What funny hats they wear in Korea!
But, you will ask, where is Korea? It is near Japan, a country you
have read of in this book.
The people of Korea look a little like Chinamen. They have yellow skin
and slanting eyes. Their hair is long, straight, and black, and they
wear it in a very strange way. The boys and girls wear their hair down
their backs in braids tied with ribbons. The men and women have their
hair in little topknots that stand straight up.
[Illustration: A Korean.]
But I must tell you about the strange hats they have. Some of the men
wear hats that go down over their shoulders. This is the kind of hat
they wear when they are in mourning, after the death of a father or
mother. Some wear hats made of straw. These hats look like large
flowerpots turned upside down. Some have hats made of horsehair.
But the hats made of straw and the hats made of horsehair do not keep
the rain out. So they have umbrellas. Their umbrellas are as funny as
the hats. They are made of oil paper, and have no handles. They look
like fans. When it rains, the people open their umbrellas and tie them
on top of their hats.
The boys in Korea wear loose jackets, and wide trousers which go under
their stockings. The stockings are padded with cotton, and are tied at
the ankle. The girls wear very pretty little jackets, sometimes red,
sometimes pink, and sometimes green.
The shoes they wear in Korea are of many kinds and shapes. Some are
made of leather. Others are like the wooden shoes the Chinamen wear,
which turn up at the toes. The funniest shoes they have are made of
paper. The paper is very thick and strong, and so their paper shoes
last a good while. But the shoes that are worn by most of the people
in Korea are made of straw. They are like sandals, and they are worn
so that the large toe is not covered.
The people in Korea have a strange way of keeping themselves cool in
hot weather. They have something like a basket made of rods of bamboo.
This basket is round and long, and open at the top and bottom. They
put their heads through this basket, and it hangs downward from their
shoulders around their bodies. Then they put their clothes over it, so
that the basket is inside. It is next to their skin. How would you
like to have such a summer dress?
The boys in Korea go to school when they are very young. The girls do
not go to school. They stay at home to help their mothers. But girls
whose parents are rich have teachers at home to teach them reading and
writing and other things.
In school, the teacher sits on a straw mat on the floor. The boys also
sit on the floor on straw mats. They say their lessons out loud. They
write their lines from the top to the bottom of the page. The people
in China and Japan, as you know, write in the same way. The boys of
Korea learn to count on a _chon-pan_. The chon-pan is much like the
counting box they have in the schools in China. It is made of little
balls on a frame of wires fixed in a box. The boys also learn by heart
the wise sayings of great men.
The boys in Korea have some very nice toys. But the best playthings
they have are their kites. They make their kites fight battles in the
air, just as the boys do in Japan. Every boy tries to tear down every
other boy's kite. This is done by pulling the strings across one
another. Sometimes the sky is full of beautiful kites, which jump and
dash about as if they were alive.
The boys also have fine, large pinwheels. They make these pinwheels
whirl around in the wind. The boys also spin tops, and they play
"seesaw," and jump the rope.
The boys in Korea are fond of fishing. Nearly every boy has a fishing
rod and goes fishing whenever he can. Sometimes the boys have great
fun going around dressed like their fathers. They wear wooden swords
and little bows and arrows like soldiers. They make straw figures of
men, and with their swords they strike off the heads of these straw men.
But the boys have to work as well as play. Many of the peddlers in
Korea are boys. They sell candy and other things. The girls do a
great deal of work at home. The first thing they learn to do is to sew.
Would you like to know how the women iron their clothes? They wrap
each piece around a stick and lay it on the floor. Then they sit down
and beat the piece on the stick with wooden clubs. In this way they
make the clothes as smooth as a Chinaman makes the linen which he irons.
[Illustration: Korean Girls Ironing Clothes.]
The houses in Korea are one or two stories high. They are made of wood
or clay, and sometimes the roofs are of straw. The windows are high,
and the doors are often so low that the people have to stoop down to go
in. The rooms are very small and have hardly any furniture. There are
no chairs. The people sit on mats on the floor. The walls between the
rooms are made of paper, and the floor is made of stone.
[Illustration: Korean Houses.]
They have a strange way of heating their houses. They have no stoves
or fireplaces. But under the floor they have a cellar like an oven.
In this cellar a fire is always kept, and the rooms are sometimes so
hot that the people can hardly walk on the stone floors.
People who are poor sleep on mats on the floor. They sleep in their
clothes. People who are rich have mattresses. The mattresses are laid
on the floor at night, and are taken up in the morning.
The people of Korea eat a great deal of rice. But they have other
kinds of food. They have meat and fish and eggs and also fruit. You
would think that they would use a great deal of tea, as they live so
near China. But they do not drink tea. They drink rice water instead.
The rice water is water that rice has been boiled in.
At their meals the men always eat first and the women wait on them.
When the men have eaten as much as they want, then the women and
children eat.
The tables they have are very low. It would not do for them to have
high tables, as they sit on the floor.
They have no knives or forks. They eat with spoons, and they use
chopsticks, as the Chinamen do.
They have no water-pipes in their houses. In the towns men carry water
in pails. They have no gas. For light at night they use candles.
They have only one kind of coin. It is a small piece of copper. It
has a square hole in the middle. They put these coins on strings and
carry them around their necks. It would take many such coins to make a
dollar.
[Illustration: Korean Money.]
There are farms in Korea, where they grow wheat, rice, rye, tobacco,
cotton, watermelons, and many kinds of fruit.
If you were in Korea, you would think it the strangest country in the
world. They do many things very unlike the way we do them. With us
bright-colored things are worn by women. In Korea the men wear bright
colors. They have a funny way of selling eggs there. They place ten
eggs end to end in a row, and put straw around them. Then they tie
strings around the straw between the eggs. This is called a stick of
eggs. When people go to buy eggs, they ask for one or two sticks, or
as many as they wish. One stick of eggs costs less than five cents.
[Illustration: A Stick of Eggs.]
Instead of a president they have a king. The king lives in the largest
town. There is a thick, high wall all around this town. There are
gates in the wall, and these are shut at night. After the gates are
shut, no one can get in or out until they are opened in the morning.
The people show very great respect for the king. When they go to speak
to him they throw themselves down on their faces before his throne.
The people love their country very much. They think it is the most
beautiful country in the world.