We made our way to the Temple to register for the workshop at noon. I'd booked our places on this a few days before - the festival organisers try to include foreigners, and there were hundreds of non-Koreans wandering around the place - not just curious Westerners, but also Buddhists from Asia and further afield. Taking our seats at the long U-shaped tables, we were given a basket to share between pairs. Each basket contained a selection of papers, some paste, a ready-made paper-and-wire lantern and some directions.
We began with great enthusiasm, learning how to rub the pads of corrugated papers and blow at them to separate them out with great tenderness. Each slight piece of paper was a rich colour that paled to white at one edge. We set to twisting edges into points. After about half an hour, Cait and I poured our lovely, perfect petals onto the table to count them - 35 petals! Hooray! Until I checked the instructions and told Cait with rather less than total glee that we were aiming for 80...
When we finally felt we had enough, we started to glue the petals to the lantern. This was harder than it looks, and I kept being told by one of our lovely, patient attendants to push the petals up close to the lantern - I was being far too gentle with them, apparently.Half way down, I decided against the red that I had so carefully picked out earlier on - and had to make a whole second batch of deep purple petals. Happily Caitlin used up my abandoned red, but having to go back to twisting petals again had me swearing never to make another lantern in my life! So much for Buddhist calm and serenity. I think we were supposed to be taking the opportunity to meditate, and here were these foreigners, red in the face, puffing and swearing about the trickiness!
That did not, however, put off the Koreans. Sitting next to Che (24, small-faced), Leigh (23, pale-haired) and Caitlin (22, blonde), I got a taste of true celebrity. We had a continuous line of Koreans brandishing cameras with ridiculously phallic zoom lenses that should be declared weapons. My embarassed friends did their civil best to smile and look foreign for their stalkers, who called out requests and instructions without qualms, but after a couple of hours I was feeling really sorry for them! I thought that after a few weeks of English Village we'd be a little used to it, but it's actually so intrusive that I think it'll always be difficult.
Bear in mind that these are mostly not professional photographers or photojournalists, but ordinary Koreans out for a day at the Festival. (We did have KBS hanging around at one point - that's the Korean Broadcasting Service - but more on that later...)At the end of two and a half hours of twisting and pasting and tucking and patting I had to admit I rather liked my effort, and even got Mike (my friendly boss) to take an extra-cheesy shot of me and mine!
I then turned my attention to the street festival. It ran the length of one rather long street which had been closed to traffic for the day and was now lined with stalls. There were all sorts of things happening - traditional games, painting, incense rolling, bead stringing, acupuncture. We even came across a stall offering "Free dental care and face painting!", with lots of tourists gathered around taking photos! My first adventure was a tea ceremony. Mike and I took off our shoes and sat on a mat in front of a lady in traditional dress ("hanbok").
After respectfully bowing our heads to her and receiving a bow back in welcome, she started a complicated system of heating bowls and cups and adding green tealeaves to a pot. I tried to keep track, but have to admit I've no idea what the system was. The end result, on the other hand, was absolutely delicious, and served in the teeniest little cup! Luckily, the teeny little cups kept coming, in between ceremonial cup-cleansings and -heatings and -replenishings. Weirdly, the taste changed with each cup, even though I swear the tea leaves came from the same bag each time! After a while I began to worry that we were being impolite and overstaying our welcome, although Mike was sure that they were used to foreigners and would tell us when to leave - and sure enough, after about 6 or 7 cups of tea, our hostess bowed her head to us, we gave her a cheery "kamsa hamnida!" and stumbled to our feet. What a lovely custom! Makes our second-hand teabags and a splash of milk seem barbarian!There were lots of Buddhists from around the world not just wandering around the festival looking, but also marching down the streets, singing or playing drums and generally livening things up :)
After a while we returned to the Lantern-making Workshop area where the head of the Buddhist organisations in Korea was awarding prizes to lantern makers. To my great surprise, I was one of the 15 "Most Beautiful Lanterns"!! A friend managed to squeeze between the newspaper photographers to take a pic of me with the other Awardees :) I was really surprised because there were some stunning lanterns around, as you can see from the picture!
My prize was a lovely box made of handmade paper.Later on in the evening we made our way to the side of the parade route to a specially designated foreigner seating area, where we watched the many organisations march and display their lanterns. Some were large groups from universities or schools carrying hundreds of brightly lit individual lanterns in the shape of fish and birds and lotus flowers. Others were Buddhist monasteries and temples who had spent months fashioning huge animals and Buddhas from paper, lit by massive generators on wheels.
Some of the biggest roared and trumpeted, and had moving heads and legs! The work that must have gone into them astounds me.
The participants were so happy and excited, waving and shouting - often when a school came past our section, the children started pointing and shouting "Hello! What's your name? Pleased to meet you!" and then laughing hysterically! As one of my neighbours commented, it was sometimes like we were the ones on parade, or on display in a contained area for the Buddhists to come and see! My English Village colleagues and I took great care to smile and wave back, and shout "hello!" to all the kids, knowing how thrilled it makes them to see they've been understood in another language.
One of my Korean co-teachers had told me on the Friday before that she'd been to a Buddhist high school and so was a master at lantern-making. She'd been taking part in parades like this one since she was tiny. Surreal moment for me - I'm so used to religious schools in Africa and the UK - Roman Catholic, Anglican, Muslim madrassas - but I'd never even thought there would be Buddhist schools! At least, not one that taught all the usual subjects and treated Buddhism as a CofE school in England would treat Christianity! Another blow to my Western preconceptions :)
A sobering moment for me was the Sri Lankan delegation, very big by the standards of the parade. The young men who made up the "Sri Lanka Young Buddhists Association" were dressed not in red and orange robes like their barefoot Indian counterparts, but in army fatigues. It amazes me that Buddhism, essentially a peaceful way of living, has been turned into an organised religion in this one country, and used as a pretext for war.
The highlight of the evening: looking down the street to see billows of smoke above the heads of the crowds! We worriedly started looking for the nearest exits, but then the smoke got closer and cleared, and we saw two enormous dragons, waving their tails and lifting their heads to breathe smoke and fire, with a soundtrack of terrifying dragon cries! It was the most incredible float I've ever seen in my life!
The next day, Cait and I arrived in the teachers' work room for the beginning of the new week, and a Korean co-teacher turned to me to ask if I'd seen the morning's paper? When I said no, she laughed and said I'd better find one, because we were all in it! Duly excited, Cait and I saw a discarded paper by a computer and paged through it until we found a little insert that told of the foreigners taking part in a Korean festival and how multicultural Seoul was! The picture must have been taken by one of the phallic lenses and shows the four Southern Africans - Che, Leigh, Cait and I (down at the end)! Not only that, but a brief statement Che made to the KBS photographer had been shown on the evening news! (I told you he was going to come up again) All in all, some very excitable foreigners made their way to the meeting that morning!
