Vu Quynh

The old chronicles say

The task the Hung king sets in the tale of the steamed cake has two halves, not one: whoever could meet his wish, find rare and delicious things, and at the year's end offer them to the former kings so as to fulfil filial duty, would be given the throne. The food, and the filial duty. In his preface he reads exactly the second half, and writes a single short line: the tale of the steamed cake praises the nurture of one's parents. A long tale of a dream, of two kinds of cake and of the choosing of an heir, he reduces to one commendation of filial care.²¹

In his preface, written in the ren-zi year of the Hong Duc reign, that is 1492, he runs through the tales one by one and says plainly what he takes from each. Chu Dong Tu's chance meeting with Tien Dung he groups with another tale in the book, Thoi Vi's meeting with an immortal companion, and closes on both with one line: do good, and the hidden merit of it can be seen. Of the watermelon he writes that setting the tale out leaves the habit of trusting in what one owns and giving no thought to a lord's favour standing exposed.¹

How later ages remembered

Those two tales are read today in a very modern way — Chu Dong Tu as a love story across the gap between rich and poor, Mai An Tiem as a story of self-reliance. The man who edited the book in the fifteenth century read them quite differently: both of the lessons he drew are moral lessons about gratitude, not about love and not about perseverance.¹