The Bulls Fight - Cheongdo

Let me start off by saying every city in Korea, no matter how small, has a festival to call their own. For the most part these festivals are arbitrarily chosen, as if from a hat, seeing that for most events there are half a dozen other places that have the same claim to fame. Let me also state here that if you have seen one Korean festival you have, in fact, pretty much seen them all. The location might be different but 90% of the rest will be the same. Same food, same booths, same atmosphere.

Cheongdo's claim to fame is bull fighting. It is an art that has been passed down for generations, or so they say. This past weekend I had the privilege of attending said fighting of the bulls. When you think of bull fighting, you probably think of that cruel ritual where a guy in tights stands in the middle of the ring and taunts a bull with a red cape, all the while stabbing him in the back. But this works differently, the bull's adversary is another bull. They have been trained to push each other in a similar style to sumo wrestling. The loser is the bull that turns and runs.

The bull fights themselves were entertaining, in a boxing sort of way. It is a chess match. The foot work and the mental work done by the bull is almost more important that his strength. For a second you think that one of them has the upper hand and then the tide turns and the other looks to be the victor. But we did not get overly in to it as we we did not understand the format. Had we understood it would have been nice to be able to follow and cheer one bull to the win.

There was also a mechanical bull that was unofficially for the foreigners to entertain the Koreans. It was also nice that there were others to go with, we were five all together so it was a good time of relaxing while taking in something new. (As you can probably tell from my writing I start off alright and then as I run out of time I rush it. This is one of those times) So to wrap up it was definitely worth the 5000 won ticket price.