Baudeogi Festival

Namsadang( Rope Dance)

Each year, the City of Anseong in Gyeonggi-do holds the Anseong Namsadang Baudeogi Festival to celebrate the many accomplishments and fascinating history of Namsadang, the country’s oldest performance troupe.

During the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), Anseong was the center of the nation’s pop culture, as well as the birthplace of Namsadang, a troupe known for their rope-dancing, singing, puppet shows, acrobatics, and more. Though Namsadang was at the time the nation’s only performance troupe, the performers were considered to be of even lower status than servants, sometimes resorting to drastic measures to make a living. Their lowly status most likely contributed to their willingness to speak out on current issues and call for social reform, incorporating many sharp-tongued and insightful comments into their comedy sketches.

Korea Traditional Performance

The lowly image of the troupe changed drastically in the 19th century under the leadership of Baudeogi, a young lady who became the head of the organization at the age of 15, thanks to her great talent in performance art. Under Baudeogi, the troupe was granted a prestigious title equivalent to that of modern-day “provincial governor” for entertaining workers during the rebuilding of Gyeongbokgung Palace!

Prevailing through periodical disbanding throughout the Japanese Invasion, Namsadang remains a proud tradition of the Anseong area and a symbol of the nation.

Baudeogi is the leader’s name of Namsadangpae, who became the first female entertainer in Korea to lead the vaudeville troupe. Baudeogi, who had many special talents and an artistic nature, toured the nation, where she entertained construction workers working on Gyeongbokgung Palace in the 19th century by performing popular folk arts.

In memory of Baudeogi, Namsadang’s Jeonsugwan was reestablished for people who wanted to see her artistic spirit and talents live on. The performance shows six exciting episodes of Namsadang including a tumbling performance called “Salpan”, a puppet show called “Deolmi”, “Sangmonori”, a masque play called “Deotboegi” as the first stage. And it has other performances like “Pungmullori” and “Seoljanggo” which are a big hit with the audiences, especially when they take part in shoulder dancing too. The whole audience bursts into laughter.This is the place where you feel the spirit of “coming together”. The second time around watching this show will be just as thrilling as the first time around.

The most popular program is tightrope walking called “Eoreum Jultagi” which makes audiences wild with enthusiasm and receives big ovations. “Eoreum” does very risky performances on a very high tightrope such as walking slowly, walking with short, quick paces, as well as sitting down and standing up. Mr. Gwon, Wontae, the world record holder of tightrope dancing in the “World Records” shown on Nippon TV of Japan, moves nimbly and freely across the tightrope like it was a piece of cake.

The troupe may have functioned as a homosexual community, with each member taking the role of Sutdongmo, "butch", or Yodongmo, "queen".Namsadang's yeonhui (연희, 演戱) or performances were held on the ground instead of theaters. When namsadang found a village, they had to get a permission from the leader of the village in order to present their talents. Members of namsadang performed the six nori in the biggest yard of the village.

The Anseong Namsadang Baudeogi Festival 2010 was a six-day celebration of the troupe and its famous leader, starting from September 7th (Tue) and going until September 12th (Sun). During this year’s festival, the 10th National Baudeogi Pungmul Competition was held as well, giving visitors a great chance to see all the masters of Korean folk music.

Brazilian Dance

Visitors were also able to check out the nighttime lighted street parade, ceremonial rites for Baudeogi, Jultagi (rope dancing), Salpan (acrobatic performances), puppet shows, comedy routines, plays, and more! There were even special performances by performance troupes from Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil, Cyprus, and the Ukraine.

Along with performances by Namsadang and those mentioned above, there was a wide range of events and programs for visitors to enjoy, including a harvest experience event, herb experience, and a variety of craft programs. Visitors were also encouraged to head over to the Anseong traditional marketplace (including the live animal market) for a glimpse back into the world of the Joseon Dynasty.

Myanmar Musical Instruments (Saing Wine)

Interesting Culture, Cuisine and Cooking of Myanmar

Myanmar is a Southeast Asian country located between Bangladesh and Thailand. The country is widely known for its well-preserved culture. Ancient Myanmar customs are still being practiced these days even after so many generations have passed.
The Myanmar people have a really strong and firm respect for their country's humble beginnings. One of Myanmar's well-preserved cultures is their native music, which is still being played and performed during special occasions and celebrations. Their beliefs and traditions were never destroyed even with the introduction of modern civilization. The old and the young are always upright to their native practices and traditions.
There are different customs that the people of Myanmar practice even during this age of computers. One of these is the "Thingyan" which is considered as the most celebrated in Myanmar's culture. Thingyan is Myanmar's New Year festivities, celebrated during the month of April which lasts up to four days. This is a momentous occasion celebrated by everyone whatever the social status may be. Rich and poor alike unite during this occasion. People gather on public places during the Thingyan where they splash water against each other. This is their own unique way of celebrating their New Year's.
Myanmar's customary superstitious beliefs are also highly valued even today. Unlike other Asian countries already influenced by modern traditions, Myanmar is still proudly loyal to its beliefs.
Myanmar is also known for its gastronomic adventures - a unique fusion of several cultures, mostly influenced by the Chinese, Indians, and some Thai. What made Burmese cuisine unique in its own way is the variety of distinct and flavorful spices used in every cooking. Seafood cuisines are more popular along the Myanmar's coastal areas, while the use of meat is commonly prepared in Myanmar's major cities like Mandalay. Vegetarian dishes are also normally being served especially during the Buddhist lent season, which is observed for three months. During this period, Buddhists only eat fish and vegetable cuisines. White rice, being the staple food of the Burmese are served regularly, served together curry. The most popular rice in Myanmar is the Thai Fragrant rice or what the Burmese call Basmati rice, which is highly priced. The Burmese are also fond of salads which are vegetables mixed with sea foods, rice or noodles, and spices.
Myanmar Cuisines are undeniably delicious and mouth-watering which everyone would surely love to try. A Myanmar trip will never be complete without trying the Burmese delicacies. With so many delectable dishes to choose from, everyone will surely be satisfied.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2598369

The End of Life!

About life,

I think every night,

Before falling asleep,

Being interesting indeed.

A day comes to life

With the sun bright,

A life comes to exist

With want and wish.

The sun goes around

To twilight from dawn,

A life fights for a taste

From cradle to grave.

A day ends in dark

Before shining stars are on alert.

How is the end of our life?

At endless nights,

I will have to think about it

As long as I live.

By Tet Nay

ဘ၀နိဂုံး

ဘ၀နိမိတ္၊ သိလိုစိတ္နဲ႕

အိ္ပ္မရခင္၊ စိတ္အစဥ္၀ယ္

သြင္သြင္ေတြးေတာ၊ ငါေဆာေၾကာ၏။

သူရိန္ေနစက္၊ လင္းလက္လက္ျဖင့္

တစ္ေန႕ရက္တာ၊ သက္၀င္လာ၍

တဏွာေလာဘ၊ လိုဆႏၵနဲ႕

ဘ၀တစ္ခု၊ အစျပဳ၏။

အရုံမွသည္၊ ဆည္းဆာဆီသို႕

လွည့္လည္ေနစက္၊ ခရီးထြက္၍

ပုခက္မွသည္၊ သုသာန္ဆီသို႕

က်င္လည္ဘ၀၊ ရုန္းကန္ရသည္

ဆႏၵတစ္စုံ၊ ျပီးျပည့္စုံဖို႕။

လင္းလက္ၾကယ္စင္၊ မႏိုးခင္၀ယ္

ေန႕စဥ္နိဂုံး၊ ေမွာင္မွာဆုံးလည္း

မဆုံးအႏၱ၊ ေမွာင္ညမ်ား၀ယ္

ဘ၀နိဂုံးဘယ္လိုဆုံးမလဲ

သက္ဆုံးသည့္တိုင္၊ အေတြးလႈိင္ဦးအံ့။

                                          တက္ေန

A Visit to Cheonggyecheon and Dongdaemun in Seoul.

Group Photos Taken Across Cheonggyecheon

 

Eco-Friendly Cheonggyecheon

We KOICA students from Hankyung National University departed our University at about ten o’ clock in the morning. As soon as we stepped down outside dormitory, the Korean winter greeted us with terribly cold breeze. That is, the maximum temperature was -12 degree Celsius on that day. However, the terrible weather could not hump down our desire to visit Cheonggyecheon and Dongdaemun. Our active willingness to study practically Korean experience in their development affairs could conquer every unfavorable condition.

Then, we proceeded from Hankyung National University bus-stop to Seoul by bus. It took about one hour from our university to Seoul Express Bus Terminal. In this way, we arrived at the bus terminal before half past eleven. Although it was almost at noon, the weather was still extremely cold against sun-shine.

Fig.1-Jongno (Sam) ga sub-way station

We continued to sub-way station and recharged our transportation cards respectively to take under-ground train. Meanwhile, we had to wait for two of our KOICA students who were late since they could not take the same bus with us due to bus ticket shortage and took another bus. Then, we took tube line no.3 to carry on our trip. After 25 minutes later, we got off the tube at subway station no.329 Jongno (Sam) ga sub-way station. Our professor is kind for and takes care of us as our parent. Accordingly, he picked us up at that subway station. After that, we got outside through exit no.15. 

Marvelous Lunch Hosted by Professor Dr. Choi Seung-beon

On the way, the professor led us to a famous restaurant and hosted all of us with chicken ribs dish. Even during preparing the dish, its smell attracted us so much that we could not control our appetite. The hospitable and beautiful young ladies from the restaurant helped prepare the dish on the gas stove and provided us excellent service. Alas! What a delicious dish! Some students came to shout in Korean language “맛있어요!”. We all enjoyed the meal with full satisfaction. At about the end of our meal, our professor got an idea to mix the rest of dish with rice. What a great idea! We could enjoy again marvelous fried rice, thanks to professor’s idea. At about 13:30 hrs, we left the restaurant.

Before continuing our trip, our professor gave us a briefing how to study efficiently the real situations of development facilities and environment in the given area in order that we can apply effectively the findings for the development of our respective countries.

Just a few minutes later, a stream, called Cheonggyecheon in which cool, clean and crisp water is flowing steadily and slowly came to be under our sight. On the bank of the stream, we took pictures in different poses, setting the beautiful scenes of the stream as backgrounds. The wonderful sceneries brought us into out of the freezing weather. In this way, we took a walk along with road-side pavement up to the starting point of the stream.

Starting Point of Cheonggyecheon

Then, we got down beside the stream and observed it carefully. During walking along the stream, our professor explained the background of the surroundings and current situations.

At about three o’ clock, we continued to textile market. I went window shopping in the market. To the Koreans, Dongdaemun Market is known as “the world’s extraordinarily large shopping town”- definitely the largest ever. Dongdaemun Market in Korea is widely popular with the locals and tourists as well. It is here that we can obtain every imaginable product under the sun at really cheap price.

Busy Dondaemun market

Afterward, we moved to Migliore in Dongdaemun. There are seven floors in it and we went through all of the floors. We can buy variety of commodities there. Among them, I occurred to buy some souvenirs such as nail cutter on which Korean flag is printed and colourful key chains. Then, we went and enjoyed the marvelous children’s performance at Migliore against terribly cold weather. At about six o’ clock in the evening, it was getting extremely colder and colder and then we went to have dinner treated by our professor. In this respect, our dinner, the hot noodle soup with sea food matched so much to cold weather and thereby, we enjoyed it so much.

At about half past six, we left for tube and continued our return trip by subway line no.4 from station no.422 of Dongdaemun History Culture Park sub-way station and after taking one station, transferred to line no. 3 at station no.331 of Chungmuro station. We all got off at the subway station of Seoul Express Bus Terminal. We came back our university by bus at seven o’ clock and arrived at Hankyung National University about quarter past eight.