Saturday, October 6, 2007

Dongdaemun


Heyo,

I know. I'm on fire.

Anyways, here's a picture of the old sewage canal in Dongdaemun.

Ancient Sewage Canal
That ain't people, it's poop

It's pretty isn't it? Yeah, well it wasn't always like that. This entire area used to stink like it would if you took thousands of people excrements and pooled it all together. How do I know? It's what my dad told me. Every time he talked about the odour, his face grimaced like he could still smell it. He used to have a shop along this street on the left side of the picture, directly under the sun. Because of the smell, his shop didn't do too well. So he sold it off and moved on to Vietnam. So why is it so pretty now? A few years back, the mayor of Seoul realized that having a market that smelled like tons of pipi and caca was bad for the business around it. He tabled a plan to rebuild the canal that basically would get rid of the sewage. Do you think the shopkeepers where ecstatic at the plan? No, they actually opposed it!!! They would rather wallow in human waste than, you know, change for the better. Anyways, the mayor had to convince the shopkeepers to go along with this, and he kept them informed about progress with regular updates throughout the entire project. Seriously, people!

Anything > Constantly exposed to smell of poop.

P.S. Most of the information here comes from my mother and father. They aren't the most reliable with details so I pass it on with a grain of salt. Still, it's an awesome story.

2 comments:

sol said...

I was just reading this with my mom and she agrees with the smell.. apprently they used to make jokes like one day, all the gas created by pipi and caca will explode in the middle of traffic and everyone will die.
maybe the whole seoul go byebye
anyways.. i hope it doesn't smell anymore. ehehehe

The Third Quarter Projectionist said...

Nope, it doesn't.