We Put The "Man" In "Mandu".

So it's finally time to write about The Mandu Challenge. It's been a little over a month since the challenge and I think the final mandu just crossed the finish line into freedom. Swim free, little buddy.

Mandu are little steamed Korean noodle dumplings filled with pork or kimchi. During orientation, there was a restaurant just outside of campus that sold 8 of those suckers for a dollar. This being an amazing deal, this joint was one of the most popular places for ETAs to go for a cheap meal. Well, one evening, I spied a photo on the wall with a date written under it. It showed 4 guys standing behind 30 metal trays in various poses of triumph and victory. I'll do the math for you: 8 mandu per tray makes 240 mandu, meaning 60 per person.

Well, that just got my Asian blood boiling. It's kind of like Irish blood except only with food. And math. And I guess Starcraft if you're Korean. Anyway, 60 mandu didn't seem like that much at all. I was confident I could do it, I just had to assemble an all-star team to help me. I was determined to leave my mark on Korea and by God my picture on the wall of that restaurant was how I was gonna do it.

I started having visions of this being a Fulbright ETA tradition, where every year 4 new people would try to match or break the record and get their own photo put up. Explaining this to scores of disinterested candidates, three kindred souls finally made the commitment to become pioneers. Jonah Popp, Steve Wulff, and Alex Page... I salute you.

We roll into the restaurant with about 10 cheering spectators and about 5 more show up in the next half hour. We decide that we should eat 31 trays to beat the record, so that comes to 62 mandu each. We start talking strategy: do we each order our own trays or share communally? Pork is more filling but kimchi is spicey, what should the balance be? The psychological game was just as important as the size of our bellies that night.

The owner of the restaurant tries to take our trays when we order more, but we point to the picture and ask him to leave them there. He laughs at us, but his mirth was shortlived as he realized the monumental task we had set out upon. In fact, around the 20th tray, he started to get very concerned about our well-being. Mandu service slowed to a crawl, I assume because he wanted to give us time to digest. He asked one of our Korean speaking friends, Amie, how much more we were planning to eat, she said just a few more trays to reach 31 and we would stop. Strange behavior for a guy that has seen this all before, right?

It took us about an hour and a half to finish. Multiple walks up and down the block were taken to let the food settle. We left our spectators there to make sure the owner didn't think we were skipping out on the check. All my confidence was gone by the last 10 mandu... I could barely swallow them and, in fact, finished about 15 minutes after my teammates. Honestly, if it wasn't for the moral support of our fans, I don't think I would have made it.

But we did it! 248 mandu later, there was cheering, high fives, a picture taken with the owner in front of our metal monument to gluttony. Just to give you some idea, I've eaten a 2 pound steak before in one sitting, and that didn't come close to how nauseatingly full I was after this. I was pretty sure each of us had over 3 pounds of food.

So here's the twist ending. During the challenge, our aforementioned friend Amie was speaking to the owner about something, and then turned to us and asked "So, if you knew that the guys in the picture didn't actually eat all that mandu, would you still continue the challenge?" I really don't know why it didn't occur to me in the least to ask any of the obvious followup questions to this at the time, but all I said was "Yeah, of course... this is a personal challenge, not a competitive one." If the Mandu Challenge ever becomes more official, this will be its motto.

Well don't you know it, once we finished, Amie dropped the bomb on us. Those guys in the picture came with a large group of people and, after everyone had finished, they stacked up all of the trays, 30 in total, and took a picture with it. There was no record. There was no challenge. And all I could think was... how much of a bigger bunch of TOOLS could you be? And I don't mean US, I mean THEM. Of course, we're tools too for not asking about the damned picture in the first place, but they would win the gold medal at the Tool Olympics (Toolympics?). I can go out to a dumpster and fish out 15 pizza boxes and take a picture in front of it too, but WHAT IS THE POINT?

In the end, the challenge turned out to be a personal challenge after all. I still felt a sense of accomplishment, and the memories are what's important. Besides, now we're the official record holders by a long shot. The owner agreed to put up our picture, but we have yet to send him a developed copy, so that's something to do. I still dream of a day that I can bring my children to Chuncheon to see that proud moment of my youth immortalized on the wall.