Cheryl in Korea: The Photo That Threatened to Cost Lives and Other Green Tea Adventures

4 July 2013

I would like to begin this entry with a hearty Happy Birthday shout-out not only to my beloved nation, but to my beloved Daddy as well. 71 years ago today, my loving father was brought into this world and has been causing trouble ever since. Just kidding. He’s pretty tame for the most part. After all, it’s not like he can wreak too much havoc as he would then be forced to cross his own name off the Nice List, and that simply wouldn’t do.

Me, Santa (aka Daddy), and Mrs. Claus (aka Mom)

Well, my dear reader(s), a lot has happened since we last spoke. Winter finally abandoned us here on the peninsula, Spring stopped by all too quickly for a brief “howdy-do,” and now Summer is upon us in all its hot and sticky glory. Before we began to be blessed with, as my friend in NYC says, the “air you can wear,” however, the Hubby and I, along with another lovely couple that we hang out with here in Korealand, took advantage of a three day weekend we had in May, brought to us by Buddha’s birthday. We loaded up the Golden Egg (our rockin’ 1999 Daewoo Matiz) on a Thursday evening after work, stopped to pick up our friends in neighboring county, and headed down south to Boseong for the Green Tea Festival and then on to Namhae, one of the many small islands dotting the southern coast of Korea.

Golden Egg in action

The Hubby is a whiz when it comes to planning out road trips, and I have never more appreciated this skill as much as I have here. He has shown his navigational prowess many a time, deciphering maps and their apps in both English and Korean to get us well on our way.

We arrived in a town close to our destination pretty late Thursday evening in the hopes of arriving to the festival early and then moving on to the island, so when we got to our hotel that first night, I was pretty beat. We got up early on Friday morning and drove the remaining 30 minutes or so to Boseong and found that we were part of the early crowd. Anyone who knows me will understand how terribly out of character that is for me. I have always been perpetually late in spite of eleven years’ worth of the Hubby’s efforts to urge me to climb onto the early bird bandwagon. Even so, I will admit it…..it was nice to catch that worm for a change.

If you have ever lived in or visited Korea for any length of time, you will know that there is a festival for everything. Each town, county, village, and city is known for something. Yesan is known for apples, Cheonan for walnut cookies, Seoul for…well…for being Seoul, etc. etc. Thus, each festival has a theme, usually for that particular region/town’s main export. Also, if you know anything about these festivals, you will know that they are all pretty hit or miss and most often incredibly similar. We’ve been to quite a few festivals here: the Ginseng Festival, the Garlic Festival, the Walnut Cookie Festival, even the Admiral Yi Sun Shin and Hi Seoul Festivals. I have to say, though, this festival was probably the most memorable.

As we left the Golden Egg resting in the parking lot, we headed toward the festival grounds and into the mass of tents full of vendors selling their green tea and green tea-inspired wares. Honestly, my main desire was to see these “gorgeous green tea fields” everyone kept talking about and then pile back in the Egg and move on to Namhae. While we looked for these famous fields, however, we browsed through the sea of canvas covered booths, taking advantage of free tea service on the way.

Free tea service from lady wearing traditional Korean hanbok

First of many photo ops

You might notice that we are all looking in different directions in the above photo. This is due to the fact that we had probably no fewer than six cameras taking our picture. It was impossible to organize a proper everyone-is-looking-at-the-same-camera photo here. Were you to wander around these many festivals in Korea, you would definitely see vast numbers of photographers in attendance with expensive-looking cameras hanging around their necks with huge, even more expensive-looking lenses attached to said cameras. When I first saw them all at my first Korean festival, I thought, “Boy. They sure did hire a lot of photographers to document this festival. That must be one impressive brochure.” As time has gone by, however, I have discovered that many of these photo-snapping fanatics are simply regular, everyday folks who just enjoy taking pictures. It seems to be a national hobby.

Anyway, after we had our tea and finished our photo shoot, we meandered further down the line of tents and came upon a dduk making demonstration. Dduk is a chewy rice cake thing that is a kind of staple of the Korean diet. You’ll find anything from dried fruit to nuts to sweet potato to red bean paste in or on top of dduk, but often it’s just served up plain. I really wasn’t a huge fan of it when I first arrived, but it is indeed an acquired taste, and now I really like it. It is traditionally made by placing cooked rice on a large wooden slab and then beating the mess out of it with a giant wooden mallet until it reforms into a large sticky mass. People were lining up to take a literal whack at it.

The Hubby even took a turn

So very very sticky

He's quite the popular one, huh? Told you there were lots of cameras. Photo shoot #2.

After pounding his rice dough into submission, the Hubby was whisked away by a group of giggling adjummas (older women) (and yes, they really were giggling; I mean, he is pretty cute, no?) to complete his training as a crackerjack dduk-maker. Meanwhile, the rest of our small party wandered to the next group of tents. While we were admiring/drooling over a green tea-infused chocolate fountain…

Incidentally, that is dduk there on the platter on top of this fountain of deliciousness

One of the many photographers in the tent stopped us and, in broken but efficient English, asked if we would participate in a tea making demonstration while he snapped some pictures. Bemused and not really sure what to expect from his jumbled explanation of what he wanted us to do, but willing to go with the flow, we sat down at a small table where we proceeded to learn how to make little green tea cakes. These cakes, however, were not for eating. We pressed some sort of paste made out of tea into these little molds.

Then we had to poke a hole in the center of each one, through which we threaded all four disks onto a piece of twine. Our instructor managed to communicate to us that we were to wait a few days for the cakes to dry and then drop them into boiling water to make a pot of tea.

Poking holes in the middle, which apparently is called "pingle, pingle." I don't know if that's an actual word, or if it's just a sound you make or what, but our lady kept saying it as I drilled my little holes.

We became fast friends, my pingle-pingle lady and I.

While all this was going on, our photographer friend was taking pictures of the experience. However, it was not only he that wanted to take advantage of the photo op. While we were busy at our table, we kept hearing raised voices. When we looked up, we could see our photographer friend yelling at another man for also taking pictures of us. While he was yelling at the first would-be photo stealer, another one stealthily snuck around the conflict to get his own perfect shot. This kept happening so much that finally, our original photographer friend stopped even trying to take pictures and just stood in front of our table with his arms outstretched, blocking us from the view of passersby. I felt somewhat like a celebrity whose beleaguered bodyguard was valiantly fighting off the paparazzi. I was waiting for someone to resort to fisticuffs, but alas, the parties involved were mostly all talk. As we watched this all go on, our tea-making instructor took away our dried tea cakes and brought us fruit, dduk, and what I think was cheese to dip in a bit of the green tea/chocolate fountain we had been eyeing before. It was even better than it looked. When we were about three-quarters finished with our little feast, our photographer friend approached us and asked if we would mind leaving now. He had gotten the pictures he wanted, and his arms must have begun to get a bit tired. Apparently there was some sort of photo contest for the festival, and we were his secret weapon. Glancing longingly at our unfinished choco-tea fountain leftovers, we stammered our thanks and, befuddled, wandered off in search of the next adventure the festival had to offer us.

The coveted picture that threatened to cost lives and which will probably end up on some brochure for the Boseong Green Tea Festival in 2014. (At some point in the proceedings, the Hubs found and joined us.)

This has ended up as quite the long post, so I will just let the following pictures and their accompanying captions tell you the rest of the story. (Virtual high five if you just read that last phrase aloud in a Paul Harvey voice.)