Introducing the Ansan's local festivals & events - 김동은(Micha)

 

 Hello, I’m Kim Dongeun (Micha). This time, I’ll introduce some Ansan’s festivals & events! I think I’ve never been to an Ansan festival. While searching about those, I really wanted to experience those amazing events.

 1. Ansan Street Arts Festival / 안산거리극축제

 

 This festival was launced in 2005 to promote the city, providing enjoyable and artistic performances. It is held around May every year. This is the first and the largest street performance event in Korea. There are various performances, such as plays, mimes, music, dance, physical plays, circus, and parades. These art performances are held in streets and squares where people just freely move around, without special stage equipments. The best artist teams from Korea and foreign countries come to perform there. Also, people can participate in a lesson program to learn from foreign artists or experience other cultures. It is a international but familiar festival.

 This is a quite popular event, but I haven’t heard about it. I really, really want to go there after the Covid-19, and I will. It sounds so fun and exciting. The good news is, this year, the festival will be held in October. I thought it was canceled. I’m not sure if I’ll go there. And It might be canceled. Nevertheless, this is a great, awesome festival and I’m glad it is not canceled.

 2. Seongho Cultural Festival / 성호문화제

 This event was started to promote Seongho Yi Ik, a proud figure of Ansan. This festival is to honor Yi Ik, who was famous for being one of the greatest Silhak scholar (practical studies scholar). It is held in Seongho Park and Yi Ik’s graveyard. There are events such as Yi Ik Mitral System, SamDoHoe(삼두회) Experience, Seongho Writing Contest, Seongho Academic Conference. Yi Ik Mitral System is a traditional confusion style offering(서원제) which is to admire Seongho Yi Ik. 삼두회 is a poetry club which Seongho made. While he held this club, he put bean soup, bean sprout, and bean paste (된장). With these foods made of beans, he criticized the corrupt officials, who was extravagant with food.

 There are also traditional art performances like 북청사자놀음, Korean dances, traditional Korean martial arts performance, pansori(판소리), folk song concert, and samulnori(사물놀이)(Korean traditional percussion quartet). And people can experience making the fermented soybean lump with bean, and experience traditional games.

 It looks so fun! I want to watch the performances like martial arts performance and the samulnori. I have been to this festival. Although I never saw the performances and concerts, I did participate in the Seongho writing contest, 2 years ago! And I won some prizes! I received an encouragement award in the poetry section, and got the second prize in the prose section!! I remember getting a gift voucher with the award. I would like to go to this festival and watch the cool performances.

 I did not know that there were so much famous and amazing events and festivals in Ansan! I really, really want to participate in these festivals, but thesedays there aren’t any events and even if there are, it is dangerous and kind of inappropriate to go. If the covid-19 ends, I will go to one of these festivals.