Happy Lunar New Year

Welcome to the Year of the Rabbit and Year 4708 on the Chinese Calendar.

Koreans celebrate the Lunar New Year with traditional foods, games, and rites, all performed at the home of their ancestors which makes for a massive mobilization of people and absolute gridlock on every transportation system.  The oldest son's wife is responsible for preparing and cooking the entire feast that customarily includes tteokguk soup, made of beef broth, pressed rice cakes, and fried eggs.  Not eating tteokguk soup would be the equivalent of skipping the turkey on Thanksgiving in the U.S.  The whole Lunar New Year holiday is centered around food because food is the traditional gift to wish for a prosperous year and food is an integral component in the ancestral rites performed. 

Beautifully packaged boxes of everything edible have been popping up in stores in the past month.  Similar to in Japan, here also the packaging is as important or more important than its contents.... So no using Sunday's comics as wrapping paper here.  Everything from oranges to raw meat, honey to olive oil, shampoo to spam- all these are available for purchase at a greatly inflated price.  



Here are some pictures from the grocery store in the basement of Pyeongtaek's Train Station.

Each box is over $150 worth of traditional stale-tasting Korean cookies made with honey, nuts and grains.

Packaged fruit in the produce section- one box of 12 asian pears was over $60.

Koreans go wild over Spam!  This box is about $50.  Mmm good!

I've mentioned before that Koreans are considered to be one-year old at birth, but another oddity about Koreans' ages is that they all turn another year older together on Lunar New Year's Day.  So this year, a baby born on February 2nd (before the New Year) will be one year old but will turn two years old the next day on New Year's Day, February 3rd, even though the baby is considered two days old to Westerners.  However, the Western calendar is used instead of the Lunar Calendar for all legal documents, so no 19 year old Koreans can buy beer in the States without a fake ID.