Wednesday, August 29, 2007

추석이 일찍 왔다

We have a songpyeon-making (송편 만들기) event in the Singapore Korean School yesterday. Since two semesters ago, an event is planned every semester to introduce students to the Korean culture. Previously, there was gimbap-making and Korean calligraphy organised. I wasn't aware that there was an event yesterday until I was told by our teacher at the start of the lesson. Too bad, I never brought my camera along. Our teacher gave a short brief of things related to songpyeon. Songpyeon is a traditional Korean food eaten during Chuseok or, in our language, Mid-Autumn Festival. The skin of songpyeon is made from rice flour (쌀가루) and its filling can include red bean, red date, chestnut or sesame seeds. Our teacher added that there was a traditional saying that women who could make beautiful songpyeon would give birth to beautiful daughter.

To accommodate the event, we only have lesson for one hour yesterday. After that, all the classes gathered at the school canteen to make songpyeon. Our teacher first demonstrated the method of making songpyeon. She pulled off a ball of dough and rolled it in between her palms. Once a nice ball shape was formed, she used her thumb and index finger of both hands to press out a cup-shaped dough skin. Then she placed a teaspoon of peanut filling into the dough skin and sealed it by pressing the edge together to form a crescent-shaped songpyeon. I realised that songpyeon is very much like "tangyuan" or rice ball which we make during Winter Solstice (冬至) as both use rice flour as the main ingredient. The exception is the shape. Chinese believe that round shape symbolises fullness, completeness and perfection and hence things should be made round to symbolise goodness, be it tangyuan or mooncake. Koreans make their songpyeon crescent shape because of the belief that the best has yet to come. A full moon will wane after that but a crescent moon will continue to develop to become a full moon and that symbolises growth and more good harvests to come.

After we have completed making our songpyeon, we selected three of our better-looking ones for the songpyeon-making competition. Before the winning result was announced our principal gave us a talk on Chuseok and songpyeon. The interesting thing that I picked out was that songpyeon is supposed to be cooked by steaming over pine needles. The "song" in songpyeon actually means pine while "pyeon" means cake. So while Chinese has mooncake (月饼) for Mid Autumn Festival, Korean has "pinecake" or songpyeon (송편-松饼) for Chuseok. Our principal also took the opportunity to announce that the 3rd Korean Speech Contest (제3회 한국어 말아기 대회) will be held on 3 November this year. He encouraged students to take part in the contest by using himself as an example. He told us that he "suddenly" felt that he could speak Japanese very well after taking part in a Japanese Speech Contest.

Anyway, the winner for the event was TOPIK 1 class. Our class won nothing. Looking at the state of the songpyeon made by the students, I really hope that the traditional Korean saying is just a make-believe.

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