Magnificent Festival Wishing Prosperity for the Year of the ox

This weekend is the Seollal Festival (Lunar New Year) celebrating the arrival of the year of the ox (so long, year of the rat!) They crowned Karen and me Empress and Emperor of the Magnificent Festival Wishing Prosperity etc etc ...


Just kidding, I wanted to get that pic out of the way; but seriously, there were a lot of people wearing costumes, including this little cutie:


... and these guys:


It's the Lunar New Year, so here are the obligatory photos of lanterns, kite(s) and paper flowers:




There were numerous performances, samples and demonstrations, including this guy doing a traditional ritual called Charye, honoring ancestors.


You could eat traditionally cooked sweet potatoes or popcorn:


You could play traditional games:


You could create crafts, like Karen's necklace:


It's called the "wishing prosperity" festival because you can follow the traditional method of writing your wish in a ribbon and tying it to your zodiac strand on the wishing tree.



Or you can write your message of hope on the Message of Hope board.



Either way, Happy Lunar New Year to you!

Namsangol Traditional Village

Today I visited the Namsangol Hanok Village on the occasion of the Seollal (New Year) Festival. I'm gong to divide this trip into two posts, one on the Hanok (Traditional) Village, including the Seoul Time Capsule, and one on the New Year's Festivities. Well, three if you count the Chungmuro Station post.

Traditional Hanok Village: The photos below show interior views of traditional houses, followed by the ondol, the floor heating system still used today--well, instead of wood fires and forced air, they generally use hot water.




Courtyards, one filled with kimchi pots, the other festooned with decorative ribbons. And decorative Karen. Be quiet, outside the courtyard is a flock of cranes. Just kidding, they're not real! They are red-crowned cranes, long incorporated into Korean culture and art, and revered as a symbol of fidelity and longevity.




I've been listening to too much T. Rex:


This shows a wooden race which carries water down the mountain into the holding pond. It's been a dry winter, but just wait until the snow melts.


The village has another, larger pond, which is frozen over right now and on which small children were seen:

Seoul Time Capsule: Buried in 1994 to celebrate the 600th anniversary of Seoul's designation as the capital of Korea, the capsule contains 600 items and is scheduled to be opened in 2395 AD.

Coolest. Subway. Station. Ever.

On my way to the New Year Festival at Namsangol Hanok Village, I encountered Chungmuro Station for the first time. Most of the stations I've been in (quite a few, but probably not a tenth of the total--hell, there are entire lines I haven't ridden) are fairly nondescript, even if highly functional. Some make a token effort to display art (Itaewon), others are massive architectural edifices (Noksapyeong), but this one is unique, and unique at three different levels.

First, in the tunnel, it looks like the bedrock is exposed--there's a station on MARTA in Atlanta like that. But when you give the stone a tap, it reveals it's fiberglass facing.



When you pass through the turnstile and turn left, you see this:


It is apparently a tribute to the Korean movie awards, because around the corner, the whole hallway is covered in awards show stills:


Finally, the entry plaza walls are covered in decorative tile murals. And check out those crazy phone kiosks.

Chicken, Street-Style

Around the corner from this convenience store (Buy the Way, get it? - a rare example of the well-executed Engish pun in Korea), you will usually find a rotisserie chicken vendor operating from a specially-equipped truck. Well, today it was a steamed crab guy, operating from a specially-equipped truck.


Though I enjoy steamed crab, blogging about it earlier really got me in the mood for the chicken, so I pressed on. The other such vendor I know of is about six blocks back in the other direction, near the Gangseo-gu Medical Center busstop. Fine. The whole point was a nice long walk, this is just a bonus:


I walk right past a certain well-known convenience store on the way back, and pop in to get a bottle of beer for afters. There are generally three sizes here: 500 cc, 1 L and 1.6 L. Guess which one I got?


The photos below show the whole and the half. Delicious!