They say that money doesn’t grow on trees. In Korea that’s not true. This past weekend we went to the Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival – the largest and longest running cherry blossom festival in South Korea. It draws millions of visitors every year. Now if millions of tourists are drawn to see a bunch of trees with blossoms, then I say Jinhae is a goldmine, money does indeed grow on trees – figuratively speaking of course. In Jinhae it would seem that the colour of money is pink.
It was raining on the day that we went to Jinhae so most of the blossoms had fallen. I think the rain kept a few people away as well – so you could say that’s money down the drain or stream in this case. Non the less we enjoyed it and the blossoms were still pretty amazing.
One more thing: The Korean word for ‘park’ is 공원 (gong-won). I find it interesting that the word ‘won’ appears in the word ‘park’. Won is the Korean currency. Linguistically it was obviously not intended that way but as architects we learn that public spaces adds value to urban environments so I thinks its fitting that the word ‘park’ and the Korean currency share a syllable.
