Monday, February 15, 2010

설날

First lunar new year away from home and I saw some kids making snow balls in Unhyeongung. Soon, they were running around and throwing at each other. Unhyeongung was one of the few places in Seoul open to public during the Seollal holiday.

I never doubted it when they said spring comes with lunar new year. Now, I know it's not exactly true. Nature had yet to awake from its winter slumber and bowing reeds were still covered in snow on Seollal. Not to mention, it was cold and not much of a festive mood in Seoul.

Seollal is not the same as Chinese Lunar New Year but they share the same twelve zodiac animals. This year is the year of the Tiger and I wish everyone a roaring success in this new year.

5 comments:

  1. 새해 복 많이 받으세요! 新年快樂! Happy New Year!!

    Cheers,
    Xaviere

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  2. 새해 복 많이 받으세요~! ^^

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  3. 여러분, 올해도 건강하시고 행복하시고요.
    해피 뉴 이어 ^^

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  4. so what's the different between korean new year and chinese new year, and say vietnamese new year? am i wrong to think that they all originated from the chinese culture?

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  5. chinese new year is the most important festival to the chinese while seollal is the second most important festival to the korean (the first is chuseok). koreans pray to their ancestors, eat 'ddeok' soup, fly kite and play 'yunnori' on seollal but chinese don't do those. of course there are some similarities like paying respect to parents and grandparents.

    as for vietnamese new year, it is quite similar to chinese new year and it is acknowledged that it originated from chinese new year. however, the same may not be say of seollal.

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