Made in Korea

My grandmother – I’ll call her Lola – and I had a strong, close relationship. After all, I was the granddaughter who lived with her, the only one she would always drag to market, the one for whom she would buy embroidered shoes or slippers, or dresses, which she called pambahay, meaning housedresses, or more often she would buy me a little yellow duckling to take home. I loved these yellow ducklings, would make them swim in a basin. But once they grow out of their yellow stage, ducks are no longer cute. I would lose interest but still considered them my pets.

In those days lunch hours were long. One day I came home for lunch and saw what looked like a chicken asado as our main dish. Chicken? I asked. No, duck, my Lola said sternly. Then quiet cloaked the table until I suddenly began to whimper. That’s my duck, I finally wailed. Well, your dog chased it, she said. And that scene repeated itself until all the ducks were gone. I didn’t eat any of them. They were my pets. All right, I had stopped attending to them and they were filling up the garden with their waste but I still was not going to eat them.

Lola was a rather stern but soft woman. Every time anybody says Korea I get this scene of me, maybe around eight years old, sitting with Lola in the old dining room of the Sta. Mesa house before she had it remodeled. It was around three on a rainy afternoon. We were about to have merienda. Lola was making me read her newspaper, El Debate to her. El Debate was in Spanish, a language I did not speak, but she would make me read it to her anyway, correcting my pronunciation as she saw fit. Ay naku, she exclaimed, dismayed. May guerra na sa Korea. There’s a war in Korea. That was the first time I heard about Korea.

She would go to Quiapo market and ask me what I wanted her to buy for me. “Get me the doll with feathers, please,” I implored. It was a little celluloid doll with painted big blue eyes and a curvaceous body. It was what was then called a Kewpie doll. Come to think of it, she must have been the precursor of Barbie. She was dressed in purple and fuchsia feathers. Lola bought the doll for me but it very quickly fell apart. “Made in Japan,” she said with much contempt. That was the label given to things of inferior quality then. It was made in America that was superior. This was in the early ‘50s, before Toyota and Sony turned that phrase around and made in Japan began to symbolize high quality.

Well, Lola, the world has changed. Made in America was replaced by made in Japan meaning high quality and that stayed on for very many years. Recently, however, there have been car recalls made by Japanese companies and I can see that label losing its luster. My son, Gino, passed me his made in America car. I had to fix or repair daily for many years.  It was slowly but surely driving me up the wall.

One day I was watching cable TV and I saw a documentary on Korean food, the way they make kimchi, the way they prepare their meals, the way they set up a party. It was impressive. They consider the food’s colors as they mix them. Furthermore I love Korean food. Then and there I decided to look for a Korean car. Now I have a small Kia Picanto. It’s big enough for me. After all, I live alone. It gets me places and I find it so adorably cute.

That’s not all. Now I use Korean cosmetics too. They suit my skin. My complexion has cleared and smoothened. And it’s not so expensive. Their highest end anti-aging face cream (and you know that’s the one single cream I use) is made from – are you ready for this? – snails.  Yes, those yuck creatures. When I lived in Burlingame and would walk every morning to the train station I would see snails crawling on cement. They leave a nacreous trail, like a line of frosted white. I think that’s what they take and turn into face cream. But hey, it works very well. It has improved my facial skin so much and I am only on my second jar. They call it Sseal, the Secret Seal of Nature.

I am writing this because last night I was on FaceBook and saw the picture of a woman with three or four snails crawling around her face. It sort of gave me the creeps so I went to check it out. I thought it would say something about snails bringing you beauty but it didn’t. I must say it though. Snails turned into face cream so you don’t see the critters crawling around works wonders for your skin.

Try it. It’s made in Korea. That’s a sure sign of quality.

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