“Fan Anthony Perkins…asks, “What does kimchi taste like?” Can anyone explain? ^^;”
- Korea Tourism Organization, Facebook profile.”
Unrepentantly saucy, kimchi is left to stew in its own juices. But this is no one-dimensional tart. As with a piece of good music, the beauty of kimchi lies in incongruities harmonised—sweetly sour, its cool crispness a perfect compliment to sizzling softness. In Taiwan on my visa run, I was offered sympathies by more than one unsolicited party for this ascendant 반찬’s trammel on the palate’s range. Purported friendship with President Lee Myung-bak notwithstanding, a Taiwanese adjosshi with whom I rideshared to the airport kindly reminded: “你們那邊有什麼可以吃的?! 不是泡菜又是泡菜!” The Chinese imagination does not allow kimchi a fair chance: its very name connotes the blandness of soaked vegetables.
