Yet another festival - Andong Mask Festival
Don’t let the title mislead you into thinking I don’t enjoy all of the festivals Korea has to offer. I just feel a bit silly ALWAYS posting about the festivals I’ve been going to. I have quite a bit of catching up to do so here we go.
Too exhausted to make it Andong after our Jjimjilbang adventures in Jinju the week before, Bryan, Catherine, and I settled for a quick afternoon trip the following week to catch the last day of the mask festival. I don’t have a whole lot of pictures since we were there for just a few hours but that isn’t to say there wasn’t much to see.
We took a bus from Daegu and were DELIGHTED to find that not only were our seats assigned on this bus but the bus was QUITE luxurious with huge reclining seats. Major step up from our Jinju trek! From the bus terminal to the festival we caught a cab and decided to start on the waterfront where there were vendors and performers. Per usual, there was a stage dedicated to girls imitating famous KPop songs and dances but we were lucky enough to catch a far more unique drag karaoke show under the tent tops. I was surprised by the rather high age-average among the viewing audience….
The main festival area was a lot more cultured with vendors offering delicious mask shaped cakes (of which I purchased a big box for the office), special herbs and vegtables and products the locals were gathered around, and fun activities. We opted to make masks at an arts and crafts booth. Had we known about the cool rice paper mask booth located elsewhere we would have gone there but we ended up at the colorful styrofoam clay art booth. It was lots of fun but we were SO deeply concentrated on making our designs and mixing our colors that we wasted far too much time sitting in silence working intently. Nonetheless, voila!
Our mission was to try some of Andong’s famous stewed chicken (안동찜닭) but unfortunately there was none at the festival and we were limited on time. Instead of spending a ton of money on over priced festival dinners we finally gave in and tried some of Korea’s fatty street food. Here are Catherine and Bryan with the infamous french fry coated hot dogs.
We ended our night with a viewing of a traditional Korean mask dance. It is essentially a set of skits all performed by men in masks. There is little dialogue and instead they communicate through their very humorous dances and movements. One featured two men in a horse costume running around, lifting one hind leg, and squirting the audience with a water bottle while another had a chubby man with a protruding belly portraying a hard working 16 year old girl.
I’m going to have to visit Andong again sometime to finally try that chicken and see what else the town has to offer. The night was wrapped up with a parade and a modest but gorgeous fireworks show off the main stage. The Andong Mask Festival is another bit of Korean tradition I would recommend to anyone looking to venture out into the real Korea and learn a bit about its culture.
