Icheon Ceramics Festival- A Weekend of Fun!

The chicken laid an egg...

Ok, this is a long one!

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to tag along with some friends to the Icheon Ceramics Festival with a side trip the next day into Yeosu for Hanji, more ceramics, and a phone museum. 

Natalie perusing the wares

But first a little bit about festivals in Korea.  Every decent sized town/city has one.  Depending on what the town is ‘famous’ for that is the festival that that city hosts.  There are tons of festivals in the spring, and even more in the fall season.  Many festivals can last for several weeks and our plans to visit this particular one had been in the works for several months!

 My friends Natalie and her husband Jason have a car of their own, but they also had weekend access to a fairly new sedan through a hagwon owner friend of theirs.  So we borrowed, and went!  The day started out beautifully.  A perfect autumn day, clear deep blue skies, cool and slightly crisp morning air and a breakfast at the only place truly open for breakfast…McDonald’s.  It also happens to be a convenient meeting place, as it is the only McDonald’s in Iksan …for now.

Once again I had a bit too much coffee. Coffee’s everywhere here, and I do mean everywhere. My neighborhood of almost 2 city blocks has nearly 15 coffee shops and those are just the ones I can think of offhand.  Those are just the ones on the ground floor; I don’t look up too often.

Icheon Ceramics festival dude

 But that gave us the opportunity to stop at the travel station along the way.  Travel stations along the highways here are fantastic as far as travel stops go.  Not just a mere restroom and perhaps a small rushed restaurant like you might find on a turnpike at home.  But give the turnpike rest stops steroids and this is what you get.  A really sweet restroom, usually, (not extremely fancy, but shiny granite) very well maintained, clean, and bright; at least one convenience store, a restaurant or two, and various vendor stalls selling food and drinks, coffee shops and gift stores.  The most famous item that people get at rest stops, which are heavily used by bus travelers as well, are these bite sized, steaming hot, walnut pastries.  The dough is slightly sweet, slightly crispy and the inside has crushed walnuts and sweetened red bean paste.  The smell is outta this world fantastic.  These pastries are always piping hot and fresh.  Really, really good!

Well we had an absolutely beautiful autumn morning for our trip.  (Thank you Jason for driving!)  We made it into Icheon around 10:30 and found our way to the festival site.  Icheon is not too far from Seoul and is very famous for its ceramics and its shiny rice.  Its ceramics are internationally known and draw visitors from all over.  We got to the festival and wandered around the different pavilions that held dozens of vendors and amazing ceramics.  I got a little drooly and hoped I brought enough money to purchase at least one little thing!

Well, it turns out that money wasn’t my biggest problem, but rather my lack of hands.  I must give a great big thank you to Natalie, her husband Jason, and Lee for providing another 6 hands… Of course they got their own things as well, and by the end of the day everything was all mixed up.  Eventually I ended up with a set of Natalie’s teacups which, strangely, she didn’t want to part with.  Not that I blame her of course!  I got some gorgeous vases in Korean style, and a traditional Korean tea set complete with tea pot, sugar bowl, 5 cups, and tea whisk bowl.  I also got a couple of fantastic crystalline glazed porcelain mugs.

Jason getting ideas!

During our day at the festival, we had various experiences that I might mention.  After looking through the vendors (before our major purchases) we stopped to have lunch in one of the food tents sent up inside the festival site.  As I was leaving, I was approached by a very well dressed middle aged Korean man, in the center of a large group of other men, some with cameras.  Thinking I was about to fumble with my very limited and poor Korean, I began to panic slightly inside. And as the only immediately accessible foreigner in the tent (The others were still clustered around the table gathering their things) I knew that I was the target.  It was inevitable, and yes, I was right! But, this man spoke very good English, and welcomed me to the festival, gave me his business card (very nicely done in Korean, English, and Braille) and asked how I was enjoying my day at the festival and my stay in Korea.

Food on sticks is a must!

Turns out I had just met the very influential and quite well-known, governor of Gyeonggi-do, the province just south of Seoul, and where Icheon and Yeosu are located.  In his entourage, along with reporters and various photographers ensuring that this encounter was preserved for posterity sake and probably plastered all over the evening news and nest year’s campaign posters, was the mayor of Icheon, who also presented me with his card.  By this time the others had joined me and (thank you, Jason!) Jason with his excellent Korean was able to converse and impress the group.  I was able to slip through to the back and breathe again, and was shortly joined by Lee and Natalie.

One of my purchases!

Eventually after our many (many, many) purchases, we made our way to the wood fired kiln display.  Jason was quite fascinated as were we, but for different reasons!  While we roasted, a ‘band’ group began to sing John Denver’s “Country Road, Take me Home’. And of course we began to sing along.  Not loudly, but with good cheer and humor.  I hereby note that, the sight of 4 foreigners singing an English song is entertaining and bemusing.  And it attracts attention.  The drunken elderly kind.

A man dressed nattily all in black sat at a table to the side of the kiln and called us over.  Under the impression that he was the kiln ‘master,’ we complied.  Getting closer we realized that no, no this guy is not the ‘kiln master’.  He’s not even the master of himself at the moment. 

The kiln

Quite enthusiastically, and to the dramatic dismay of both his companions and ourselves, he began to offer us great swigs of makoeli (rice wine) in previously used cut-off water bottles and our choice of sweet tteok (rice cakes), tteokbokki (spicy rice cakes), and/or smoked pig snout, fresh from the pig.  It was sitting in a convenience store bag next to the table…  No was not an option, and he kept calling us ‘eonni’.  Now this was the strange part. “Eonni” is a Korean woman’s term to call a close, slightly older woman. He should have been using the term ‘noona’ which is the men’s term to call a slightly older female.  Except of course, he was the elder! By a lot!

Well, we moved on from there and went to invade the children’s craft area.  We foreigners have fun doing this.  A few younger adults do too, but these tents are mostly for young children to learn about various crafts and traditional arts, etc, usually related to whatever festival you happen to be at.  There are some though, that pop up at nearly every festival.  This time Natalie and Lee painted mugs, and Jason and I tried the potters wheel.  The gentleman ‘helping’ us, of course, didn’t like whatever design we had made and would ‘help’ us to make the one he approved of.  Basically we just got to play with clay for a few minutes before being sent off to decorate ‘our’ pots.

Lee, Natalie and lamb skewers

My hotel room

My 'own' pot

 That was nearly the end of the first day.  The rest of the evening consisted of remotely admonishing a toddler for licking the window and door at a coffee shop while his young mother took selfies on her camera, hunting down a slightly less seedy ‘hotel’, going for dinner at a tiny five table Chinese restaurant, before which Natalie made a new drunken 'acquaintance' who thought her shoulder made a good resting place scaring her into screaming, a nearly broken toe, and amazing Chinese manduu and lamb skewers on a really cool skewer rotator thingy.

To the phone museum!

Natalie's new phone!!

The next day we were off to the phone museum which we were convinced we’d never find after a wild trek into the wilderness. Ok, not quite, but it was way up the side of this mountain and down these two way roads built for half a car. This was the only museum devoted entirely to the cell phone, and had an awesome display of early phones as well.  The curator took through the museum himself.   The types of cells phones and the time span of all the ‘firsts’ was impressive.  Off to lunch at a baek ban restaurant (literal translation = 100 banchan – side dishes, but not really 100, just a lot, lol!) that was serve yourself (unusual) and delicious. The Hanji workshop was closed and the Yeosu Ceramics Festival was a let-down after the awesome one from the day before.  Yeosu was more for families with children and the merchandise was all commercially made rather than hand thrown.   

World's 1st Smartphone

So we hopped into the car and made our way back to Iksan, where we stopped for Chinese for dinner, (a different kind!)  A very full weekend, and a ton of fun!!  Great memories with great friends!