Saturday, March 23, 2013

Joung Hwan Park / Let's Celebrate! / Tues 11am

       There is just too much to eat and too much to talk about with all these people. That is because it is the time of Chuseok. Chuseok, originally known as Hangawi, is a time where families and relatives visit their hometowns and get together in celebrating a major harvest festival. In Korea, during this three-day holiday, families and relative gather and carry out traditional customs, enjoy traditional food and play folk games. Besides all this, Chuseok in general, is a time for giving blessings to one another, wishing them well for the future and catching up with those who you haven't seen in a while.

Some traditional customs of Chuseok include Charye, Seongmyo and Beolcho. Charye is holding a memorial service for ancestors and honoring them. This is usually done in the morning and then families head off to the graves of ancestors. Seongmyo is visiting ancestral grave sites and Beolcho is taking care of the graves by removing the weeds around them. From the past, Seongmyo was carried out in the traditional way of offering traditional food and alcohol in honoring the ancestors, but the way paying respect has changed nowadays as people's notion towards following the custom have become diverse due to their respective religious beliefs. Traditional food at Chuseok is a feast to remember because the variety of food at the table is enough to make some people forget that going on a diet was their new year's goal. Songpyeon is a major food eaten during Chuseok, which is a Korean traditional rice cake with stuffing inside it. The stuffing is made with lots of healthy ingredients such as sesame seeds, walnut, chestnut, honey, etc, and other well-known traditional food include hangwa, japchae and bulgogi.

        Besides all the traditional customs and food, another memorable aspect of Chuseok is where the children show respect to elders of the family by bowing to them, hence, elders bless the children by wishing them well for the future and giving them a small amounts of pocket money. However, most important of all, Chuseok is a time for remembering the significance of family and sharing the love and joy between everyone. 

3 comments:

  1. I read your essay very interesting. I also like Chuseok too. At the hook, you mentioned Hangawi was very good idea. It make us interesting to read. Also, Charye, Seongmyo, were make me know well about Chuseok.
    But I just wonder how did you seperate the body into 3. Because the writing shoul be in 5 paragraph essay. Your body's content was already seperated into 3 paragraph.

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  2. I learned a lot from your reading about Chuseok and I also like your hook sentence. However, your thesis statement in the introduction paragraph seems to be unclear. But you provided good background information about Chuseok in all of your paragraphs; the customs, food, and its meaning. However, I think you should remember that this essay should be a "process essay". Although you have provided good background information, facts or other deatials, there's no process or sequence. So, how about choose one thing about Chuseok you mentioned, such as Charye or Seongmyo, or Sonpyon... and write a process of it? For example, the process of Charye of your family, or how to make Songpyeon on Chuseok.

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  3. 2nd draft of "Let's celebrate"

    There is just too much to eat and too much to talk about with all these people. That is because it is the time of Chuseok. Chuseok, originally known as Hangawi, is a time where families and relatives visit their hometowns and get together in celebrating a major harvest festival. In Korea, during this three-day holiday, families and relative gather and carry out traditional customs, enjoy traditional food and play folk games. Besides all this, Chuseok in general, is a time for giving blessings to one another, wishing them well for the future and catching up with those who you haven’t seen in a while.

    Some traditional customs of Chuseok include Charye, Seongmyo and Beolcho. Charye is holding a memorial service for ancestors and honoring them. This is usually done in the morning and then families head off to the graves of ancestors. Seongmyo is visiting ancestral grave sites and Beolcho is taking care of the graves by removing the weeds around them. From the past, Seongmyo was carried out in the traditional way of offering traditional food and alcohol in honoring the ancestors, but the way paying respect has changed nowadays as people’s notion towards following the custom have become diverse due to their respective religious beliefs.

    Traditional food at Chuseok is a feast to remember because the variety of food at the table is enough to make some people forget that going on a diet was their new year’s goal. Songpyeon is a major food eaten during Chuseok, which is a Korean traditional rice cake with stuffing inside it. The stuffing is made with lots of healthy ingredients such as sesame seeds, walnut, chestnut, honey, etc, and other well-known traditional food include hangwa, japchae and bulgogi.

    On a more practical term, the moving of people in masses at Chuseok is a thing not to be forgotten about. Families, usually in the urban areas, all head off to their respective hometowns and this creates havoc in terms of traffic and crowdedness on public transports. Cars are made to wait for hours, especially on highways, and people taking public transport have no choice but to suffer stuffy subway carriages filled with people. Hence, if you prefer a less congested environment during Chuseok, I would recommend that you stay and enjoy urban areas with much less people than usual.

    Besides all the traditional customs and food, another memorable aspect of Chuseok is where the children show respect to elders of the family by bowing to them, hence, elders bless the children by wishing them well for the future and giving them a small amounts of pocket money. However, most important of all, Chuseok is a time for remembering the significance of family and sharing the love and joy between everyone.

    ReplyDelete