As I recall, this was the title of a soap opera I watched for a time in the early '80s when I was living in Appalachia, on a six-acre "farmette" with a small child. I was indulging a weird fantasy that fluctuated between Chinese peasant to back-to-the-land hippie, while the Wizard had a busy job running a county library system (supporting more or less illiterate families of a coal mining culture). To escape from the isolation and boredom (which, quite frankly, I would welcome at this point in my life) there was the soap opera--Another World.
I suppose it is no different that I should now be escaping into another world of 37 B.C. Korea, the historical epic/soap opera of Jumong, the 81-episode tale of the founding monarch of an early kingdom of Korea.
Korean history, whatever, it's still wuxia. Swords and chivalry and swords and familial conflict and loyalty and weird father/daughter, mother/son relationships and swords and very interesting hairstyles. Did I mention swords?
The father/daughter-mother/son themes frequently come up in wuxia. I recently read something in a Taoist commentary on the I Ching that explains this. It's a yin/yang thing. (And if you don't think old Korea was under the spell of yin and yang and the bagua, just look at the flag, to say nothing of the tail art on Korean Air 747s.)
According to Master Alfred Huang (no relation to Master Chungliang Al Huang), when the mother seeks a union with the father for the first time, she recieves a son: the Arousing, Thunder. When the father seeks a union with the mother for the first time, he recieves a daughter: the Penetrating, Wind. This can go on for generations. Mothers get sons, fathers get daughters. This is all about family relationships in the bagua. But it explains something in all these Asian family dramas.
4 comments:
I did not know about the bagua/family relationship motif; that's certainly an interesting layer to the dynamics described in the I Ching.
"K-drama" is notoriously addicting. ;)
There is a long history of Taoism in Korea. If you're interested, you can check out this site to learn more about Taoism's interaction with the indigenous animist and shamanic practices in Korea.
There's a syncretist form of Taoism in Japan as well, where it's known as "Onmyodo" (literally, the Way of Yin and Yang).
Well, I may have stretched a point, but I thought it was interesting. I am no authority on this. I had been reading Alfred Huang's "Numerology of the I Ching" and he alluded to the parent/child dynamic as part of the bagua development. It just connected to my observation in the wuxia stories.
Thanks for reading and for the link which I will shortly explore.
Got any other K-drama to recommend? I expect terrible withdrawal to set in when I finish this thing.
Korean Air's livery has to be my favourite among the world's airlines, what with the tail symbol and the shade of blue. I hope they don't change it. I used to like Delta's when it looked like this: http://widebodyaircraft.nl/l1011-80.htm
So bold, adventuresome, larger-than-life. But 'tis no more.
SP: Yeah, that Delta is nice (though I never much liked the L-1011). If you want to see a fabulous KA 747 in action, check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTl1nQ9bO1Y
Thanks for reading.
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