Fans

Fans are everywhere over here.
The countries of Asia - much like anywhere else- have a long and tumultuous history but they doo seem to agree on the important stuff.

• Rice is tasty
• Tea is art
• Fans are awesome

Well they have been infamously  famously used for battle and there are countless records of people assassinating/saving lives through the use of a cunning fan. Obviously not the bamboo and rice kind but the prettily painted kind forged by the blacksmith.

Ah but they have so many uses martial arts, slapstick comedy, dance and keeping cool....wait.

Regardless, every other person on the street has some form or another fluttering from their fingers, (Hey, it's hot.) and a coupke of people say 'to hell with that' and seem to carry around electric fans a little bigger than the norm for hand held variety.

All the tourist shops sell a variety of the exact same model - paper, fabric, plastic etc with and without boxes/cases. Sometimes the prices surprised me in that the cheaper and uglier fans were more expensive than the larger ones -weird.

Anyway, most of it was nice but the same guy was probably supplying half Seoul.

In Insa-dong, we found an old guy who had set up a stall at the top of the street (I believe he was actually from a shop further down) painting fans. [see above]

These were decent enough quality fans but he had (and was still)
 painted all of the fans which is what made them interesting.

While there were lots of pretty fans painted with flowers et al I knew that for me it should be nothing other than the teapot and cups. XD

I bought the cover and accessory at a shop elsewhere. (two different shops in fact) Before that though, I had fun fluttering my fan as we walked down the street. It was hot so I really appreciated the breeze I can tell you!

I wrote down my name in English letters for him and he read my name in Korean. Pretty impressive Hangul. On the right is his signature as the artist and on the left is my name. How do you like that? ^_^