To celebrate Buddha’s birthday, Seoul puts on an incredible, annual, international, weekend-long Lotus Lantern Festival. I have never seen so many people. I have never seen so many lanterns.
Yesterday, Adam spent all day in Seoul, and I joined him after work. As I stepped off of my bus onto Jongno, the main urban road in Seoul, I realized it would be no simple task to make my way to Adam’s and my meeting spot. Throngs of people were already flocking onto street-side bleachers to stake their claim on the best view of the coming parade. I swam upstream into Insadong, one of the centers of the Lantern festivities. Annie and Sung Sook were already there with Adam, when I reached the book shop. We wandered through the Buddhist worshipers, tourists, and revelers congregating at Jogyesa Temple.
As dusk fell, the temple began to glow with a canopy of lanterns. Red, pink, blue, yellow, green, white. The ancient tree looked as though its boughs were glowing lanterns. The first monks and drummers began to pour into Jogyesa’s courtyard, the final destination of the parade. We knew the parade had begun. We ran past the stirring sound of drums, songs, and TV announcers, and pushed through crowds.
Annie, the petite child that she is, was able to squeeze through to the curb for a clear view of the parade, but we weren’t so lucky. She came back to us, and we continued down the sidewalk to an entrance to the subway. There were people sitting all along the edge of the roof, and Annie and I climbed up on the sloping end. It was the perfect seat for viewing the parade. Adam wandered, seeking out the perfect photograph (and I think he found many). Sung Sook milled back and forth in her lovely, helpful way and brought us kimbop and dok boki in plastic bags. Annie and I managed to pick our dinner out of the bags with our chopsticks without sliding off the slanted roof.
After almost two hours of luminous lanterns and colorful costumes, we jumped down from our perch and made our way back to Insadong. The thousands of lanterns that had glowed their path down Jongno were now deposited in radiant piles on the sidewalk near the temple. Annie and I went on a frenzy, filling our arms with lanterns. When our arms were full, we would drop the most ordinary lantern and pick up a prettier one. People started looking at us, and one woman stopped to hand us one of her lovely pink lotus lanterns. “Obviously these girls want these lanterns more than I,” she must have thought.
On the far end of Insadong, Annie’s dad picked us all up in the van, and we opened the trunk to pile our lanterns inside. Annie and Sung Sook had collected seven lanterns, and Adam and I had nine. Our friends dropped us off at the bus stop, and Adam and I climbed onto the bus, laden with glowing orbs. The bus driver laughed and gave us the thumbs-up sign. We slept the whole way home.
Now we need to figure out a place to hang all of them.
-Jessica
