Mong mong… or happy dog year
Try as I might (not very hard) I couldn’t spot any amusing stories in the Korean press to accompany the start of the dog year. Oh well. The BBC on the other hand have been running a FOOC story about the conflict of interest in modern Chinese society now that dogs are increasingly popular pets as well as menu items.
So here is something pretty instead:
Yes, a lovely Korean kite that a friend of mine gave me recently. Didn’t get a chance to fly it today unfortunately.
This new year is 丙戌 (pyŏngsul/병술) or ‘fire dog’ in the sexagenary cycle. Previous pyŏngsul years have included 1946, 1886, 1826 (etc). Can’t think of anything particularly interesting that has happened in a pyŏngsul year before, but perhaps something will come to mind…
By the way, I’ve just discovered that Wikipedia now has an excellent guide to the Chinese/East Asian sexagenary calendar. It gives all the ‘heavenly stems’ and ‘earthly branches’, showing how they are written and pronounced in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese and then all the 60 combinations that make up the years of the cycle. I have to tackle this calendar quite a bit in my research but I still haven’t learnt all the characters or how they are pronounced. I suppose that will have to be my new year’s resolution…
