Before This Cup Cools (1)
The administrative divisions of Jeju Island in the Joseon era were a little unusual.
It’s well known that the whole island belonged to Jeolla Province. Most of it fell under Jeju-mok and was governed by the Jeju magistrate.
But Daejeong-hyeon, Taesu’s destination and Kim Jeong-hui’s place of exile, was not part of Jeju-mok.
Daejeong-hyeon in the southwest of Jeju and Jeongui-hyeon in the southeast were separate, independent counties directly attached to Jeolla Province.
The reason such a bizarre arrangement had come about was simple enough: Jeju-mok lay in the north of the island, and with Hallasan standing in the way, travel to the southeast or southwest was difficult. The island’s geography made it awkward to move around.
So even as late as King Taejong’s reign, the troops stationed on Jeju’s east and west sides were effectively beyond the magistrate’s supervision, running a pirate-style military regime that would have made late Goryeo proud.
Of course, Joseon was a modern state, far beyond the likes of Goryeo, and pursued what the textbooks called “nationwide centralized rule.”
Joseon struck feudalism in the face and knocked it flat, detached the two counties from Jeju-mok, and dispatched county magistrates. Then it plundered them itself.
Anyway, that was why Daejeong-hyeon was not really “Jeju.”
“That’s why the people here are actually closer to our Songsang merchants coming and going by sea from Gangjin,” Cha Un-hong said.
“Even if walking is difficult, wouldn’t it still be easier than taking a boat to the mainland?”
“That’s a merchant’s way of thinking. Most people here just live here, so they’ll see merchants like us more often than they see the Jeju-mok people. Besides….”
Cha Un-hong glanced at the ship they’d arrived on. It was a vessel seized from the merchants of Gangjin.
“Jeju is a poor, barren land. People are so busy just trying not to starve that there’s little room for weaving or ironworking. That’s why almost all tools and cloth have to come from the mainland through us.”
Even the Viscount Belcher of Samarang—who had spent only a month in Jeju two years ago—had noticed that and written it in his travel account.
Of course, the people of Joseon had known it far earlier.
So there was no chance the cotton cloth branded in Gangjin and stacked high on the ship would be cheap.
Taesu understood it too.
“With this, we can buy horsehair, bezoar, and hats, then sell them in Tongyeong, where we’re headed next.”
There would be plenty of demand in Tongyeong, the famous center for gat hats, and that way they wouldn’t have to trouble themselves crossing Jirisan. Even Yi Ha-eung had plenty of uses for it.
Cha Un-hong poked a finger into a Tongyeong gat and spun it around.
“Exactly. Like I said before, our Gangjin merchant office still doesn’t have a proper trading partner, so we need to make new introductions here.”
And aristocrats like Kim Jeong-hui, even in exile, were often still local notables.
He was nothing like a commoner such as Yi Won-beom. The reason for seeking a connection to Kim Jeong-hui was not purely political.
Then the Mountain Spirit spoke.
[Hmm. The gods here really are like foreigners. That stone doll too, and that snake god writhing along the ground—how utterly strange.]
* * *
I could guess why the Mountain Spirit had suddenly started spouting that sort of provincial prejudice.
When we set out from Gangjin, he’d boasted that he’d summon a favorable wind and a lightning-fast current for us.
But this time there was no Western ship, and no shaman with real power.
With no tricks to work, he had to win on his own reputation, and this was the most disadvantageous contest I’d ever seen in my life.
Despite the Mountain Spirit’s endless whining, the sea didn’t change a bit.
The fishermen from Geokpo who made up the main body of the fleet—employees of the Gangjin merchant office, in other words—said this was just the sort of waves and wind that were “normally there.” We landed by human strength.
So there was no need to feel sorry.
I wasn’t disappointed in you. I hadn’t expected anything in the first place.
[Y-you little punk! I’m not feeling sorry. If I weren’t here, what in the world would you do on this isolated island?]
Isn’t Ganghwado an island too?
[I was born in Hanyang. I told you already—I’m descended from a noble house.]
How had such a spirit ever become a mountain god when he was so completely fused with the mortal world? Had he gotten the job by bribery? It was Joseon; it wouldn’t even have been impossible.
Still, there was one gain. If the vessel we’d brought was a stolen Gangjin ship, then that confirmed we didn’t need the unstable, half-defined power of some eerie supernatural force.
Delighted that the Mountain Spirit had gotten what he deserved, I looked around.
While Ha-eung went to meet the county magistrate and secure our boat fare and expenses—nobles really do live easy lives—we strolled near the county office and thought about business.
What we had to sell wasn’t just cotton cloth.
Especially when it came to farm tools, neither Un-hong nor I knew much, since neither of us had ever farmed. But according to Kim Sun-won, there seemed to be demand.
“Good heavens. You’d use a mallet to stop a leak, as the saying goes, and now I’m seeing the saying with my own eyes. Why are you swinging the wrong hoe and the wrong plow in the wrong place?”
In other words, people were using farm tools for purposes they weren’t meant for all over the island.
It wasn’t that the people of Jeju didn’t know how to farm; it was that there were too few imported tools, so they used whatever they could.
In the army, toothpaste comes as a supplied item but bleach doesn’t, so people use expensive toothpaste to scrub the toilet, don’t they? That’s separate from whether toothpaste works well.
In short, the absolute number of farm tools on Jeju was still far too small. A perfectly solid blue ocean.
Feeling relieved, I enjoyed the Jeju sightseeing I’d never been able to afford in Korea.
Kim Sun-won and the sailors were still down at the harbor sorting the cargo, so it was just me and Un-hong.
We walked slowly under the early-summer Jeju sun, alongside stone walls.
Un-hong was peeling oranges she’d somehow obtained and stuffing them into her mouth, chewing with her cheeks full. I’d noticed it for a while now: she was absurdly cute when she ate.
The hamster version of Un-hong said, “Hmm. We’re tasting all the Jeju tangerines the king only occasionally grants to students of the Seonggyungwan. Hardly anything reaches the north without rotting first… Could these be preserved longer if we boil them and pack them in jars?”
Was tangerine canned food made by boiling? I wasn’t sure.
Then something suddenly popped into my head.
[An infidel.]
Ugh, that’s annoying.
You attention-seeking bastard.
Hey. If a Western ship had arrived, other people would’ve noticed it already even without you. So…
[No, no. It’s not a Western ship. Look over there.]
I looked.
And yes, he was right about the infidel.
At the very least, a monk who looked as though he’d attained enlightenment more deeply than this Mountain Spirit was staring back at me.
* * *
Under the monk’s bamboo hat, his eyes flashed.
He came shambling toward Taesu and Cha Un-hong.
Taesu was a little flustered.
It looked like he had business with them, but neither of them could speak the Jeju dialect. In an age without mass media, the Jeju speech of the day was about ten times harder to understand than in a drama.
But the monk opened his mouth in mainland speech.
To my surprise, he pointed straight at Taesu and scolded him.
“You wretch. Where have you dragged such a vile evil spirit all the way out here?”
Cha Un-hong stepped in front of Taesu just in time to prevent a monk-slaying incident.
“That wandering monk’s probably lost his mind from going hungry through a barley-hill famine. Let’s get out of here.”
And then Cha Un-hong became several times more shocked than before.
Taesu was facing the monk with a bewildered expression.
“How did you know?”
The monk took off his bamboo hat.
He looked very old, though he had no beard. Still, the ends of his brows were thick and luxuriant like an old man in a caricature, proof of his seasoned age.
“So you knew it too?”
“I knew. I just couldn’t get rid of it. If you can help, sir, I’ll pay well enough.”
“Do I look like some village exorcist to you? I’m in training in Haenam. I came to see a friend who lives in Jeju. Tsk, tsk. What crime did you commit to end up carrying such an evil spirit on your back?”
“...Is it that bad?”
“That thing isn’t just enough to strike one man dead on the spot. It’s the kind of evil spirit that could bring down a country. Any ordinary shaman would die the instant they tried to do something about it.”
As far as Taesu was concerned, it was such a thoroughly relatable statement he could hardly disagree.
The monk had claimed not to be a shaman, but if he knew this much, he seemed like he might actually have a method.
For the first time, Taesu truly understood the feelings of people who pour their fortunes into cults. Just as he was about to offer more money in desperation, a familiar voice rang out.
“Monk Choui! No, wait. There you are. I’ve just paid my respects to the magistrate, so let’s hurry to Chusa’s house! Huh? Park Axe, you too?”
It was Yi Ha-eung.
Choui, the great monk who was a close friend of Kim Jeong-hui and Jeong Yak-yong and had even received a royal title from the king, turned to Yi Ha-eung and clicked his tongue.
“So you brought him, my lord?”
Then he pointed his chin at Taesu. Yi Ha-eung tilted his head.
“Yes. He’s the merchant I’ve been indebted to, and I wanted to introduce him to you. Is there some concern on your mind?”
Yi Ha-eung wondered whether Taesu had perhaps beaten Choui up or something, but he soon dismissed the thought.
If that had happened, Choui wouldn’t still be alive. The monk’s spiritual power was universally acknowledged, but spiritual power wasn’t the same thing as brute strength.
Choui said with a sour expression, “A man carrying something that foul would, if he were ordinary, have gone deaf and dumb and spent his whole life bedridden. The ghost aside, this one’s inner force is truly strong. Without that ghost, he might have become a general.”
Yi Ha-eung was pleased in a way that didn’t show on his face.
His eye had been right. Setting aside the evil spirit and all that, Park Axe really was no ordinary man.
Yi Ha-eung dragged both parties along at once.
“Since you’ve met, isn’t that fate? Come with us and have a proper talk. You too, hurry along. The master is waiting.”
* * *
The Chusa Kim Jeong-hui Taesu saw was just an old man with a broad, pocked face.
If history held true, Kim Jeong-hui would be released next year.
Modern people wouldn’t know that, but Yi Ha-eung, who belonged to this era, could roughly guess.
The king didn’t have much time left. Before the balance of power could somehow be overturned, he would want to restore at least one official from the anti-Andong Kim camp to court.
Yi Ha-eung conveyed that political situation well enough through the sort of coded hints scholars used with one another.
But Chusa seemed more interested in Cha Un-hong’s canned crab and abalone than anything else.
“This is truly delicious!”
Kim Jeong-hui, who had looked as though he had no appetite at all, was shoveling it in with gusto.
You might think seafood was a common luxury in Jeju, but people living in the land where cacao grows in the twenty-first century don’t necessarily gorge on chocolate every day.
Here, seafood—especially abalone—was taken away wholesale through ruthless plunder, so for an exile like Kim Jeong-hui, it was hard to even get a taste.
Only after a long while did Kim Jeong-hui realize that the two commoners were watching his meal with expressions as unconventional as his own Chusa script.
“Ahem! Right. That’s enough of that. Have you both finished? Hmm. Yes. You said you were merchants, didn’t you? I’m a poor scholar, so I don’t have much to give you. But do you perhaps have any fans?”
Exactly the situation Cha Un-hong had been waiting for, she promptly laid out several fans.
As Kim Jeong-hui began the inscription, Taesu was genuinely impressed.
For a moment, he almost seemed like the goofy old man from before.
But Choui beside him was the same way. Men who had mastered a single field carried a peculiar and undeniable presence.
After finishing the writing, Kim Jeong-hui held up the brush with a rather satisfied expression.
“My calligraphy has made me an undeserved name, so I imagine there will be buyers for something like this.”
Then Taesu, staring at the unreadable script for a moment, said, “Why would I rush to sell it for a few scraps of money? This ought to be kept properly and passed down in the years to come.”
From his earlier impression, Taesu was sure this Chusa Kim Jeong-hui was not one of Yi Ha-eung’s frauds.
That was why he said it. If it was Chusa script, of course its value would rise later, after modernization.
But Kim Jeong-hui, who had no idea how greedy modern people could be, looked at Taesu with a somewhat surprised expression.
“You’re no ordinary merchant.”
“What did I say? I told you I don’t know why he’s in business.”
As Choui muttered that complaint, he brought out the tea he’d carried with him.
“I happened to bring some old tea grown in Dasan today. Truly, is this fate, just as Lord Heungseon said?”
Another name Taesu recognized had come up.
Dasan? Jeong Yak-yong?
In fact, Choui was Jeong Yak-yong’s disciple in tea ceremony. It symbolized the wide network Choui had among the so-called late Joseon practical scholars.
By this point, Taesu had begun to take the group seriously.
There were two people connected here whose names he had heard of even before.
If even Taesu knew them, they were mostly the sort who had moved the gears of history—people like Kim Dae-geon, Choe Je-u, and Yi Ha-eung.
It was the only way someone like Taesu, who hadn’t majored in history and didn’t even have a hobby of simulation games, could make use of the advantage of being a modern man.
With full stomachs and a cup of tea in hand, the mood grew relaxed.
Yi Ha-eung briefly explained Taesu’s background.
Since Cha Un-hong had also brought along some gift items in addition to the canned food, the scholars didn’t ask why they had been introduced to a merchant in the first place.
Kim Jeong-hui stroked his beard.
“I see. So you drove off a Western ship. Well done. The Western ship that came this time—the Samarang, was it?—was apparently the English ship that came here to Jeju two years ago, and I heard both officials and commoners were in a terrible panic.”
That was all right to say. Kim Jeong-hui had sent a letter with similar contents to the former prime minister, Kwon Don-in.
“The Western nations launch ten thousand ships a year. It was nothing more than a passing vessel. If one understands the affairs of China and the West, there’s no need to worry about where they’re going or what they mean to do.”
Kim Jeong-hui gave Taesu a look that seemed to carry some deeper meaning.
“When King Ikjong was governing affairs, even when the English ship—the Lord Amherst—came, things were not like this. It happens because only the offspring of the powerful families roam the land while there are no worthy scholars. If someone like you, who understands the West so well, had served King Ikjong, how wonderful that would have been.”
Kim Jeong-hui was not merely some easygoing old man.
He had guessed why Yi Ha-eung had arranged this meeting in the first place and was testing Taesu.
Since Yi Ha-eung brought you here, and since you have the strength and knowledge to stand against a Western ship, are you someone who will cooperate with us in ending the hegemony of the royal in-laws, as King Hyeomyeong once wished?
That was roughly the meaning.
Cha Un-hong, who understood the hidden implication, swallowed hard.
These people seemed to be the “enlightenment faction” Taesu sometimes talked about.
In a direction different from merchants—and with a force far greater, nine times out of ten—they were people who could help realize his goals.
The faction represented by Kim Jeong-hui, the people close to King Hyeomyeong, seemed to be trying to draw Taesu in by showing him a face that might align with his own vision.
But trusting them and revealing the whole civilian port-opening project would still be dangerous.
Cha Un-hong fought down the urge to chew her nails.
What should I do?
But Taesu didn’t look as if he were thinking that deeply.
If anything, he looked mildly irritated.
Cha Un-hong watched him anxiously.
But this wasn’t a merchants’ gathering. Even at best, she was only Taesu’s fellow trader, and as a social minor she couldn’t step in here.
In the middle of her anxiety, Cha Un-hong froze at Taesu’s casual, thrown-away remark.
“This is why I’ve always hated educated men.”
The room fell into a silence like a scream.
Staring lazily upward, Taesu said, “Don’t dress it up with some talk about the West and pretend you’re interested. You’re only interested in Kim Jwa-geun’s gang.”
Author’s Note
1. The remark that “the farm tools are completely mismatched to their purpose” also appears in Viscount Belcher’s account of the Samarang’s voyage.
However, contrary to the interpretation in the story, Belcher most likely meant not Jeju specifically but all of Joseon’s farm tools. By nineteenth-century standards, Joseon’s agricultural implements were stagnating, and there were even arguments for importing Japanese tools instead.
2. The present-day Jeju tangerines were cultivated starting in the twentieth century, while the tangerines in this story are an indigenous variety.
3. Monk Choui really did visit Kim Jeong-hui in real life. They were close partly because they lived relatively near one another among their circle of friends. There is no record of him having supernatural powers.
4. King Hyeomyeong was indeed the official in charge—the regent—when Lord Amherst arrived, but he did not particularly argue for trade with the English ship; he blocked it effectively and sent it away.