These days, at the end of a long, tiring day, one of my greatest pleasures is lying in bed before falling asleep and catching a glimpse of a friend’s daily life. It’s the story of my friend, who, at forty, left her life in Korea behind and moved to Japan.
How did she and I become friends? We first met when I had just turned twenty, at a small workshop making independent short films. She was a hairdresser. Later, after we had grown closer, I learned that she had been born into a poor family and had lived much like a girl who had to support her family. She had started learning hairdressing in high school and, much earlier than her peers, had been thrown into the harsh realities of making a living.
So whenever I looked at her, Maggie from the film <Comrades: Almost a Love Story> naturally came to mind. A person who had come from the mainland to Hong Kong carrying ambitions far bigger than her shabby belongings, taking on all kinds of hard work without complaint, working three or even four shifts a day and living tenaciously, yet unable to hide the hunger deep inside her, constantly eating something and looking somehow sad.
Interestingly enough, she and I were, in a way, complete opposites back then. Carrying a deep wound in my heart from the trauma my childhood had left me with, I was nothing but a young idler who spent all day reading books, watching movies, writing, and, when the time came, smoking and drinking, all under the pretext of pursuing a deeper exploration of human nature and life. How on earth we became friends is still a mystery to me, but in my memory, a few late-night drinks we shared when we were still awkward come to mind. I suppose we were able to break down our walls because we saw something beyond each other’s surface.
However, what is even more interesting is that, over the more than ten years since then, I have come to see that our positions have reversed. Leaving behind countless ups and downs in Korea, I moved through Malaysia and crossed the Pacific to the US. Looking back, my past ten years were no different from the lives of the poor immigrants who poured out and scattered when the crowded train finally arrived at Hong Kong Central Station in that poignant first scene (and last scene) of the movie <Comrades: Almost a Love Story.>
In this country, where people so wealthy that their fortunes can hardly be counted coexist with immigrants living from day to day, I was smaller in stature, looked different, and spoke the language awkwardly compared to them. Still, just like Maggie, I kept my eyes wide open, clenched my teeth, and growled back whenever someone hit me, fiercely and carefully making my way through each day. How should I put it, they were days when even if I was sad, there was no time to be sad, and even if I was in pain, there was no time to be in pain.
While I was rowing through the years in my own way, she, true to her nature, also remained sharp about the ways of the world, had an eye for making money, and was full of ambition. So she ran a hair salon in Korea, worked as a broker for plastic surgery clinics in Gangnam, managed a restaurant, and kept living her life without ever slowing down in her own way. Meanwhile, it seemed she went through a few ups and downs involving men.
Because she had not grown up feeling loved enough, that had always been her weak spot. Even back when we were close friends, she had poor judgment when it came to men, and there was no end to the trouble, big and small, they caused her and the hurt she suffered. Even so, she had bravely kept her love life going. However, although I didn’t ask about all the details, this time it seemed she had suffered a rather big betrayal. She wandered for quite some time, shaken to the very foundations of her life, but in the end, painfully pulling herself together, she decided to leave Korea. It has already been about a year and a half since she left for Japan with a gloomy face and light luggage.
In the videos she posts every now and then, just as she begins to drift from my mind, she has found work as a hairdresser with the help of an acquaintance, attends language school, is getting used to public transportation like the subway and buses, which she never had to use while living in Korea, and on her days off, explores the neighborhood around her place, visiting clothing stores, variety shops, and local restaurants. Compared to her past life in Korea, it was quite simple and modest, but somehow, her complexion and characteristic cheerful vitality were gradually coming back to life, little by little. For that, I was grateful, and at the same time, I felt as though seeing her like that was awakening in me something profoundly important that I had unknowingly lost.
While watching her, I saw my younger self overlap with her, like a secret known only to me, beyond the image of her as she swayed a thousand times in the wind before finally settling like a dandelion seed, taking root in her rightful place and beginning to bloom. Back then, I was much greener and younger than I am now, a shabby immigrant worker for whom every penny was precious, whose hands were cold and who was hungry, working all day as a plumber yet rushing to the library whenever I had a spare moment, pinching my thighs to keep myself awake as I read, collected, and memorized the sophisticated sentences of critics. Why, exactly, did that image of me from a past when I had truly shone overlap with hers?
Watching her from afar, I draw two great inspirations. The first is the realization of how much I love the phrase “just barely, just barely.” Leaving behind the familiarity, comfort, and even the wealth built over time to start a new life in a place where almost no one knows you surely requires no small amount of sacrifice and courage. At banks that are even stricter with foreigners, you can open a bank account in your own name only after submitting all sorts of paperwork, and until you get used to the bus and subway routes, you have to stay on edge trying not to get on the wrong one or miss your stop. Though it has been nearly ten years since I began living abroad, I am still in a state where I have neither fully left my homeland behind nor fully come to belong to the foreign land I live in, meaning I have to wrestle with government agencies and banks in both countries at once to handle administrative matters more often than expected. Only someone who has been through it would know how much time is wasted and how agonizing it can be each time.
Yet, an outsider’s life, built just barely, just barely, overcoming countless difficulties and unpredictable trials and errors, one by one and entirely by my own strength, clearly has a rhythm and a sense of fulfillment all its own, as well as a romance and a beauty. It is as if, when you gather all your focus to complete tasks that had until now been nothing but completely familiar, you are returning to the feeling of someone who has been behind the wheel all their life since the age of twenty, as though it were the very first day they ever took the wheel, and there is no room left for idle thoughts, distractions, or calculations to slip in. And so, in the end, you can feel proud and rejoice purely like a child even over accomplishing something small and insignificant.
I also learn from her once again that a cheap bottle of wine bought by emptying your pockets at the end of the month when money is tight, a small lamp newly placed beside the bed, or a little bento shop discovered on the way home from work, can gently brighten the end of a day when you have been hurt by people or a night filled with loneliness, and that this, after all, is a precious happiness granted only to a life built just barely, just barely, rather than a life in which everything is simply smooth and abundant.
And one more thing. Watching her life, I find myself asking whether I am truly living the life I want, even if it means giving up many things, and whether I am pursuing what matters more than money diligently enough, without shame, working just as hard for it as I do for money itself.
Having lived a little, I have come to realize how strange life truly is. Sometimes we fix our eyes only on the summit of Mount Everest and climb toward it with everything we have, only to discover that once we get there, there is nothing left to do but come back down. And other times, just when we feel we have lost everything and have been driven to the edge of a cliff, the path in life we have arrived at because we had no other choice turns out, in the end, to be the very path that saves us.
It has always been the nature of our lives that no one can ever say for certain, until the very end, what is good and what is bad. In that context, despite the questions and worries of so many people, and even the countless doubts and fears from within herself, my friend, who followed the flow her life was leading her in, walking steadily through the unknown and ultimately saving herself, has now become someone I am as proud of as a great mountain. And so, at some point, she, who had always seemed to me like Maggie from <Comrades: Almost a Love Story>, began to look like Karen from <Out of Africa>.
After all, wasn’t Karen in that film someone who, in the end, passed through every failure life poured upon her on her own, who raised her voice to take command of a vast farm and its many workers in order to make a comeback, who faced the tragedy of losing the person she loved, and who, in doing so, grew along the unpredictable narrative of life itself? I hope my friend’s soul, too, will grow in just that way.
And so, when we meet again someday, I hope that, even though the lives we have lived have been winding and far from easy, she and I will recognize each other once again and smile at one another with the smile that only those who have held tightly, with both hands, to life’s most precious values and never let them go can wear. For surely, it will be a smile that anyone who has lived a life of a similar kind could never fail to recognize.
© Text & Photos by Tao Jung