Grandmother, Why Did You Lie?

The sesame oil and the peanuts were both from China.
The goods the old women sell,
huddled side by side —
now I doubt them all.

Beyond the city limits, a five-day market opens. Vegetables fragrant with spring line the stalls. Some come for the pleasure of haggling; others wander in search of things made with care. Everywhere the air hums with the lively back-and-forth of bargaining. I, too, haggle when I buy. But I keep one rule when shopping: I never bargain down the price of anything an old woman is selling. It was what my late mother did all her life.

Not long ago, I went on a trip with my old high school classmates. At the entrance to a tourist site, a few elderly women were selling all kinds of grains. Their eyes were full of toil and devotion. I went up to the one who looked the most advanced in years and bought a measure of peanuts and a bottle of sesame oil. The thought of how pleased my wife would be warmed me. The old woman insisted, again and again: "These peanuts and this sesame oil — I grew them myself, in my own garden plot." I believed her completely, and I carried the peanuts and the bottle of sesame oil home, cradled against my chest.

When a friend came to visit, I set out the peanuts I had bought that day. He tasted one or two. Sensing something was off, he asked, "Aren't these Chinese?" He had grown peanuts himself, he said, so he knew the taste. For a moment I was at a loss. Reflexively I brought out the sesame oil and poured some onto a spoon for him to try. This too, he said, shaking his head, was not Korean.

In that instant, the words the old woman had spoken as she handed me the goods came back to torment me. She had told me that Chinese peanuts go for five thousand won, but hers were Korean-grown, so twelve thousand; that Chinese sesame oil sells for ten thousand won, but hers, being Korean, was thirty thousand. What was more, she added, others might sell theirs as domestic, but since she had grown these with her own hands she really ought to ask forty thousand — she was letting me have them, specially, for thirty. I paid gladly, without shaving off a single won.

How I resented that old woman. No — rather, I pitied her. My wife's disappointment was plain on her face, and yet she told me to think of it as having helped an old woman.

I had many experiences on that trip, but it is this grandmother who lingers most in my memory. For this is not simply a story about haggling over prices; it is a story about the preciousness — and the ache — we feel in the exchange of true hearts between people. Bargaining may be part of our culture, but truth and honesty must never be sacrificed along the way. The price I paid that old woman carried her devotion and her sweat — and my compassion. I set out in search of truth in that hour, but above all, the experience made me think once more about human sincerity and human worth.

Whatever we buy, and at whatever price, it holds a value beyond the price itself: someone's sweat, someone's labor, someone's love. Haggling over a purchase has its place, but far more important is knowing what it is we are truly buying — and understanding the meaning the thing carries within it.