Chu Dong Tu and Mai An Tiem

This episode tells two stories, set side by side in the same old book, one tale apart.¹²

The first is Chu Dong Tu and Tien Dung — the young man with no loincloth and the daughter of a king. The second is Mai An Tiem and a watermelon on a sandbank.

Neither has a single word in the official histories: not in the Le dynasty history, not in the Nguyen dynasty one.³⁴ They exist only in Linh Nam chich quai.

And both, in the old text, have a passage that today's telling has dropped. What matters is that neither dropped passage is a minor detail — each changes what the story means.

Chu Dong Tu's father was named Chu Vi Van, of the village of Chu Xa on the great river. The book records that father and son were both of a kindly nature.¹

Their house caught fire and every possession burned, leaving one cloth loincloth, which father and son wore in turn when either went out.

The father, old and ill, told his son: when I die, bury me naked and keep the loincloth for yourself. The son could not bring himself to do it, and buried the loincloth with his father, leaving himself bare.

From then on he lived by standing in the water with his hands out to the passing merchant boats, or by fishing with a rod.¹

A man so poor that his family's only property was one piece of cloth, and he put it in the ground. The poverty in this story is not symbolic poverty.

The old text opens with Tien Dung, not with Chu Dong Tu.

The book records: the Hung line had passed to its third reign, and a daughter was born, named Tien Dung My Nuong, eighteen years old, of fine appearance, who did not want a husband and cared only for travelling. She went about the whole country and the king did not stop her. Each year around the second and third months she would fit out boats and float out to sea, so happy she forgot to come back.¹

A princess of the Hung age travelling for months each year with boats and a retinue of her own, and her father letting her be. That detail is in a text of the fourteenth century, not an addition by someone of our own time.

The book also records Tien Dung as a tenth-generation descendant of Than Nong.¹ Anyone who heard the Son Tinh episode will see the snag at once: there, the Hung king's daughter My Nuong is recorded as a descendant of the twenty-seventh generation.

Two daughters of Hung kings, two different distances to the same ancestor, inside one book. The compiler neither explains it nor tidies it away. This is how the collection works: it writes down what it heard, even when the pieces do not fit.

The meeting itself today's telling keeps fairly faithfully.

Tien Dung's boat put in at the bank with gongs, drums and pipes and a large retinue. Chu Dong Tu, frightened, hid in a clump of reeds, scooped out a hollow in the sand to bury himself, and pulled sand over the top. She had a curtain drawn around that very clump for bathing. The water poured down, the sand washed away, and a man was revealed.¹

Tien Dung saw that it was a man, thought a long while, and said: I never wished to marry, and now I meet this person, both of us bare in one hollow of sand — this is heaven's arrangement. He refused outright; she answered that heaven had joined them, so how could he refuse.¹

The father's reaction, though, today's telling usually softens. The original softens nothing: Tien Dung has not spared her good name, has not valued what is mine, has roamed the roads and lowered herself to marry a poor man — with what face can she come before me.¹

She heard of it, and did not dare go home.

Here is the strange part. Cast off by her father, the two did not withdraw into hiding. They went into business.

The book records that they opened a landing market, put up shops and stalls, traded with the people, and it grew into a large market; foreign merchants came and went to deal there, and honoured the two of them as its masters.¹

Then a rich man proposed a scheme: let the lady put up one dat of gold, go out to sea this year to buy precious goods, and next year it will be ten dat. Tien Dung was delighted and said to her husband: we two were joined by heaven, our food and clothing are heaven's gift; now let us take the gold and send our household men out to sea to trade, and make our living so.¹

A story of immortals, discussing a tenfold return.

Chu Dong Tu sailed out and put in at Mount Quynh Vien, where a small hermitage stood. While his household men went for water he climbed up and met a monk named Phat Quang, who taught him the Way; he stayed on to study and handed the gold to them to buy goods with. When the ship came back for him, the monk gave him a staff and a conical hat, saying: the power resides in these.¹

He returned and spoke of the Way. Tien Dung awoke to it too, and they gave up the market, the shops and the whole estate to go looking for a teacher.

One evening, with no village in reach, they stopped by the roadside, planted the staff and set the hat on top for shelter. By the third watch of the night there appeared walls and gates, jewelled towers, treasure halls, terraces and galleries, storehouses, shrines, gold and silver and pearls, beds and hangings, immortal boys and jade maidens, officers and guards — all ranged before them. In the morning the people around were astonished and came with incense, flowers and food to offer themselves as subjects; there were civil and military officials, troops posted in watch, a separate kingdom in itself.¹

The Hung king heard of it, took it for his daughter's rebellion, and marched against her. His officers asked to divide the troops and hold her off. Tien Dung laughed and said: this is not my doing, it is heaven's sending; life and death rest with heaven, and how should I dare resist my father; I shall take what is right and leave myself to be put to death.¹

The royal army arrived and camped at Tu Nhien bank, still across the great river, and night fell before it could cross. At midnight a great wind rose, flinging sand and tearing up trees, and the army fell into confusion. The citadel and all who followed Tien Dung rose into the sky at once, and the ground sank into a great marsh. The people built a shrine there and called the marsh The Marsh of One Night — the Marsh of One Night; the sandbank they called Man Tru, and the market Tham.¹

The second story is much shorter, and it is the one where the old text and today's telling stand furthest apart.

The familiar version: Mai An Tiem was the adopted son of a Hung king, displeased him, was banished to a desert island, survived by growing watermelons, and was pardoned in the end.

The old text opens quite differently. There was a retainer named Mai Thiem, a foreigner by origin. At seven or eight years old, the king bought him from a merchant ship as a slave. He grew up well-featured and quick to remember things, and the king gave him a new name, Mai Yen, with the style An Thiem, gave him a concubine, by whom he had a son and a daughter, trusted him with business, and he gradually became rich.²

Then gifts began arriving at his door, and he grew proud, saying often: all this is property from my former life; I have never had any favour from a lord.

The king heard, and was angry: a servant who breeds arrogance in himself, who does not know his lord's favour, who says all this is property from a former life — now I shall put you in a place beyond the sea where there are no people, and we shall see whether the property of your former life is there. He banished him to a sandbank outside the sea mouth of Nga Son district, with no human track on any side, leaving him food enough for four or five months, meaning him to eat it and die.²

His wife wept. An Thiem laughed: heaven gave me life and will surely keep me; life and death rest with heaven, so why should I worry.

Then a white bird came flying from the west, settled on the corner of the hill, called three or four times, and spat out six or seven melon seeds onto the sand. The seeds sprouted and grew thickly and bore fruit. He rejoiced: this is no marvel, this is heaven keeping me. He cut one open and ate it, and the taste was sweet and cooling, the spirit light; he kept the seeds, planted more the next year, had more than he could eat, and traded the surplus for rice to feed his wife and children.

Nobody knew the name of the fruit. Because the bird had carried the seeds from the west, it was called tay qua — the western melon.²

Fishermen and traders who tasted it all liked it; people from villages near and far bought it for seed.

Later the king thought of him and sent someone to see whether he was alive. The man came back with his report, and the king sighed: he said it was property from a former life, and truly he did not speak idly. He recalled him, restored his office and gave him slaves and maidservants. The sandbank where he had lived was named An Thiem, and the village Mai — today in Nga Son district in Thanh Hoa.²

In its very last clause the book adds a variant that softens that origin itself: one account says the bank was where An Thiem's parents and forebears had lived all along.² If so, he was no foreigner brought in from outside. The book sets down both and chooses neither.

That ending is not "the king forgives a man who has learned his lesson". It is the king conceding that the arrogant remark was no idle boast.