottle after bottle of booze.