I met with my friend Mr Kim, yesterday. We went hiking on Mudeungsan, which I’ve hiked parts of, twice before, but never to the top – it was over 6 hours, round trip, and we were basically jogging down, the last hour, trying to beat the setting sun, because we’d gotten a late start.
The late start was because we’d taken our time. He took me to his alma mater, Chosun University. It has a very attractive campus nestled on a southwest-facing hillside on the eastern edge of downtown Gwangju. It’s probably the most attractive university campus that I’ve seen in Korea, and it reminded me quite a bit of Humboldt State in its hillside layout.
The main building of the campus is against the hillside, quite a ways up, just like Humboldt’s Founder’s Hall is in Arcata. But the building is huge, and of a very distinctive architecture. Seeing it from a distance, looking up at it, I had always assumed it was one of those postmodern follies dating from a recent decade, but today I learned that the building in fact was made in 1946, making it that rarest of Korean architectural gems: a structure that is post-colonial but pre-Korean War – at the height of Americanizing influence in the peninsula, during the post-WWII occupation, but when things were much more idealistic than in the no-more-utopias phase that came after the 6/25/1950 war (as they call it, here).
After the campus tour, we parked at the very touristy base of the mountain, the west-facing, Gwangju entrance of Mudeungsan Park. We then went to one of the plethora of restaurants that cluster there, to serve the infinitude of day-hikers. The place that we went was absolutely the most delicious Korean restaurant I’ve eaten at in recent memory.
One highlight was the 도토리수재비 [do-to-ri-su-jae-bi], which is a kind of nuts and dumplings savory soup or stew. No meat or fish (which always strikes a chord with me), loaded with all sorts of different kinds of roots, veggies and nuts, a thick, umamiful (yes, I just made that word up, but look up umami in wikipedia sometime) broth, and these amazing acorn-flour dumplings (really, they were Korean acorny gnocchi).
The absolute culinary miracle, for me, however, was something I will never forget – my first taste of 흑마늘 [heuk-ma-neul], roasted, sweet, black garlic. Oh, this was a truly amazing treat – imagine whole cloves of garlic with a consistency and vague taste of chocolate, that you can eat like candy.
We finally started hiking at about 1220.
Here are some pictures of the campus and the lunch. I will put pictures from the actual hike at a later post.
Looking down on the Gwangjuscape from the main building at Chosun University.
The distinctive and ancient (by modern Korean standards – 1946!) and massive main building of the university.
The stairs leading down from in front of the main hall to the rest of campus, including the dormitory building and the 16 floor engineering building where my friend Mr Kim studied nuclear engineering back in the 80s, in the distance.
The spread, for lunch. Look at all those amazing banchan (side dishes).
And the really stunning, delicious, unique roasted black garlic.