I spent the whole day with Mrs. Chung.

It wasn’t my intention. I thought I would run many errands and get home early after a couple of hours in the morning with her, drinking tea. But I have asked her to help me with a couple of things and for her trouble, I must be patient.

I arrived at her apartment in the morning, drank green tea and ate rice cake with her. We talked for awhile before she served me a lunch of spicy ramen with kimchee. After that she took me out to Insa-dong where she knows an artist who makes tojang.

Well, not quite like that: Before the ramen she took me out to a neighborhood tojang shop where a rude guy with shoulder-length hair was charging too much for pine tojang. Besides the pine, there were hardly any other choices of stone or other types of wood. I told Mrs. Chung that it was important for the tojang to look nice since they aren’t entirely functional for us. This is when she took me back for lunch and prepared to take me all the way downtown.

Insa-dong. She knows the artist, a young man smiling brightly from his desk behind the window. His is a small shop, not one foreigners would wander into probably, not one I have ever been in though I’ve passed it a dozen times at least. He is famous, she says, like she claims of all her acquaintances. On this day he will give us a special price. On this day, only.

So many types of stone from which to choose. I can’t decide; I’m taking too long. I choose the wood for Dave instead. Black wood from Siberia: very dense and dark - black - and smooth. Smoothness I can’t keep my fingers from. How much? Oh, I can’t tell you. I called Dave, and I told him, and he hesitated, and I said, this is yours for your lifetime, it is worth it, and he said, OK.

Then I asked the man to choose a good piece of stone for me. I had already picked a few I liked and he examined them for flaws; he told me through Mrs. Chung which one had the most integrity. His knowledge was there for me, so I just asked him to choose a fine piece. He pulled out a Chinese box from beneath the shelves containing two pieces of cold stone a milky olive green. Like a bowl of miso soup: translucent at the surface with clouds swirling below. How much? Same as all other stone. On this day. This day only.

The characters: What kind of carving would I like? A book of examples for me to browse. I know nothing, nothing, nothing. Finally, I just tell Mrs. Chung: I don’t know what will work for the medium, what will work for the size of the blocks; I think the artist knows best and I trust him to choose. I only knew that I wanted Chinese characters and I said so. The man asked me to choose the complexity of them and I chose the more complex. He said he would try but some of the characters have many fine details and it would be hard to carve. I told him I understood.

I paid him half the balance and then we left.

Mrs. Chung asked if I had time, if I had things I wanted to shop for. I said I didn’t have anything I needed to buy, but I could browse. I do have things I want to shop for but I don’t want her to know what I am buying. I don’t want her to see the amount of money I will spend nor the items on which I will spend it. I have a carefully constructed persona to maintain.

We strolled along the street until we reached a shop that deals only in Chinese tea and Chinese teaware. She peered in through the window, started laughing, and led me in. She knows the man who owns the shop, of course; he is very famous, of course. A fine artist and purveyor of the highest quality tea from China. I have been in his shop before, with Dave. I have seen the tea pressed into disks, into the shapes of mushrooms. I have admired the tea cups and the teapots. There are no prices. No need for me to even ask because I know I could not afford it. He is very famous.

The water is boiling and, from speakers hidden somewhere, a single piri (flute) plays. He asks us to sit at the table where a tea set is waiting for the boiling water. He reaches over to the kettle, lifting over the set, the tray, to pour water over everything, over the pot, the cups, the decanter. With long bamboo tweezers, he lifts each cup by the lip and pours its contents over top of the tea pot. The water drains through the slits in the bamboo tray into the receptacle below. He spoons dried oolong tea leaves into the teapot, then pours water over the whole thing again. Uses the tweezers to empty the water from the cups onto the pot.

Then water into the pot. Steeping. The best part: He picks up the tea pot, forefinger through the handle, thumb on the lid, and pours the tea through a conical strainer that is placed in the decanter. We see the tea pour for just a moment before he sets the whole pot into the strainer to let it drain on its own.

I can see the artist’s signature on the bottom of the pot. A porcelain teapot with a landscape etched finely in indigo blue. I see mountains, a lake, boats, even people finely drawn with an instrument not as wide as a the tip of a needle. It is extraordinary. Mrs. Chung asks the price of the teapot and decanter, which are a set. He replies samshipomanwon: about $300.

The teapot is removed from its compromised position in the strainer and placed upright in its place at the center of the tray. The strainer is removed and placed on a holder at the upper left corner of the tray. The tea is poured into cups and the cups are placed before us by tweezers after a tap on a napkin to dry the bottom.

A monk enters the shop. A famous monk, very famous, she says. He sits with us, drinking tea. They chat. The tea is poured and re-poured. The tea pot upended again and again into the strainer inside the decanter. The leaves have re-hydrated and fill the teapot entirely. When he lifts the lid off to pour in more water, the leaves expand out of the opening until he squashes them in with the lid again.

I sit, back straight, using two hands to drink from this cup that is half the diameter of one palm: the left holds the rim and the right covers the bottom. In silence. Listening and catching only bits and pieces. She talks about me and they laugh at her stories, the usual stories about me. She has other stories she repeats and repeats and I think these two men look bored and I wonder about the dynamic here, about her place among them and what they really think of her. Her stature requires respect, but she is still woman, a woman who repeats the same stories of her daughters. She, like me, drinks with two hands sitting back straight. They slouch against the backs of chairs, legs spread, drinking with one hand.

I had a thought that this method of serving tea, while very relaxed and facilitating familiarity, is intrinsically masculine. There is such power in the occupation of space, free movement. (Of course.) This is the way Mr. Shin served us. This is the Chinese way: Do women serve tea this way in China? In Korea and Japan, when tea is served by women, the ceremony is very rigid - not a drop spilled, back straight, must use two hands. Here I sat, back straight, using two hands. Men talking or enduring one of her stories. I, in silence. Always. Seeing, only. Men talking or enduring one of her stories. I could not be certain of their affect but something was happening in the way they laughed, in the way they didn’t look at her when she talked, in the way they looked at each other when only they held the conversation. Was this cultural or personal? The tea kept coming to me and I scooped it up with two hands, drinking it all like a shot of liquor, then placing the cup back onto the saucer for yet another round.

Mrs. Chung, why don’t you translate what they say about me? I hear them saying things. From the few words I hear that I know, I can piece together a vague meaning of the whole. Why aren’t I told what I hear? She only tells me what she says. I wanted to ask but I do not want to give up the power I hold in assuming ignorance.

There is a price to be paid for all her generosity. In this case - in this culture - friendship is a transaction. I’m aware of it, and I will have to pay my dues. In little ways: I carry packages to the States for her daughter; I will be a mule for her. I will pretend to be what she likes. If she visits me in the States, I will be a generous hostess. And in big ways: I will eat bondegee (silkworm pupa) with her. One shell at a time, I stab. She loads up her toothpick with 5 or 6. When I say I’m finished, she upturns the cup and the remaining bondegee and juice slip into her mouth. Lots of protein, she says, good for health.