Lighting the Lotus Lanterns

I did not want to see the Lotus Lantern parade. Or, to be more precise, I very much wanted to see the Lotus Lantern parade; I just didn't want to see it by myself. Nonetheless, the weekend before Buddha's birthday, the day when all of Korea stirs the land in celebration, I found myself very much alone.

I spent the morning fidgeting in my dorm room. Then I spent the afternoon fidgeting through the aisles of overpriced goods at the Hyundai Dept. Store. After I had finished spending a large portion of my day doing nothing particularly useful, I forced myself onto a packed subway train, finally tumbling off at the Insadong stop with hundreds of other Koreans, all of whom seemed to arrive in large groups of family members and friends.



Exiting the subway, I quickly and instinctively walked to Jogyesa Temple. I was uncertain exactly where Buddha's birthday celebration was to be held, but Seoul's main Buddhist temple, housing three resplendently large, gilded Buddhas, seemed a likely starting point for my quest. The temple was busy -- packed with people -- just like the subway and surrounding streets. As I was to later find out, there were thousands of people both as spectators and participants in the parade. I took out my camera and took exactly two shots of the temple, which had a rainbow of paper lanterns hooked to wires above it, when I thought I heard my name.

But that couldn't be. I didn't know anyone who was coming here. I ignored what I assumed to be the voice of my overactive imaginatio and took a third photo, when I heard my name shouted more loudly. And there they were: Jeff, BB, and Goan,* three swing dancers I knew slightly from the local dances. After speaking a few minutes, they kindly invited me to drink makoli with them. So, we found a quiet corner of park just outside the temple (no drinking on temple grounds) and had a picnic of Korean pancake, gimbap, fried mandu, and makoli.



During the picnic, we were joined by two other dancers, Robin and his fiance Yeoni.* Soon after the picnic, we heard a clanging of drums and bleating of horns from the street outside the temple. We rushed to the street and saw the start of the parade. Row upon row of lantern bearers passed. They were dressed differently according to their group's affiliation, and also carrying lanterns in different shapes and colours. Women were dressed in hanboks luminescently pearl-sheened, green, white, rose-petal pink, fushia . . . every colour imaginable . . . and the lanterns they lifted on poles above them were fish-shaped, bell-shaped, square-shaped, sock-shaped, etc. There were even a group of brown-garbed monks with shaven heads, carrying lanterns in both their hands -- lanterns that were russet-coloured and shaped like alms bowls.







As the parade progressed, the lanterns became increasingly large and elaborate. They moved from small ones held by individuals to giant lanterns on floats that were carried by four to six men, and even floats that had engines attached to them. A variety of giant Buddhas and giant lotuses were to be expected, but there were also a large number of tigers, white elephants, scenes from traditional Korean lore, and -- my favourite -- fire-breathing paper dragons!



It is my personal belief that more public events should include random bursts of contained fire. Even the stage performances we watched after the parade had several columns of fire shoot up from the edge of the elevated platform. At the parade's conclusion, after several hours of watching what seemed a never-ending multitude of almost-magical lanterns, millions of pink petals were released from the sky. They floated down among us and we leapt up to catch them in our hands.





*Some of the names have been changed to protect those** who can't spell.
**Myself.

Small Girl, Great Wall

I grew up in a small town in Ohio. Not even a town, technically, as the population density, or lack thereof, classifies it as a village. Even other Ohioans are rarely aware of Greenwich Village, and when asked to further clarify its location, and my origin, I often jokingly claim that I was raised in the middle of a cornfield. Greenwich (pronounced "green witch" -- we're a phonetic people) had the advantage of being one of the safest places on earth for a child to be raised, and I'd often play barefoot in the soft, uncut grass of my backyard or even in my neighbors' backyards. In the purpley-grey dusk of evening, my best friend and I would coast through town on our bikes, sometimes playing an elaborate game of hide-and-seek throughout the village. It didn't really matter where I roamed; as Greenwich was too small for any sense of anonymity, everyone knew either me or my parents.



Nonetheless, there were disadvantages to living in such a small town. I felt certain limitations without fully being able to understand or express them. My dreams of becoming an author or an artist, and my accompanying individualistic attitude, marked me as a shy eccentric. When Disney's Beauty and the Beast was released, I could relate closely to Belle, who dreamily lamented, "There must be more than this provincial life," while her neighbors, not unkindly, sung, "It's a pity and a sin / that she doesn't quite fit in."


Books were my escape. There was the library, which though now moved to its own separate building, was once located in a single, corridor-like room on the second floor of the firehouse. I would visit the library/firehouse and pile books pecariously on the handlebars of my pink 10-speed bike to transport them back to my house. My favorite books included an enormous tome of Tennyson's collected works. It had a dark, satiny, mustard-coloured cover, gilt edging, and original engravings from the 1880s, when the book was published. I also liked to tote back what few travel books our library proffered, which were fortunately kept a bit more up-to-date than the poetry section. After making it home, I would spread these out, with my geography book from school, along the honey-coloured wooden floorboards of my bedroom and read bits of everything. Too greedy for information of a bigger world, I'd sometimes try to absorb them all at once -- soothing, rhythmic sections of The Lady of Shallot, snippets from travel guides, photos from my geography book . . . especially photos from my geography book, poring over scenes of the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon, the Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, wishing that I could see such places in person but never considering it an actual possibility.



When I was in China, I visited the Great Wall, not once, but twice, hiking along different sections both at Mutianyu, a restored Ming dynasty area only an hour outside of Beijing, and at Shanhaiguan, where the Great Wall snakes into the Bohai Sea. While I was there, I felt something expand inside me: a sense of achievement, of somehow entering the geography books myself. That's a lot of what this blog is about for me -- a celebration of the fact that one day, I only dreamed of seeing the world, and now it's really happening.

Night Train to Xi'an

During the train ride to Xi'an, I knew exactly three and a half words of Chinese: nee-how (hello), shah-shah (thank you), ping-my-o (terra cotta warriors), and jiao (the last syllable for "dumplings").

The train ride in itself was an adventure. With a small red square of a ticket clutched in my hand, I boarded what I could only hope to be the correct train in Beijing's overwhelmingly large train station. In fact, the number of people milling about the station on an average weekday was likely three times the size of the entire population the small Ohio town in which I had been raised.

I had been advised to take a first class sleeper, which was touted as being more comfortable and generally filled by high-class Chinese business men and other foreign tourists like myself. Whether or not the amenities of first class were as luxurious as promised and the people as genteel I could not say, for in my possession was the ticket for only a hard berth, second class sleeper -- which was half the price, as well as being the only option available for purchase on the same day as I left.

I located my bunk and sat nervously (and uncomfortably) at the edge of the bed, putting the kilo of bright red wax berries I'd bought earlier that day on the bed beside me. I didn't have any specific anticipation for what a second class sleeper should entail, but they were as follows: The "rooms" without doors, just a tight pile of 6 berths (three on either side of the area) with a table and trash bin in between. There were also a number of tiny table ledges with fold-down chairs by the train windows. A number of Chinese men were already sitting at the tiny tables, smoking, chatting, and reading local newspapers. It may have been my imagination, or perhaps some combination of hypersensitivity and egoism that colors my observation, but it seemed that everyone stopped their activities, for at least the first few minutes after I made my entrance into the train car, and stared at me.

A young Chinese couple sat on the bunk across from me. We stared at each other inquisitively for a few minutes, and then I asked if they could speak English. "Yes," the young man tentatively replied, "a little." Later, I would learn his name was named Lintao, which means "wind moving through the forest."

"Hello," the girl said, in a prim though not unfriendly manner -- rather, as though repeating a dialogue learned in school -- "How are you?"

"I'm scared," I confessed. "I've never ridden by myself on an overnight train."

Whatever barriers are naturally kept between strangers then seemed to melt.

"It's ok," she said, smiling.


The young man and woman were then joined by another traveling companion, a second young man. We all shyly spoke to each other, opening up more as the train rumbled down its track. They were all from the same company, working as engineers and IT personnel in Beijing and being sent to Mongolia on an assignment. They would be on the train for 33 hours, as compared to my journey of 12 hours. We didn't do anything so exceptional on that trip, but it was nonetheless a little wonderful: We played cards (Lintao helping me with my hand, so that I could learn the game's rules by observation, which I partially, but never fully understood), they spoke to me of American sports (which the Chinese men understood far more fully than myself), I asked which cities in China were the best to visit and they took the Asian map I had with me and circled all their favorite cities, writing in the names of a few places that weren't on the map.

At one point in the night, I noticed my red waxberries had puddled out the corners of their plastic bag and leaked onto the bedsheets, a large cerise halo staining the formerly pristine linen. When the train matron discovered what happened, she yelled in a general sort of way, but I could see that she was secretly amused by the incidence, as were all my fellow passengers. After that, I shared out the waxberries with my new friends and we ate them until our fingers and mouths were stained vermillion.

When I finally bundled down to sleep a not-at-all-inconspicuous crowd of Chinese men gathered at the table nearest the foot of my bed, watching me. I am uncertain what they could have possibly gained by the spectacle of me tossing about on the bunk until my bed clothes twisted round my body like a winding sheet. Their observations could have led to nothing more profound than: Western lady finds it difficult to sleep on a hard bunk. Or the more astute may have concluded: Western lady finds it difficult to sleep on a hard bunk while five strange men are watching her.

Which brings me to the next morning. . . As I left the train station early in the golden softness of an April dawn in Eastern China, I knew exactly three words in Chinese. (I had forgotten the last half of the word for dumplings sometime in the middle of the night.) I had also, most unfortunately, lost the tiny scrap of paper -- really, a hostel advertisement -- that served as a map for Xi'an. So, I had no city map, no guidebook, no friends at that point, and only a vague idea that the terra cotta warriors were NOT AT ALL near the station. All of this would be easily enough to overcome if I would simply relent and use a taxi like other Western tourists. But, in the words belted out by Tina Turner, "[I] never, ever do things nice and easy."

I bounded up to a woman who was working at the train station. "Ping-my-oh?" I asked. She waved me to the left. I didn't really see any place to the left with the appropriate bus, so I then bounced up to the another woman who seemed local to the area. "Ping-my-oh?" The lady took me by the hand and led me to wait at an underpass where dozens of other Chinese people were also waiting, patchwork suitcases and bags of food in hand. The problem was that this area was also not a bus stop. After waiting for about 15 minutes, I approached a young, college-age man. "Ping-my-oh?," I inquired hopefully. The young man looked horrified. "No, no, no!" and he took his bag and scampered away. Hmm. Maybe I'd used the wrong intonation. I tried another woman, this time virtually cooing "ping-my-oh" to make it sound harmless as a baby. She did not know, either, but eventually located a Russian woman who gave me perfect directions to the correct bus stop.

Finally, I boarded a bus with a group of middle-aged Chinese people, most apparently on their way to work. In contrast to their bland facial expressions and serious work attire, loudspeakers filled the bus with excessively loud American club music. A dozen stops, a few dollars, and about 40 minutes later, and I arrived at the gate to one of the world's greatest historic and artistic discoveries, the beautifully detailed terra cotta warriors, the elusive ping-my-oh.

Goodbye Korea, Hello Kitty

About one year ago to the date, I turned the photograph on my page-a-day global calendar to a snowy scene in Japan. The photo was of a night-time scene, and greenish amber lights were cast upon the front of a large, white four-story building -- that was constructed entirely of snow. The caption at the bottom of the photo read simply "Winter Festival, Sapporo, Japan." It caught my imagination and I decided that one day, I would go there.

Saturday became my "one day." After many negotiations at work (whining, pleading, wheedling), I convinced my manager to grant me vacation time for the trip. I managed to get the last remaining ticket, so far as I know, from Seoul to Sapporo during the festival.

I was relaxing in the airplane, drinking a beer at 10:00 in the morning -- disclaimer for the folks at home: not because I enjoy the taste of beer but simply because the stewardess had presented it as an option and I enjoyed the oddity of it. "I'm Canadian," I carefully explained to the stewardess as I reached for my beer. Of course, I'm really American, but I don't like to cast aspersions on my home country by my poor behavior. Everybody loves Canadians, so I figure their reputation can take the hit. Anyways, this is not the point of this captioning (though it's beginning to sound like I'm drinking another beer while writing this). The point of this caption is that while I was drinking my beer, I noticed the entire row of left-side passengers on the plane, the same side on which I was sitting, suddenly lean into their windows. I turned to my window and saw this gorgeous view of Mt. Fuji. Truly, it was so unexpected and breathtaking that I teared up a little when I saw it.


Since finding housing during the Winter Festival proved problematic, I tried couchsurfing for the first time. My host, Nana, was a wonderful Japanese girl, about 28 years old, who lived with her father and grandparents in a large house on the outskirts of Sapporo. She had to work a lot of the time I visited her, but she was very generous in spending her free time with me. We went shopping, ate out several times, visited the Ainu museum (which featured the culture of the indigenous people of Hokkaido) and walked though the snow sculptures. Even though it was the first time I had ever met Nana, it felt like she was a real friend.


Exquisite porcelain dolls, often in royal formation, were on display in the stores for the upcoming Japanese holiday of Girl's Day. These doll sets cost between several hundred to a few thousand dollars. I knew Nana's family was special when she related a personal story about the dolls. Her family had their dolls on display when Nana was still a little girl, and being too young too realize their value, and just old enough to realize the fun of colouring, she had picked up a permanent marker and drawn all over their faces. Instead of the corporal punishment or severe scolding that one might have expected to result, her mother and father simply laughed and said that now the family dolls had facial tatoos.


I spent one morning in an onsen, which is a natural Japanese hotspring. This onsen was in the middle of nowhere, but Nana recommended it as being cheap and in a beautiful setting and she even offered to drive me there. Once I arrived, the drill was somewhat familiar to me, since I have visited the culturally equivalent jimjilbangs in Korea on several occassions. First, and most importantly, I determined which section was for women. Once in the correct section, I slipped out of my clothes and took a preliminary shower. Probably because the onsen was tiny and in such an isolated location, it seemed to only be used by local people. This is great and all -- I really like genuine cultural experiences -- but when you're naked, you don't like being the one who stands out. At least, I don't. I looked around me suspiciously. Then breathed a sigh of relief. I was NOT the fattest one.

First, I stepped into the onsen baths inside the building. Then I noticed the outside baths and went into them. Oh, it was lovely. Lovelier than all imagination. The onsen was so close to the nearby mountain and river that if you'd thrown a snowball with good aim, you could have hit either of them. Then while my body was warm and toasty beneath the hot spring water, the snow starting falling down, blowing across my face, the bridge of my nose, my cheeks, freezing into frosty little stars in my hair. "Why," I thought to myself, "does Heaven smell like sulphur?"


(photo just outside the onsen, since taking a photo inside the onsen would have been weird)

When I expressed the desire to eat sushi, Nana took me to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. It was the first time I had ever had sushi in Japan, and it wasn't until this exact point in my life that I realized I love the stuff! In the past, at my friends' urging, I've tried choking down dry mounds of sushi made in the Midwest United States. On several occasions, my American friends would even get food poisoning from it. It was both horrible and overpriced, but I would sometimes pretend to like it because it was considered a trendy food item. Sushi in Japan is an entirely different experience. The freshness of the seafood, even at the cheapest restaurants, is indisputable, and the quality of the rice itself differs, with the moistest, fluffiest grains being used in the better restaurants.


Another noteworthy meal I took in Sapporo was in one of the shops along Old Ramen Alley. By this point in my stay, I had left Nana's house and was couchsurfing at another place, with a pile of futons on the floor of an English school classroom. I didn't get to see my actual host for more than 15 minutes since she lived in a separate house with her husband and in-laws, but the location in which I was staying was central to the festival and everything else in town. This left me on my own for figuring out how to spend my time and where to go. In my host's bathroom was a 20-year-old guidebook on Hokkaido. In particular, it extolled the culinary virtues of Ramen Yokocho in the Susukino district.


So, I bounded off the subway at around 10:30 pm in Susukino, and in typical fashion of my traveling style, I didn't know where the famous Ramen Yokocho was located, nor did I realize -- here is where you may begin hitting the palm of your hand against your forehead to produce sympathy pains for my stupidity -- that the Susukino district is filled with "nightclubs" and is, in fact, the only dangerous area in the entirety of Hokkaido Island.

Blissful in my innocence, I merrily bounded along the hooded backstreets (while wearing my little kitten hat) until coming to the conclusion that: A. I was really, really hungry and B. I would never find Old Ramen Alley simply by wandering aimlessly. Both these realizations led me to seek help from a nearby stranger who just happened to be standing on the street corner in the driving snow, doing nothing apparently except enjoying the near-freezing temperature. He was a tall, slender, young Japanese man, so tall and beautiful that he looked like the muse for an anime hero. He seemed rather annoyed when I asked him where Ramen Yokocho was located, but I simply smiled and waited for him to help me. He called over another man who was also apparently just standing on the street corner in the driving snow and doing nothing but enjoying the near-freezing temperature, and together they held a brief discussion in Japanese. Maybe it was just my fine-honed sense of intuition kicking in, or maybe it was because his friend was dressed like a gothic vampire, but I began to think, "Something's not right here." At any rate, the first guy from whom I'd asked help, after consulting with his friend, simply said "Come," and grabbed my wrist, leading me down a twist of streets and alleyways. At last, we ended up at an alley with a dozen or so ramen shops on either side. "Oh, thank you!" I exclaimed and bowed to the man. His face lit up briefly with the only smile I'd seen him make, and then he disappeared back into the black of night.


Later, after having finished my ramen and walking back to the subway, I looked more closely at the street corners. They all seemed to have one or two well-dressed men loitering on them. As I began to pay more attention to details, I noticed that most of them were holding papers that they would show to other men as they passed. These papers were photos of scantily dressed, or even undressed, women along with their corresponding prices. That's right. I had asked for directions from a pimp. Odd as it may sound, I felt sorry for him when this realization struck me. I wonder what had driven him to such a place and had the feeling, derived largely from the underlying unhappiness that seemed a part of his being, that he was not the top in command but merely another pawn being played by someone more powerful.


The main drag through Sususkino was well-lit and safe enough. It was also decorated with hundreds of ice sculptures, many of which had mythical origins. In the night, with the city light shining upon them, they shone like crystal.


Anyone can slay a dragon, he told me. Try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero.
~ Brian Andreas



The best snow sculpture, Nana and I decided, was the large one of the zoo animals. There was something about the variety of animals (gorilla, cheetah, bears, eagles, etc.), as well as the life-like features that had been carved into them, that made the sculpture seem special to us.

Just as a scale to the size of these photos -- the sculptures don't look as impressive on film as they do in real life -- here is a photo where a man is cleaning the sculpture after the previous night's blizzard covered some of the features. That tiny blur on the cheetah's back is the man.


One of my days in Hokkaido, I noticed a postcard with the image of a snow and ice playground. I made it my mission that day to find the playground. It ended up being on the outskirts of Sapporo; I took the subway and then a bus to get there, but it was worth it. There was a giant stadium, inside of which short K-pop performances played continuously. Outside the stadium, there were three giant slide sets (meaning each slide set had about 6 different paths to make for minimal waiting in line). The smallest one involved sitting on a little plastic square and sliding down packed snow. This resulted in much bruising. The next one was made entirely of ice. It looked stunning, but the slope was too gentle to thrill anyone but kids. Finally, there was the master slide, which as Goldilocks herself might say, was just right.


From the top of this slide was a great overview of the city, and to descend, you had to sled down via intertube. The photo doesn't make the descent appear very steep, but that's something of an illusion. One of the adults next to me was frightened enough by the height that she refused to go down it after waiting in line, which was a pity because it was soooo much fun.

Now for some gratuitous "I was there" photos.

Here I am standing in front of a snowy replica of the Korean Baekjae Palace. I am wearing the coat of a used kimono I bought in town, and snow is blowing down at an angle. For all those reasons, this is one of my favourite photos of the trip.


And here I am with the spirit from Princess Mononoke. This photo was taken at dawn, which adds an eerie rose-grey backlight to the scene. Also, the dark tree branches sprouting at odd angles behind the spirit give it a sort of alien quality, don't you think?


There is no story behind the Totoro statue, but I find the child-loving monster to be adorable in all his incarnations.

To Buyeo We Go

Vanessa and I board the bus from Daejon to Buyeo, pastries in hand.


Dunsan Prehistoric Settlement Site(800 BC)in Daejon
Early man invents fire. Early woman keeps an extinguisher handy.


Goransa Temple




Goran Mineral Water
Every cup you drink will make you 5 years younger.


Do I look more youthful?






Sedong Park


Vanessa and I have had a long day. Time for the bus ride "home."

Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival

The Hwacheon (trout) Ice Festival comes once a year in Korea, a time when the otherwise sleepy little town of Sancheoneo bursts into life, all its fences, posts, buildings, and scenery ablaze with brightly coloured paper trout which, rather spectacularly -- if oddly -- all light up as night encroaches.

Yonsei University, where I work as an editor and proofreader extraordinaire, holds a summer and winter English camp for children. As the American and Canadian teachers often buzz in and out of the offices where I work, I happened to hear some of them mention going to an ice festival that upcoming weekend. "Me, too," I said. (I had actually never heard of said festival up to this point, but living abroad tends to make you leap on opportunity.)



So that weekend, after several hours in a bus that bumped and gurgled its way up icy mountain roads, we arrived in the small town of Sancheoneo, nestled protectively in a hollow between the base of several mountains. The Bukhangang River originates in this area, and, in the heart of winter, it freezes solid. The local people depended on the Bukhangang River for their livelihood in years past. Now, the festival's activities center around the river and it serves largely as a tourist attraction for urban Koreans who want to spend their free time in the country. Sancheoneo has become so famous for icefishing that it apparently runs out of trout, and purportedly, town officials hire workers to sneak to the river's edge at night and replenish the fish.


(Are these people taking out some fish or sneaking some in?)



By the time we arrived, around noon, there were certainly enough people camping out on the ice to make the rumors of stocking the river seem plausible, if not definite. The icy river had more holes cut through it than swiss cheese, but the ice was strong and thick and the air tangy with chill, so there was little danger of falling through.



Though there were nearly 100 people perched hopefully by little holes in the ice, some of the more experienced fishers told us it was too late to catch anything at this time of day. One raucous, exuberantly-friendly Korean man, Peter, invited us to share the fish he'd caught earlier that day. We were hesitant to take too much of his food -- he had his wife and children with him -- but the scent of the fresh-caught fish rolled off it in steamy little waves as it roasted over the grill and we took tiny white flakes of it with our chopsticks and delicately nibbled at those morsels.



After finishing eating and drinking with Peter (we, at least, managed to contribute the drinks), we entered the gaping, fanged mouth of a white tiger. The tiger was, of course, made of snow. Inside the tiger's belly was a long tunnel and several small rooms made entirely of ice and backlit in blue and green lights so that it had the outlandish atmosphere of a night club, albeit the world's chilliest night club.




Following this, our group separated somewhat, scattering on the ice as we found the section of the river that had been portioned off for ice sledding. Several members of our group played on a large, multi-person sled. As for myself, I rented one of the tiny ice sleds. It was just a small, square wooden board with a set of blades on the bottom, such as you might find on ice skates. Following the example of countless children and adults around me, I sat crosslegged on my new vehicle and used the two icepicks I'd been given to dash into the ice and then propel myself forward.



From my vantage point of the ice sled, I discovered many things to see at the festival, including the results of a creative sled-building contest, which had resulted in sleds made to look like tigers, tomatoes, and sea gulls.


I also noticed a trail where children could rent teddy bear rickshaws. It entertained me greatly to see the little mechanical bears jerk their rickshaws up and down the road, often abruptly halting, their tiny feet impotently moving in place, as they found no traction on the iced trail.



In the evening, our small group reunited, perhaps called out by Jonathan, who somehow convinced the man in charge of the loudspeakers (which reached almost the entire festival) to let him perform a brief karaoke dedicated to English teachers. And then, just when we thought the trip couldn't get any better, we discovered human bowling.



Finally, it was time to go home, with an odd constellation of paper fish lighting our way.