The Jehol Diary (열하일기) - China and Korea as seen through the eyes of 18th century scholar Pak Jiwon (박지원)

Having just finished the first half of Pak (or Bak) Jiwon's Jehol Diary (열하일기/Yeolha-ilgi), I wanted to take some time to reflect on the book so far and share some of the things I enjoyed about the first part. Although the book is essentially a travelogue, it's so full of ideas about history, philosophy, society, antiques, art, and life in general that deciding where to begin discussing the book was quite a challenge. However, at this point in my exploration of the book, it seems most appropriate to focus on Pak's curiosity and open-mindedness as a model of the type of mindset we should strive for, especially in a time as multicultural and hyperconnected as the present.

The Jehol Diary caused a tremendous stir when it was first written and ruffled the feathers of some very powerful figures among Korea's political and literary elite. To explain why the book was received in this way, let's take a couple of steps back and look at both how Pak's insatiable curiosity came about and the times in which he lived and worked. As will be clear by the end of this post, Pak Jiwon was an exceptional person for his time, and one of his greatest strengths was arguably his ability to look at his own country through the eyes of an outsider — an ability that was sadly lacking among the majority of his contemporaries with the exception of a small minority of thinkers.

Pak Jiwon (1737–1805) was born into a family who were members of the noron (노론/老論), one of the main political factions in the late Joseon dynasty. Although his intelligence and brilliant memory were recognized early on, after a couple of unsuccessful attempts at passing the state civil service examination — on one occasion he even turned in a blank test paper — he simply gave up and worked odd jobs to fund trips with friends, much to the exasperation of his family. During these trips, Pak met and spoke with people from all walks of life, and in the process of doing so, he developed an exceptional ease in making new acquaintances and getting along easily with complete strangers. In addition to these trips in his late teens and early twenties, he was also indirectly exposed to other cultures through stories about travels in China which he heard from relatives and friends who often visited China as ambassadors. These various experiences, both direct and indirect, helped shape his endlessly curious personality and made him more receptive to other cultures and customs than many of his more conservative-minded compatriots.

By the time he embarked on the trip in 1780 to visit the Qianlong Emperor (건륭제) of China which would become the subject of the Jehol Diary, Pak was already well-versed in Chinese literature and history, as well as a fluent reader and writer of classical Chinese as a result of years of studying for the civil service examination. Being a seonbi (선비) or 'classical scholar' devoted to a life of learning rather than the pursuit of official titles or material wealth, Pak went with the tributary envoy to China essentially as a tourist without any official obligations, which gave him plenty of free time to explore and speak with as many different people as possible¹. Pak was invited to join the envoy by his cousin Pak Myeong-won (박명원), who had just recently been promoted to the position of Congratulatory Ambassador (진하사 겸 사은사, 進賀使兼謝恩使) for missions to China, and it's a good thing Pak Jiwon was invited at all, because he proved to be an ideal observer to accompany such a trip and in fact provided king Jeongjo (정조) with far more useful and accurate information about what he saw and heard in China when he returned to Korea than the other government officials from the envoy who simply dismissed the "barbarian" Manchus ruling China as having nothing to teach Korea.

This prejudice toward the Manchus who established the Qing dynasty and ruled China in Pak's time was typical especially among the Korean elite. Two of the primary philosophies of the day, bukbeollon (북벌론/北伐論, "Northern Expedition Theory") and sojunghwaron (소중화론/小中華論, "Little China Theory"), are direct results of this disdain toward the Manchu rulers of China and their culture, particularly the queue hairstyle — a shaved forehead with a long ponytail running down the back of the head — characteristic of Manchu men. Aside from the unusual hairstyle which seems to have so deeply disturbed Koreans, what could have caused such intense feels of animosity toward the Qing dynasty and everything associated with it?

When the Manchus overthrew the Ming dynasty ruled by the Han Chinese people in 1636, they established their own dynasty known as the Qing dynasty. Although the Manchus asked Korea repeatedly for support during their campaign to conquer Ming, Korea either hesitated to act or outright refused, partly out of loyalty to the Ming dynasty for supporting Korea during its own crisis in the 1590s when the Japanese invaded. Naturally the Manchus did not like being brushed off like this, so they went on a punitive expedition to Korea (병자호란, "Qing invasion of Joseon") and, after surrounding the city to which the Korean king Injo (인조) had retreated, forced the king to perform a humiliating ritual of submission — bowing and slamming his head against the ground several times until his forehead was a disheveled mess of bloody hair — to the Manchu king Hong Taiji. This humiliation would not soon be forgotten in Korea and became the basis of the bukbeollon or "Northern Expedition" proposal to invade the Northerners (i.e. the Manchus) and punish them for what they did to Korea. Even 150 years later, when Pak was embarking on his trip to China in 1780, this was one of the dominant political discourses in Korea and a major reason why Koreans regarded the Qing Manchus with such disdain, refusing to even consider the idea that they might be able to learn something from the Manchus. Bukbeollon went hand in hand with sojunghwaron or "Little China Theory," according to which Korea was a miniature version of China responsible for preserving the "true" Chinese culture inherited from the previous Han-ruled Ming dynasty until the Manchus could be overthrown and the Han people could regain their rightful sovereignty. Hence, many Koreans felt almost morally obliged to oppose the Manchus and stand by the Han Chinese people and their culture.

Although a supporter in spirit of the overthrown Ming dynasty and its "pure" Chinese culture, Pak Jiwon was astounded by the material superiority of China on his trip and became a passionate advocate of iyong-husaeng (이용후생/利用厚生, "Pragmatism and Welfare"), part of the wider Silhak (실학/實學) or "practical learning" movement, which emphasized the importance of adopting technologies capable of improving the lives of the struggling Korean people, regardless of where they originate. In Pak's view, rejecting Qing culture and technologies which could significantly improve the standard of living of all Koreans on the basis of something as trivial as contempt for the Qing hairstyle is both absurd and a large part of the reason that Koreans were still struggling to eke out a living while clinging to "traditional" technologies in spite of their inefficiency and ineffectiveness. According to iyong-husaeng, an idea should be judged based on its applicability and usefulness, not on its place of origin. The main features of Qing's superior material culture which Pak felt were imperative to adopt in Korea can be summarized in three examples: bricks, carts, and horse manure, more specifically the reuse of the latter.

One of the earliest observations that Pak makes upon entering China is that the brick houses in China are so much better constructed and better insulated than the traditional stone or thatched houses in Korea, particularly those inhabited by the lower classes. We learn from Pak's detailed description of the houses he sees during the trip that, while thatched or stone houses in Korea were poorly insulated and suffered from frequent rodent infestations due to holes in the walls, Chinese houses were made of brick, which provided much better insulation since the bricks were pressed and formed in molds, ensuring consistent, evenly-shaped bricks which could be fit together precisely like pieces of Lego and sealed with lime. The rooves of Chinese houses were generally made of tiles, and what impressed Pak about this system is that even broken tiles were recycled and joined together to form walls or decorations instead of being discarded. For the same reason, he admires the Chinese for reusing the abundant horse manure produced by countless horse-drawn carts passing daily through the busy streets of major cities. The manure was recycled both as fuel to keep houses warm in winter and as a material for making bricks.

The dizzying number and variety of carts in China also appears to have captured his interest because he gives detailed descriptions of several types of carts, including the pre-industrial version of a firetruck — based on a design from the book 'Diagrams and explanations of the wonderful machines of the Far West' (원서기기도설록최/기기도, 遠西奇器圖說錄最) by Joannes Terrenz (1576–1630), a German missionary in China — and bemoans the lack of carts and proper roads for them in Korea as one of the main reasons that many people remain impoverished. We get a sense of just how much importance Pak ascribes to carts when he says that "nothing is more valuable to a country than carts," describing them as "boats on land." According to Pak, the key to making proper carts is to ensure that the wheels are perfectly round and to determine the correct spacing between the wheels, the axles and the body of the cart itself to prevent them from bumping into each other, reducing the cart's effectiveness. Pak tells us that the previous feeble attempts to introduce carts in Korea were stymied by these engineering difficulties and praises the Chinese for their superior technology in this area. He goes on to lambast Korean politicians and scholars for using Korea's rugged, mountainous terrain as an excuse for not laying proper roads for the widespread use of carts and circulation of goods among different provinces, citing China's far more extreme variations of terrain as a counterargument. If China, with its vast stretches of mountainous land, was able to lay down such a complex network of well-maintained roads, why should a country as small as Korea and with no more rugged terrain than China not be able to do the same? At the time when Pak was writing, the various provinces in Korea were not connected by a proper network of roads, nor were carts widely used, which resulted in exorbitant costs to circulate specialty goods from each province to other parts of the country, meaning that only the wealthiest could afford, say, apples from Chungju or sweet persimmons from Goheung. Lower income people would be able to afford these products and enrich their lives if the proper infrastructure for their circulation were established.

Another example of Pak's ability to look at his own country critically from the perspective of another culture can be found in his appraisal of the Chinese kang (캉/炕) bed-stove heating system vs. the Korean ondol (온돌) floor heating system. Although he felt that the Korean system was more effective overall in heating homes, he acknowledged the superiority of the Chinese system in minimizing heat loss through a clever arrangement of heating pipes. Still one of the most popular forms of heating in Korean homes even today, the ondol or gudeul (구들) floor heating system goes back a long way in Korean history, so for Pak to propose a change to such a longstanding traditional method of heating demonstrates his willingness to make improvements where needed, unflinching in the face of tradition or history, as long as the final outcome was more practical or beneficial.

Finally, there are also instances where he clearly prefers the way something is done in Korea. During one of his pildam (필담, "written conversation," see note 1 below) with some Chinese merchants, Pak asks the merchants about the Chinese education system and learns that children study the Chinese classics in two stages: first, they memorize the texts by sound alone through rote repetition of the teacher, and only after this stage do they finally learn how to read the Chinese characters. However, not everyone reaches this second stage of the curriculum, so there are instances where people may be able to recite entire books from the Confucian canon from memory without being able to read even basic Chinese characters. Pak tells the merchants that children in Korea — children from upper class families who had the opportunity to receive an education, that is — learn both the pronunciation and the meaning of characters simultaneously, which he feels is a more efficient system. From this example, we see that Pak is neither unconditionally critical nor complimentary of Korea; he maintains a balanced view of the pros and cons of both China and Korea, giving praise where it is due and recommending the adoption of improvements where possible.  

The reforms proposed by Pak have become so commonplace today that it rarely occurs to us that there was a time when houses were not made of perfectly interlocking, insulated bricks (with running water and electricity, to boot) and fruits and vegetables of every variety imaginable were not available year-round. At first glance, it can be easy to overlook the almost revolutionary significance of proposing such changes in late-Joseon Korea, but as we learned from a brief look at the political and social climate in Korea in the 1780s, suggesting such reforms modeled on a dynasty that was so widely disdained by Koreans at the time would have been viewed with great suspicion, and unfortunately for the average Korean person of Pak's time, these suggestions were almost completely ignored in favour of maintaining the status quo.

Unfortunately, no complete edition of the Jehol Diary exists in English yet — a few chapters have been translated by Dr Yang Hi Choe-Wall and published by Brill — but I hope that this post stirs the interest of potential readers and conveys at least a sense of the book and its importance in Korean literature and history, as well as its relevance in our time. Even today, or perhaps especially today, when we are all more connected than ever before, there is still much that we can learn from Pak's open-minded attitude toward other cultures, his boundless curiosity, and his willingness to take risks in the hope of changing his country for the better.

Notes:

1) It would be more accurate to say "write" than "speak" since 박지원 did not actually speak Chinese but was able to read and write it fluently like most educated Koreans of the Joseon dynasty and carried on conversations by means of pildam (필담/筆談) or "written conversations" where participants would exchange written messages instead of speaking — a sort of in-person real-time version of texting today. However, not everyone Pak encountered was able to read and write Chinese characters — a skill requiring years of intensive training to master even for native speakers of Chinese languages. Occasionally, when Pak would show someone a written message in an attempt to initiate a conversation, the person would squint at the characters with a look of incomprehension and walk away.