Living in Seoul is awesome- it is convenient, bustling, and efficient (except maybe the whole sorting your trash part). Bright lights light up the city 24/7, and the streets are always populated with people, even at 4am, the difference being that most of them are those who are heading home after a night out and might not be steady on their feet. I love living in Seoul, but there are days when I just need a break from the sound of the cars, the drunken yells and the bright lights of the city that never sleeps.
So on Halloween weekend, I left. Seoul.
For a slow city (or rather, village) in Damyang, Jeollanam-do.
SAMJINAE VILLAGE (삼지내마을)
What makes Samjinae unique is that it is internationally accredited with the slow city label as part of the global CittaSlow movement! This movement begun in 1999 in Italy, and has come to be recognised as a mark of quality for small towns/villages and their communities. What all these slow cities all over the world have in common is that they seek to preserve the traditional way of life, not entirely without technology, but instead, integrate modern technology and communication services to better protect the environment, while promoting an emphasis on a natural and environmentally friendly way of life~
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| Traditional hanoks, with no tall modern buildings in the surroundings to block the views of the mountains. |
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| The mountain range surrounds the fields and the village, making it feel as if I had travelled back in time~ |
Samjinae became the first Korean city to gain the slow city title in 2007 and visitors to this charming village can experience its various traditions, two of which I got to personally try out during my weekend there!
After a five hour bus ride from Seoul (thanks to the weekend traffic- everyone it seems, wanted to take a break from Seoul), we arrived in Samjinae just in time for lunch!
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| Delicious or what! |
Post lunch, we spent some time on the wide open lawn in front of the house before we begun our traditional candle making experience. We got to try out some of the traditional games that Koreans children used to play before the invasion of smartphones and technology.
Stilts- it looks easy, since the platforms are barely more than 20cm high, but in reality, you need a delicate sense of balance, strong arms to move yourself forward, and also the ability to forget how to walk normally (ie. lifting your feet) and that was the most disorienting for me since I could not seem to tell my feet to stay on the platforms instead of lifting themselves as I attempted steps...
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| The lack of coordination skills me learning to walk on stilts made from bamboo (which is in abundance in Damyang!)... |
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| Success (?) but not without some help! I did eventually manage to walk BACKWARDS while on this. Why? I have no idea... |
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| As can be seen from my facial expression, I was concentrating intensely. |
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| A Buddha jump shot that we had to take at least 5 times over ^.^ |
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| 'May the force be with you' shot- which we again took at least 5 times over in order to get the one shot with everybody in the air at the same time. |
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| Finally, laying down to catch a breath, and capturing it with the aid of a fish eye lens + selfie stick! |
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| Our teacher :) the pot on the right is actually the container used to heat the beeswax! |
Now what's the big deal about beeswax candles? I always thought it was because they came with a higher price tag as opposed to regular candles because were made from 100% natural stuff, and that they were just the same as a regular candle (ie. paying a premium for 'organic' candles).
Yet after a beeswax candle crash course, I take back all my groundless assumptions...
1) They probably cost more because they are painstakingly handmade instead of being casted in moulds.
As can be seen in the picture below, the candle on the left was after 10 dips, and the candle on the right was after 20 dips. One holds on the wick, and dips it in liquid beeswax for about 5-10 seconds, then lifts it, lets the layer dry, and repeat. This process results in a candle that can burn for longer because the wax is more tightly layered together than if it were casted in a mould.
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| Our teacher steadying our hands- the slightest waver could cause wrinkles to form on the layer, resulting in less than smooth looking candles. |
2) They are way more environmental friendly than the regular paraffin candles.
Beeswax is produced by the worker bees, and it is the building block of a honeycomb. The wax produced is usually colourless, but turns to various shades of yellow, and even brown, due to the influence of pollen oils and propolis (bee glue). --> THEY ARE 100% BEE MADE!
Paraffin on the other hand, is a by product of petroleum (fossil fuel) refining. It is mixed with colours and fragrances before being manufactured into the candles that we see in shops. Not only are they chocked full of chemicals, they also produce soot particles when burned. These particles are so tiny that when we inhale, it goes straight into our lungs, sometimes causing respiratory irritation >.<
That, for me, is reason enough to choose a beeswax candle over a regular candle :) The added anti-allergenic benefits of beeswax candles are of course, a bonus!
It took us all a good 2 hours to get all of our beeswax candles done and sealed up in an envelope to bring home. It was a fun experience, and also very suitable as a parent-child activity! As for the candles that you bring home... the longer you keep them (basically the curing process), the better they will smell when they burn, and also the longer they can burn.
We then took a short ride to the other part of the village where we participated in the making of the Korean rice taffy (쌀엿)!
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| Sneak peek of our finished product! |
쌀엿 (read as ssal-yeot) is a form of traditional Korean confectionary, and can be made from a variety of ingredients, such as rice, sweet potato, mixed grains, and barley. It is still enjoyed by Koreans today, usually when celebrating traditional festivals or when received as a gift.
While there are many types of yeot on the market that is machine made, Samjinae's rice taffy are all 100% handmade and sold in various parts of Korea! As we were all ushered indoors for our yeot making experience, we were first greeted with some glutinous rice cake snacks and some taffy samples!
After filling our tummies, we watched a live demonstration of yeot pulling, with a running narration of what to take note of, how to pull, where to pull, how much to pull, before we tried it for ourselves. The whole idea of stretching it out evenly is that it introduces air into it evenly, resulting in beautiful little air bubbles inside and turning it a beautiful beige.
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| The very desirable bubbles. |
Chatter soon filled the room, and there was a buzz of excitement as we were so sure that as young people fun of energy, we could do it better than the ahjusshi and ahjumma. Yeah right.
And so the laughter begins... (by that I meant our teachers laughing at our attempts to make yeot)
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| We started out with a piece of freshly made 갱엿, freshly boiled and chilled. |
I mean, how hard was it?
Erm, very. We had problems. We did not know how to stretch the yeot out evenly, resulting in thick ends and an overly skinny middle that was at the risk of tearing. The yeot was sticky, and it stuck to our palms. The heat from our hands also cause it to melt a little more and making it stickier. Each pull only made my palm feel increasingly raw. When we did manage to stretch it out nicely, we did not know how to take it in the right way so it formed beautiful lines.
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| This took us a good 15 minutes of pulling, and by then our arms were ACHING. How do they do it on a daily basis?! |
As it turns out, our teacher has been making yeot for THREE DECADES and has of course, perfected her skills. She laughed as we tried to use pure strength to make up for the lack of skills, and gave us credit for trying. Some of us, she said, had potential, but potential counts for little in yeot making, for hard work and a dedication to the craft counts so so much more.
I left with my own bag of yeot and a newfound appreciation for the craft:)
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| A picture to remember that hard work shows :) |
The yeot making has left us all hungry and ready for a hot dinner on a cold night, and we returned to the house for a dinner of bulgogi. Tadaaaaaaaaa~
We ended our first night with a mini-album making session, where five pictures that we took in the day were printed out for us on polaroids, ready for us to put into our very own slow village experience album ^.^
It was definitely a nice change from Seoul, and I slept super soundly on the ondol that night:)
For more information about the village, you could check out:
Korea Tourism Organization
http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=1344755
Cittaslow Korea
http://www.cittaslow.kr/eng/eng_sub02_04_02.php
The quickest way to get there via public transportation is to hop on a bus for Gwangju, then transfer onto a local bus 303 and disembark at Changpyeong public security center!
Posted by Eileen Chong http://itsnotjustduck.blogspot.kr/2015/11/slow-living-in-samjinae-village.html
