Chusok (some say Chuseok) is the Korean harvest festival, the autumn full moon. In the Soviet time it was not celebrated openly, but the old women made rice cakes (songpyeon) in secret and brought them to the graves. After 1992 the people of the valley wanted something public. In 2008 the head of the Korean Cultural Centre, Mr Tyan, himself a rice farmer, started the festival that we have now: long tables in the open, the first of the new rice cooked by all the women together, music, a tug-of-war between the villages, and a ceremony at the graves.
I am no organiser. I go each year, I sit on the grass and I judge the rice. Every year someone asks me "Viktor Pavlovich, how is the harvest?" and I say "better than the people, worse than the rice". A bad joke, but they laugh every year.
This year there were about 3,000 people. Half were Iradis from Nurzhan and Talas who came for the food, the other half were us. An Iradi boy, about ten, asked me what is the meaning of Chusok. I said: "It means we are still here and the harvest is in." He thought and said: "Like our Eid." I said, "Yes, like that."
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