I'd be remiss if I didn't, before bringing you all up to speed on Christmas time in Korea, tell you at least a little bit about one of Hampyeong's two main attractions of the year: the annual Chrysanthemum Festival. So here's a rather lengthy post that offers some shameless plugging for my hometown and the beautiful flowers that flock to it each fall.
I've been told that, in the course of two weeks, somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people, Koreans and foreigners alike, plan to visit the Hampyeong's Chrysanthemum Festival. Whether those folks actually turn out and live up to the numerical hype is still up in the air--although Hampyeong felt slightly larger and busier for those two weeks, it's not something that's hard to do for a (still relatively small) town that is the centerpiece of a county with a total of 45,000 people. That being said, I'd like to think that those who chose to attend were not disappointed. And here are 19 reasons why:
Reason #1 is simple enough, and that is that you are really greeted with flowers before you even enter the Festival. The whole town recognizes just how special an event this is, and, as such, you are greeted with Chrysanthemum flowers for a few blocks before entering the park. What's also pretty nice is that this is all about a 10 minute walk from my apartment. Here's to small towns!
Reason #2: Where else on earth can you find giant trees that are A. shaped like cows, dogs, and other animals and B. covered in flowers?
Reason #3 (And probably the coolest as far as I'm concerned): Admission is free for foreigners. That's right. Students and teachers pay somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000-7,000 KRW (so, about $3-$7) to attend, while I was able to walk in without opening my wallet. Here are some of my younger students from Wolya Elementary (my Monday school, with whom I was so fortunate to get to check out this festival) entering.
Reason #4: Awkward class photos. For your viewing pleasure, the 6th grade homeroom teacher and I were able to capture the sheer enthusiasm (or lack thereof) of the Wolya 6th graders. Granted, it was only 9:30am, but they look way too upset to be missing school for this.
Reason #5: The cosmopolitan feel of the Festival. Okay, I use that term loosely--what I think I mean by "cosmopolitan" in this case is that all the flowers you see lining this greenhouse walkway are indeed Chrysanthemum flowers that are grown in all different parts of Hampyeong and are contributed by farms and households throughout the county. Could've fooled me; the flowers all tend to look alike.
Reason #6: The cute kids that are actually excited to be here and missing school for this...contrary to the 6th grade picture I showed you.
Reason #7: Silk worms, caterpillars, and other cool bugs that you can pick up and play with and pretend to eat (if you're the 3rd graders of Wolya Elementary, in which case there's not so much pretending). Hampyeong, by and large, tends to stretch its concept of being all about butterflies (the other main festival in Hampyeong, which comes in the spring) into a full-on assault of bug culture. As such, this particular vendor had all kinds of bugs to play with...even a few snakes, if I remember correctly.
Reason #8: Cute kids playing with said bugs.
Reason #9: 5th graders who look slightly more jazzed to be missing school for this field trip than the previously pictured 6th graders.
Reason #10: Reason #9 continued.
Reason #11: The inescapable reality of becoming so bored of looking at Chrysanthemums and bugs all afternoon and the ensuing hour of gaming on one's phone. These 6th graders simply couldn't take it anymore. Now that I think about it, I don't think I even had a phone until high school...
Reason #12: Cute snack circles of 5th grade boys. It's just awesome. They take a few samples from each other's bags, and offer all the teachers a handful. I didn't even have to ask, and within 20 minutes I had a solid stomachache.
Reason #13: This huge, awesome structure made of Chrysanthemum flowers that resembles a cool tower or temple structure or some kind of traditional Korean architecture that I'm clearly not aware of. This is one of two centerpieces of the Festival.
Here's another look up at it.
Reason #14: Getting to hold hands with cool 5th grade dudes and pose for nice pictures for all the homeroom teachers in front of the giant flower tower.
Reason #15: The privilege of witnessing Korea's extremely slow transition into winter weather, which is something really special. One thing that really sets the climate and seasonal pattern of Korea apart from home is how gradual the transitions from summer to fall to winter come. In the Upper Midwest (Minnesota, for example), let's just say the temperature plummets, the leaves all fall, and the snow begins coming down all within weeks, it sometimes seems. So views like this are really great to take in while I'm here for a year.
Reason #16: I take it back...there are 3 awesomely huge attractions of the Hampyeong Chrysanthemum Festival, and this is the 2nd. This is a giant flower gate with a corresponding courtyard aptly named, in barely legible Korean letters in the center, "Secret Garden." Really cool to walk through.
Here's a much better, up-close look at Hampyeong's own "Secret Garden."
And here's one with cute kindergarteners and 1st graders running through it.
Reason #17: Colors, colors, and more colors. You sort of wonder where the town of Hampyeong is in all of this, as the park is on the edge of town and the park grounds are huge. You really do feel like you're in a different world...I'm not saying it's disappointing to walk back to my apartment, but everything just feels less...animated.
Reason #18: The 3rd awesome attraction of the Festival, the giant mushroom-shaped tree full of branches covered in (you guessed it) Chrysanthemum flowers. This is what you see on most advertisements for the Festival, and it really does tower over everyone and everything there.
I should have taken a better picture for comparison, but it's a good, healthy 30 or 40 feet high.
Reason #19: Flowers that, all things considered, do not actually resemble Chrysanthemums! I didn't see this one coming. There was, however, an entire greenhouse full of alternative flowers--if for no other reason than to prove that there is, after all, more to Hampyeong than just flowers and bugs.
And so we headed back to Wolya Elementary, which had its own unique brand of fall beauty.
So there's a quick plug for the Hampyeong Chrysanthemum Festival, for all of those who haven't been, or have been and were simply overwhelmed by their own experience. My advice: make the trip with cool kids and hold lots of crazy bugs. Thanks for reading, folks. Next up will be a post on some good Christmas times in Jeolla Province.
Lots of love, and all the best,
Sam
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