Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Happy Birthday Big Guy!

Quiz time! What major world figure had a birthday on May 5th of 2006, giving cause for celebration throughout much of Asia? Buddha! His birthday is on the eight day of the forth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, so it moves around a bit by our modern Gregorian calendar. This year, it fell on May 5th, coinciding with Children's Day in South Korea (which means one LESS holiday that I get off from work.) You can guess which holiday most of my students actually cared about. But being a country that is about 1/3 Buddhist, this is a pretty important day for many people in Korea.

Interestingly enough, it's not a very high profile holiday. Because it's not commercial and there isn't much merchandising to be done, you really don't see any evidence of it, except for the strings of colored paper lanterns that popped up all over the city. The best sites were at the temples though, where hundreds and hundreds of lanterns were hung from every available space, all with wishes and prayers attached. The major temples underwent a bit of restoration and cleaning in order to prepare for the crowds that would turn out. Here are some photos from the week before the actual holiday.


The courtyard of Jogye-sa Temple, the largest temple in Seoul. Check out the scaffolding on the temple in the background; they were cleaning it up for the celebration.

A worker hangs lanterns outside Jogye-sa, the largest temple in Seoul. Notice that they are all hung one by one, as each person purchases them.
Bongun-sa Temple, where spring greenery and flowers add to the festive beauty.


The biggest celebration actually took place a week before Buddha's day of birth. Sunday, April 30th was the Lotus Lantern Festival, held in an area of Seoul called Insa Dong (April 30th also happens to be my friend Matt's birthday and the day that Hitler commited suicide.) So Matt, Sun and I went to check out the festivities. There were all sorts of neat things to do, like make lanterns, eat monk fook, learn to chant, paint pictures, none of which we actually did. Instead we wandered around taking pics and enjoying the friendly atmosphere.

A royal lady greets the crowd in a historcial reenactment.
Foreigners learn Buddhist meditation and chanting.
A family lites incense outside Jogye-sa Temple.
One of the rituals performed for Buddha's birthday involves pouring water over him. I'm not sure of the exact significance of it though.

I'd be smiling too if people were putting money in my hand.
A fire eater performs for the crowd. Look closely at the bottom right corner of this pic -- notice the spray of kerosene about to hit the people? A minute after I took this pic, he did the same thing on our side of the stage, and those of us who had previously been stoked about being so close were suddenly regretting it. We smelled like kerosene the rest of the day...mmmm.
Just a selection of the many lanterns for sale.
And of course the required photos of cute kids!

Come nightfall, there as a huge parade that began at Dongdaemun Stadium and ended in front of Jogye-sa Temple. It was endless too; I swear every Buddhist in Asia was in this parade, because they just kept coming and coming. It was great because everyone was smiling and waving and generally having a nice time. At the end of the parade route, many people would give their lanterns away to the crowd, and usually to the foreigners. This big group of semi-drunk Americans near us collected at least 20 lanterns in about an hour. We weren't nearly as aggressive (and not drunk either), so we only ended up with one.

The hightlight of the parade was the huge lit-up floats made of painted rice paper. There were dozens and dozens of them, and they were all beautiful. Here is a sampling.







Sun and I accidentally discovered that the best way to see the parade was to join it. We had been running along the edge with the crowd trying to catch up with the floats, and next thing we knew, we were on the other side of the seated crowd, running along with all the marchers and floats, everyone waving as we passed. Here's the view from the other side.

At the end of the parade, everyone gathered for dancing and music. The whole courtyard was covered with lit lanterns, and it was beautiful.
Jung Pyo, who we met up with later, outside Jogye-sa Temple
Dancing at the end of the festival.
Sun and I acting like ajummas and taking home as many lanterns as we were willing to carry. They were there for the taking, who can blame us? Although the were a bit awkward to carry home on the subway, they make a nice addition to my dreary apartment.

posted by Nicole at 7:17 PM

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