Yesterday (OK this was a week ago now) I woke too late to go for my morning run. It was after 10am, the sun was too high in the sky and the temperature was 30 in the the shade. Not ideal running conditions. So I decided to walk my running route instead and take some photographs along the way. After lathering my Celtic skin with sun cream and grabbing a bottle of water I set off.
The River Hagui runs behind the apartment building where I live. It runs down from the mountains in to the Anyang River, which in turn empties in to the huge Han River in Seoul. I read somewhere that the rivers in Anyang used to be toxic, draining the waste of the industries that lined their banks, but they must have been cleaned up and regenerated some time ago because now they are actively used as public parks and serve as conduits for nature through the concrete city.
At 8.30am (and again at 8.30pm) the pathway above is absolutely packed with runners, joggers, power walkers, cyclists and elderly strollers. However at 11am it was too damn hot and, apart from me, the route was sensibly deserted.
The river is shallow, very much unnavigable, even for punting. It serves as a drain for scores of extant and underground watercourses that come down from the mountains surrounding Anyang on all sides. In dry weather, it flows slowly and is barely a few inches deep. In normal conditions like this, there are regular stepping stones where you can cross the river. After the rains however, storm channels like the one above push all their water in to the river and it rises by several feet, often requiring the riverside path and roads that run underneath the bridges to be closed. The water flowing over the top of the stepping stones becomes a whirling rapid.
Rising on either side of the river are clusters of huge apartment blocks and some industry, though the latter seems to be being replaced by more commercial and residential units. Every half mile or so the river is traversed by another four or six lane highway bridge, as well as occasional pedestrian ones. At night people sit underneath the bridges, enjoying the coolness of the water, drinking soju and playing guitar.
On this occasion the heat was keeping most of the wildlife hidden, but in the mornings I’ve seen two kinds of snake, some kind of stoat type thing, possibly carry a dead mouse in its mouth, magpies, sparrows, several herons, lots of grasshoppers, countless dragonflies and the midges they feed on. Of course, overriding everything is the roar of cicadas, rising and falling as if with one will.
Tall grass and reeds line most of the path, mixed with some shrubs, bamboo and stands of wild flowers. Occasional shade is provided by what I hope are cherry trees (so I can see the blossom next Spring).
After walking (or running normally) for about 1.8 miles, and passing some mini side rivers, I usually stop and use the outdoor gym before running back. These gyms are everywhere in public places around Anyang – here’s a shot of me during an especially hard work-out in the Gwanaksan forest park – and they’re well used, often by sprightly elderly ajosshis and ajummas.
However on this occasion I didn’t stop, not only because it was ridiculously hot, but because I had picked up company. The only other guy mad enough to be out in the sweltering sun was Paul, a law student at Yonsei University who had excellent English. He introduced himself. I told him my name was David and he asked if I was Christian. I told him ‘not for some time’ or words to that effect. He asked how I was settling into Korea and told me his dream was to be President of his country. He told me the Lord Jesus Christ had died on the cross for my sins, as if reminding me of a library fine I had neglected to pay off. I indicated that I was aware of that and he carried on. He said that if I accepted His salvation I would no longer fear worldly cares and receive the blessing of eternal life. I listened, and when he had finished I told him that I respected his beliefs, however they were ones which I do not share and had long ago rejected. I thanked him for the conversation and wished him luck in the realisation of his earthly ambition. He did likewise and we went our separate ways.
Soon, I left the city behind too. Here Anyang/Uiwang dissolves into fields of smallholdings, polytunnels, petty garden centres, and unintentional sculptural groupings. Miniature rice paddies mix with allotments growing chilli peppers, tomatoes, gourds, pumpkins and melons. A small but brightly decorated Buddhist temple sits next to an SK petrol/gas station.
The infrastructure heats up too. High overhead, 8 lane highways rest on giant columns, motorways burst out of wooded hillsides, converge in a tangle of off-ramps and flyovers then disperse, curving across the skyline before plunging into the next mountain. Anyang is in Gyeonngi Province, which surrounds Seoul with a doughnut of urban development punctuated by mountains, lakes and rivers. The density of the combined Gyeonngi, Seoul and Incheon area means that over half of Korea’s ˜50m population is squeezed into one small corner of the country. This means that Gyeonngi is as famed for its unplanned sprawl, its anonymous satellite cities, its complex arterial threads of interconnecting road systems, as it is for the beauty of the natural scenery and the history and culture of the region, which has been the heart of Korean government since at least the beginning of the Joseon era in 1392.
What’s amazing is how well all the infrastructure seems to function, pumping vast numbers of people around far flung chambers of the megacity. Coming from Britain, it all seems remarkably well planned to me. For example Anyang has several large six and eight lane roads, constantly streaming with traffic, that run straight through the heart of the city at ground level (including one a short walk from my apartment block). However these roads don’t seem to impinge upon your life at all, in fact most of the time you don’t even realise they’re there. I remember in London constantly being aware of the noise, threat, and pollution of heavy traffic pushing its way down narrow two and four lane roads that had barely been widened from their medieval dimensions. Here I don’t notice it at all. (At times it feels a bit like living in Sim City…)
I reached the end of my walk at Baegun Lake, a huge reservoir holding the water that comes off the hills on the Uiwang side of Anyang. There are pleasure boats to rent and lots of restuarants. It looks like it could be a nice place to walk around when the weather gets cooler. By this point my skin was aflame, and my legs covered with bites, so I ducked into the first likely looking establishment – a pretty swanky coffee and waffles place overlooking the lake, in which I lowered the tone and stained the couch with my sweat in unintentional revenge for the W9000 ice Americano I drank in three gulps. That’s higher than London prices! I read a little of my book and looked out the window, enjoying the A/C. Now all that remained was the walk back home and a day of work…
Korea Change 
Nice photo of an egret…….