ARTE Distribution

In South Korea, the Gameunsa Temple Site is located far from the hustle and bustle of Seoul. Three Buddhist nuns live there and are determined to preserve the culinary traditions of this 1,700-year-old building.

In Asia, the charismatic abbess WooKwan Sunim is considered one of the best cooks in the world. The temple being located in the mountains, she cooks with what nature offers, starting with wild plants.  The result is a vital energy that benefits both the nuns of the Gameunsa Temple Site and the faithful.

This 10-part series takes you on an anthropological and cultural journey to ten destinations around the world, to reflect on our globalized consumption patterns. An invitation to travel in the most beautiful way possible to the last bastions of local customs and cultures.

Let us meet the men and women who make these markets a place of commercial and cultural exchange. While the globalized economy leads to a standardization of tastes and consumption, going to a market allows you to dive immediately into a local culture, to meet its inhabitants, its food, its smells, its colors, its customs. An invitation to travel in the most beautiful way possible, to enjoy the abundant and varied riches of nature and meet people from different cultures around the world, who are the beating hearts of these markets. 

Every culture has its own rituals for dealing with the different stages that punctuate our lives (being born, growing up, seducing, bonding and dying). Each episode of this series will focus on two different cultures and their distinct or similar ways to deal with these issues. 

Being born, growing up, seducing, bonding, dying: this cycle of life is immutable. It is the very foundation of our condition as human beings, beyond culture. It leads us inexorably towards the end – after all, moving forward in life means moving closer to death, and from that point of view, living becomes a frightening adventure! This is why humans have invented accompanying rituals that help structure life in specific stages: the collective rites of passage from one stage to another provide individuals with a calmer perception of their mortal condition.
 

Meet those who, throughout the world, celebrate these life's transitions. Purification, isolation, pain, transformation of the body: every group has its own practices, beliefs and prohibitions that reveal its identity. By sharing these rituals with them, we gain an insight into their culture, their fears, their desires, their vision of life, their way of responding to “the difficult task that is growing up”.

It allows us to question our own anxieties and perspectives and reflect on the usefulness of these ritualized occasions. Today, our Western societies are becoming more and more emancipated from them: people are free to live out their love with whomever they choose, cremation is secular, and graduating is no longer a widely recognized official entry into adulthood. What do rites of passage teach practitioners? How do they help them move on to the next step? What kind of transformation does one undergo?

Located in the historic center of Mexico City, Mexico's capital, Mercado de Sonora is home to the country's largest esoteric market. Here, low-price herbs, amulets, potions and talismans are sold like hotcakes, and people practice all kinds of magic, both black and white. The Mexicans call it the witchcraft market. With its 400 tiny stalls spread along 11 narrow, crowded aisles, Mercado de Sonora is a city within a city. A place full of mystery that reveals the dual dimension of Mexican spirituality, between Catholic fervor and the continuing existence of pre-Hispanic rites and esoteric beliefs. It's a particularly lively market, especially in early November around the time of the Day of the Dead.

Hernin and Marcellin Abong are two Vanuatu twin brothers with very different backgrounds: one has become the “Very Great Chief” of his tribe, while the other is an ethno-archaeologist. 

Their culture is slowly but surely disappearing forever. To keep a record of it, they both delve into the most remote parts of Vanuatu in search of the customs and rites of their people. On foot and by canoe, their journey takes them to grandiose and isolated territories, to discover spectacular and unknown rituals, even for them.

Among the planet's largest deltas, none is as fertile and highly populated as the Mekong Delta in Southern Vietnam. In this wetland area, where people row more than they walk, trade takes place quite naturally on the water. The region is home to some of the most beautiful floating markets in Southeast Asia. The most prominent one is the floating market of Cai Rang. It enables all the delta's farmers to come and sell their fruits and vegetables. Over the years the market has set up its own culture and its own rules. A micro-society that is now faced with economic change and competition from road transport.

Along the shores of Lake Titicaca, in the city of Puno, at an altitude of 3,800 meters, an unusual market is held every year: the Alasitas Fair, where you can purchase your dreams! Around a hundred vendors sell miniatures known as alasitas. Buying an alasita implies making a wish to get the actual item in the coming year. This market has its roots in ancestral beliefs inherited from the Incas, but is also linked to a major Catholic festival.
 

When a child is born... What other world do they come from? To be recognized and admitted by society, they must be given a name, registered in a lineage, “declared” among their own... Each society has created rituals to welcome newborns.

For the anthropologist Maurice Godelier, there would be a direct link between the making of an individual and the way of thinking about their birth. A child would not only belong to their parents, they would also belong to society...

At Madurai flower market, the biggest one in South India, jasmine is king. From the wholesalers who set the price of jasmine, hourly, according to demand and production, to the workers who make the flower necklaces for offerings and for women to put in their hair, not to mention the growers, a whole chain of trade, solidarity and knowledge sharing is revealed.

In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, the Minangkabau are a matriarchal society. While Koranic law attributes only one-third of the inheritance to girls, the property of a Minangkabau family is passed on from mother to daughter and men can be repudiated by their wives.

Reini is a young woman from the Minangkabau ethnic group in West Sumatra. She is getting married. She goes to pick up her future husband from his parents’. According to their tradition, she is the one who has to lead him to the ceremony where the guests are waiting. After the wedding, the young husband will move in with his in-laws and take care of the children of his clan, while Reini will work in the fields.
 
But in Indonesia, in recent years, Islam has become more rigid. Nowadays more and more men want to restrict women's freedom. Reini knows that the Minangkabau way of life and traditions are in danger, but she plans to fight to protect them.

In this episode, Anne-Sylvie will question the time of passage from childhood to adulthood through two encounters: that of Getolio, a young boy from the Xavante tribe in the Brazilian Amazon and Silla in Papua New Guinea.

These two ways of living out the end of childhood question a period of life that does not seem to exist in these traditional societies: adolescence. In the West, where rites of passage such as military service have disappeared, the time of adolescence is getting longer and longer, and with it a certain unease. As if the wandering between two worlds – that of the children and that of the adults – did not have a clear ending. As if this unraveling provoked a psychological discomfort that could go as far as a profound disorder.

In Cambodia, the small town of Skun has become a " must-visit " place for all edible insect lovers: crickets, silkworms, grasshoppers... The roadside market is famous for its specialty: deep fried tarantula with garlic. A delicacy that Cambodians love. But in recent years, spiders have become increasingly rare.