20
Coffee Hanjan
About a year after Peter and I moved to Brooklyn, the little record I had written in the cottage at the bottom of my parents’ property started to receive a surprising amount of attention. Funny enough, I released the album under the moniker Japanese Breakfast, a name I’d come up with years ago, up late one night browsing photographs of neat wooden trays set with perfectly grilled salmon fillets, miso, and white rice. A small label based in Frostburg, Maryland, offered to put it out on vinyl. My mother’s image graced the cover, an old photograph of her in her twenties in Seoul, wearing a white blazer and a ruffled shirt, posing with an old friend. I had two of her watercolors printed on the paper centers of the vinyl disc, the songs I’d written in her memory revolving about their poles.
It came out in April and that summer I was offered a five-week tour opening for Mitski across the United States. At the same time, an essay I had written over the course of a few weeks in the evenings after work, titled “Love, Loss, and Kimchi,” was selected as Glamour magazine’s essay of the year. The prizes included publication in the magazine, a meeting with a literary agent, and five thousand dollars. I had moved to New York to put my creative ambitions aside and focus my energy on climbing the corporate ladder, but all signs seemed to indicate it wasn’t quite time to hang up my hat.
I left my job at the advertising company, and the buzz around Psychopomp continued to swell, allowing me to pursue music full-time for the first time in my adult life. I put together a band and we drove down I-95 along the East Coast, across the long stretch of I-10 from the marshes of Louisiana through the empty deserts of West Texas and Arizona, up I-5 along the majestic cliffs and mountains of the Pacific shore, and back through the misty valleys of Oregon, where I left flowers on my mother’s grave, the headstone corrected and finally reading lovely. We played to a full room at the WOW Hall and, later that year, at the legendary Crystal Ballroom, where sixteen-year-old girls beamed at me the same way I had beamed at the musicians I’d idolized. We opened for bigger acts, and then we began to headline ourselves, out for long stretches of the year, crisscrossing the country.
After the shows, I’d sell shirts and copies of the record, oftentimes to other mixed kids and Asian Americans who, like me, struggled to find artists who looked like them, or kids who had lost their parents who would tell me how the songs had helped them in some way, what my story meant to them.
When the band had enough momentum for it to be financially feasible, Peter joined on lead guitar, rounding out the group with Craig on drums and Deven back on the bass. We played Coachella in California. We played Bonnaroo in Tennessee. We traveled to London, Paris, Berlin, and Glasgow. We had a hospitality rider and stayed at Holiday Inns. After a year of shows in North America and three tours through Europe, our booking agent called me with an offer for a two-week tour through Asia. Naturally, we’d finish in Seoul.
I messaged Nami on Kakao to let her know we’d be visiting at the end of December.
We’d kept in touch over the past year, but the language barrier made it difficult to get specific. Most of the time we just wrote “I love you” and “I miss you” accompanied by various emojis and photos of my Korean cooking efforts. I tried to explain that things were going well, that the band was experiencing some success, but I’m not sure she really understood or truly believed me until I informed her that we had a concert in Seoul booked for the second week of December.
A moment later I got a call.
“Hello, Michelle, how are you? This is Esther.”
Esther was Emo Boo’s daughter from his first marriage. She was five years older than me and had gone to law school at NYU. She was visiting from China, where she now lived with her husband and one-year-old daughter.
“Nami just told me that you’re going to play a show here in a few weeks? Is that true?”
“It’s true! We are doing a two-week tour all over Asia and our last show is in Seoul. Peter and I are planning on renting an apartment for a few weeks afterward. In Hongdae, maybe.”
“Oh, Hongdae is a fun place. Lots of young artists there, like Brooklyn.” She paused and I could hear Nami saying something in the background. “We…we are just confused. Is there some kind of office?”
“An office?”
“Well…I guess we are just wondering, who is it that pays you?”
I laughed. It certainly wasn’t the first time I’d been asked to explain it, and after years of pay-to-play DIY touring I often had a hard time believing it myself. “Well, there is a promoter that books the show, and then we get paid by the people who buy tickets.”
“Ah…I see,” she said, though I had a feeling she didn’t. “Well, I really wish I could see your concert but I’ll be going back to China before then. Nami says her and my dad are very excited.”
The tour started in Hong Kong and would take us to Taipei, Bangkok, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Osaka before finishing in Seoul. Each night we played for three to five hundred people. The promoters of each show would pick us up from the airport and guide us through their cities, pointing out the landmarks as we headed to the club, translating the input lists to local stage crews. Most important, they’d show us the best things to eat.
It was a stark contrast to what we usually ate on tour in North America, the long drives fueled by gas station snacks and fast-food chains. In Taipei we had oyster omelets and stinky tofu at Shilin Night Market and discovered what is arguably the world’s greatest noodle soup, Taiwanese beef noodle, chewy flour noodles served with hefty chunks of stewed shank and a meaty broth so rich it’s practically a gravy. In Beijing we trekked a mile in six inches of snow to eat spicy hot pot, dipping thin slivers of lamb, porous wheels of crunchy lotus root, and earthy stems of watercress into bubbling, nuclear broth packed with chiles and Sichuan peppercorns. In Shanghai we devoured towers of bamboo steamers full of soup dumplings, addicted to the taste of the savory broth gushing forth from soft, gelatinous skins. In Japan we slurped decadent tonkotsu ramen, bit cautiously into steaming takoyaki topped with dancing bonito flakes, and got hammered on whisky highballs.
The tour drew to a close. We flew into Incheon and tracked down our guitars at the oversized claim. In the arrivals hall we were greeted by our local liaison, Jon. Jon had arranged our show in Seoul at a club in Hongdae, the same neighborhood where he ran a small record shop called Gimbab Records. It was named after his cat, who was himself named after the Korean rice rolls that my mother had made when it was her turn to feed the Hangul Hakkyo. He was tall and slim, clean-cut, dressed plainly and conservatively in black slacks and a peacoat. He looked more like a salaryman than a promoter and owner of a cool vinyl shop.
Jon took us out for a late dinner, where we met his associate Koki, a sweet Japanese man with a goofball grin who spoke fluent Korean and English. Koki was forthcoming and earnest, the perfect complement to Jon, whom we struggled to get a read on over kimchijeon and many mugs of Kloud clanked in celebration of my return to the homeland.
The next day we loaded in for the show at V Hall, a club capped at a little over four hundred people. Our greenroom was filled with Korean snacks from my childhood, shrimp chips and Chang Gu honey crackers, sweet potato twigs and banana puffs, slices of chamoe melon and even a small box of Korean fried chicken. Jon made sure that Nami and Emo Boo had a spot reserved on the balcony overlooking the stage. The two of them arrived early with flowers. We embraced and took photos together. Nami taught us the latest trend of posing with your index finger and thumb diagonally crossed in the shape of a heart.
When we got onstage, I took a moment to take in the room. Even at the height of my ambitions I had never imagined I’d be able to play a concert in my mother’s native country, in the city where I was born. I wished that my mother could see me, could be proud of the woman I’d become and the career I’d built, the realization of something she worried for so long would never happen. Conscious that the success we experienced revolved around her death, that the songs I sang memorialized her, I wished more than anything and through all contradiction that she could be there.
I took a breath. “Annyeonghaseyo!” I shouted into the mic, and we launched into our set.
I hadn’t believed in a god since I was about ten and still envisioned Mr. Rogers when I prayed, but the years that followed my mother’s passing were suspiciously charmed. I had been playing in bands since I was sixteen, dreamt of succeeding as an artist practically my whole life, and as an American, I felt entitled to it in spite of my mother’s aggrieved forewarnings. I had fought for that dream thanklessly for eight long years, and only after she died did things, as if magically, begin to happen.
If there was a god, it seemed my mother must have had her foot on his neck, demanding good things come my way. That if we had to be ripped apart right at our turning point, just when things were really starting to get good, the least god could do was make a few of her daughter’s pipe dreams come true.
She would have been so tickled to have seen the past few years, me dressed up and shot for a fashion magazine, watching the first South Korean director win an Academy Award, YouTube channels with millions of views dedicated to fifteen-step skin-care regimens. And though it felt contrary to my beliefs, I had to believe that she could. And that she was glad I had finally found a place where I belonged.
Before our last song, I thanked my aunt and uncle for coming, looking up at them on the balcony. “Emo, welcome to my hoesa,” I said, extending an arm to the crowd. Welcome to my office. The band posed for a picture with our fingers in the heart pose Nami taught us, the sold-out crowd in the background. Dozens of kids left the venue with sleeves of vinyl held under their arms, fanning out into the city streets, my mother’s face on the cover, her hand reaching toward the camera like she’s just let go of the hand of someone below.
Afterward, Jon and Koki invited us all out to a vinyl bar called Gopchang Jeongol to celebrate. The name translates to offal stew, but that was nowhere to be found on the menu. Instead, we ordered a variety of anju. Impeccable golbaengi muchim—sea snails mixed with a red pepper and vinegar sauce served on top of cold somen noodles, tofu with kimchi and dried filefish jerky with peanuts.
The bar was dimly lit with Christmas lights and blue-tinted LEDs that danced around the walls. It had vaulted ceilings and exposed brick that made it feel like some kind of underground loft. In the front was a stage with two turntables and a DJ playing ’60s Korean rock, pop, and folk music in front of ten-foot-high shelves filled with records. Seated at wooden tables, our fellow patrons would burst into song at the sound of a familiar track.
Craig and Deven learned the respected drinking customs—never pour your own drink, pour for your elders with both hands—and Jon taught us games like Titanic, in which an empty shot glass is balanced in a cup full of beer and you take turns pouring small amounts of soju in, until it sinks and the loser has to shoot it back. This deadly combination of soju and maekju, the Korean word for beer, is called somaek, a common culprit for the Korean hangover.
We drank cold Cass beer from miniature glasses and poured out green bottle after green bottle of soju, sending shots all around and to Jon in particular, trying to lure him out of his shell. Late into the night, we finally made some headway and he began to talk about music.
As Jon got on to the Korean rock scene in the ’60s, I listened with rapt attention. My mom never talked much about the music she listened to growing up. In fact, I didn’t know much about Korean music in general, aside from a handful of K-pop bands that were gaining traction in the United States and a girl group called Fin.K.L that Seong Young exposed me to in the late ’90s.
When the bar died down, Jon played us a song by Shin Jung-hyeon, a sort of Korean Phil Spector type who produced sugary hooks and psychedelic riffs for girl groups of the era. The song was called “Haennim,” written for the singer Kim Jung Mi. It was a sprawling, six-minute folk song that started on finger-picked acoustic guitar and swelled with melancholy strings as it went on. We listened in silence. None of us could understand the lyrics, but it had a sound that was captivating and timeless and we were drunk and somber and moved.
Heads pounding, Peter and I woke the next day to say goodbye to our bandmates and move from our hotel to the apartment where we’d stay for the next few weeks. We would spend some time with my aunt and uncle, and I would do some writing about Korean culture and the food we ate, how it summoned the memories of my mother I wanted to keep closest.
Nami spoiled us the way only she knew how. She knew where to get the best of everything—the freshest seafood, the highest-quality meat, the quickest chicken delivery, the coldest beer on tap, the spiciest soft tofu stew, the top dentist, optometrist, acupuncturist. You name it, she had a guy. It could be dim sum on the top floor of a luxury skyscraper or naengmyeon down a back alley to some damp patio where a squatting ajumma rinsed her noodles over a drain in the cement; she was always quick to slip them a tip beforehand and ensure we got the best product and service.
In Myeong-dong, she took us to my mother’s favorite kalguksu restaurant, which served knife-cut noodles in beef broth, fat pork and vegetable steamed dumplings, and piquant, raw kimchi infamous for being exceptionally heavy-handed with the garlic, leaving you with pungent breath that cast a good three-foot radius of odor.
At Gangnam Terminal, an underground shopping center connected to one of Seoul’s major subway stations, we browsed the wares together. I was reminded of all the times my mother and I went shopping, the unique form of encouragement she gave me that I so sorely missed when I went shopping alone. I wondered if the shopkeepers thought that Nami was my mother. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing. Each of us was role-playing in a way, soft substitutes for the dead we wanted so desperately to revive. Anything I paused to examine, Nami insisted I let her buy for me. An apron with a flower pattern and red straps, a pair of house slippers with little faces on the toes. She called Peter over to carry the bags.
“Porter!” she said. We broke out in laughter. She’d surprise us occasionally like that, employing the type of words you’d hear on a period-piece miniseries on the BBC. Outdated words like convoy or barbarian that she’d probably picked up from a required vocabulary list decades ago, pocketed away somewhere in the corners of her mind.
“Nami, have you heard of Shin Jung-hyeon?” Peter asked, collecting our shopping bags.
“Shin Jung-hyeon? How you know Shin Jung-hyeon?” Nami asked in disbelief. Peter explained that Jon had told us about him at Gopchang Jeongol.
“Your mommy and me, we love Pearl Sisters. This one Shin Jung-hyeon! ‘Coffee Hanjan’!”
Nami pulled up a YouTube video of the track and played it from her phone. The album cover was bright yellow with the two sisters posing in matching green polka-dotted minidresses. Shin Jung-hyeon recorded it in the late ’60s with the sister duo who performed as the Pearl Sisters. It was their favorite song growing up, Nami explained. When they were kids, she and my mother used to perform it at my grandfather’s parties. They would wear their own matching outfits and, since they didn’t have go-go boots, improvised with their rubber rain galoshes.
On our final day in Seoul, Emo Boo drove the four of us to Incheon for dinner by the sea. Nami slipped the ajumma ten thousand won and ordered seafood knife-cut noodles in a savory broth filled with scallops, clams, and mussels. A plate of fresh hwe, light pink and white, uniformly sliced to be eaten with house-made ssamjang, pickled garlic, red leaf lettuce, and sesame leaves. Firm, briny abalone that looked like little sliced mushrooms, served inside their beautiful holographic shells. Live spoon worms, which looked like deflated, wriggling penises.
“This is the stamina food!” Emo Boo said. “Good for man—power!”
“What’s this?” Peter asked, game for anything. He was balancing some banchan between his chopsticks, a chunk of boiled potato mixed with corn and mayonnaise.
“It’s potato salad,” I laughed.
After we finished our bounty, Peter and Emo Boo ducked into a convenience store next door and emerged with firecrackers, which they promptly set off on the beach. Nami and I watched from inside as the wind whipped at their jackets. The past couple of weeks had been brutally cold, even wrapped in the long down coat I’d bought that could have easily passed for a sleeping bag.
Emo Boo and Peter burned through the rest of the fireworks and returned with wet red faces for a final glass of beer before heading home. The sun came down over the Yellow Sea. The gray sky streaked with a vivid strip of yellow orange that thinned and then disappeared.
“I think Halmoni and Eunmi and your mom is very happy,” Nami said. She flipped the heart charm on the necklace I gave her so it faced forward. “They are all in heaven together, playing hwatu and drinking soju, happy we are here together.”
We took the exit for Mapo-gu, back toward our apartment. Emo Boo began to reminisce about his days as a student at Hongik University, the college nearby. He had wanted to be an architect, but as the eldest son it was his duty to take over his father’s practice. The neighborhood had changed a lot since then, its streets now filled with skin-care shops and clothing boutiques, food carts serving fish cakes and tteokbokki, sweet corn dogs and deep-fried shrimp. Street musicians gathered with portable amplifiers, singing to busy walkways filled with young artists, students, and tourists.
On a whim, Emo Boo suggested we end the night with karaoke. He turned the car down an alley over which an illuminated sign read noraebang. Inside, a disco ball rotated, swirling squares of light across the dim purple-hued room.
Nami scrolled through the options on the touchscreen and found “Coffee Hanjan.” The song opened with a slow, drawling cymbal, the twang of a noodling guitar fading in over the build. When the lead line finally came in, I could have sworn I’d heard it before. Maybe they sang it together at the noraebangs we went to when I was younger. The lyrics slowly faded onto the screen as the long instrumental intro came to an end. Nami passed me the second wireless microphone. She took my hand and pulled me toward the screen, facing me as she began to sing. I swayed back and forth with her, squinting to try to sound out the vowels and keep up with the melody, a melody I searched for deep within a memory that may or may not have even existed, or a memory that belonged to my mother that I had somehow accessed. I could feel Nami searching for something in me that I had spent the last week searching for in her. Not quite my mother and not quite her sister, we existed in that moment as each other’s next best thing.
Peter and Emo Boo clapped in time with tambourines that lit up multicolored LEDs every time they were struck. I tried my best to sing along. I wanted to do all I could to help her resuscitate the memory. I chased after the Korean characters that seemed highlighted at the breakneck speed of a pinball. I let the lyrics fly from my mouth always just a little bit behind, hoping my mother tongue would guide me.