By Jeongnam Kim
(Former Senior Presidential Secretary for Education·Culture·Society, World Korean News advisor)
A white bowl on the small tray. The bowl is filled with water to the half of its capacity. This is a scene in the detached house where the bowl is set near the head of your father's mattress of bed. 'Jariggi' is water in the bowl, set for your fathr to drink during night when thirsty.
'Jariggi' is a compound word of 'Jari' and 'Ggi." 'Jari' means a place to sit down, a place to stand up, a place to lay down, or here it means a place to sleep. 'Ggi' is a meal, or food. Here it means a meal of food you eat at a set time. "Jariggi' is a bowl of water you drink when you feel thirsty during night.
To have a bowl of water kept near your head at night had something to do with the environment of our abode. The outhouse is way too far from the kitchen, and if you need move around, you have hard time lightening. In the old days we didn't have electricity and had to rely on oil lamps to lighten, and therefore it was hard for one to go as far as the kitchen.
On top of that, it was not good for an adult to go to the kitchen in the darkness of night and dip the water from the large water container and drink it with a jar. These days, we keep water in the fridge and it's easy for us to quench our thirty, but in the past, it would be easy for you to make noise for you to go to the kitchen in the night and waken other family members, Just as we kept a urinal in the living room, Jariggi was essential in the outhouse.
However, this Jariggi is not just a bowl of water intended for you to drink in bed. In a way, it could be seen as a combination of the housing culture and the food culture. A traditional Korean house is built with woods and heated by the hot floor. This causes dryness of the air in the room.
It is apt to cause the health problems, particularly disease in the respiratory organs for us to sleep in the dry air. The Jariggi is a bowl of water for you to drink but it also serve a double role of finding a solution to the dry air in the room.
In this context, the Jariggi is a product of wisdom of our ancestors related to the environment of our traditional housing, with both the housing culture and food culture properly reflected in this. Besides this, there are a variety of natural humidifiers created by our ancestors. For example, they used to dip in a heated charcoal in a bowl of water, keep the wet pine tree cones in the room, and the like. The wisdom of our ancestors in the lifestyle is just amazing.
