The Legend of the Heavenly King of Phu-Dong Village
During the reign of King Hung1 the Old Kingdom of Vietnam was peaceful and prosperous. Peasants and farmers often harvested two good crops a year. So, the country became richer and richer everyday, and that made the poor neighboring tribal countries crave strongly for its wealth.
Meanwhile, the An Barbarians in the north of his kingdom had lost their crops several years. Facing inevitable starvation, they organized a huge army to invade this rich kingdom to rob of its food and resources.
Wherever the An came, they killed people, burned their houses, and robbed whatever they could eat and take away. Animals of burden and domestic fowls were slaughtered for food to eat right on the spot or to bring along with their army. The whole country suffered a lot from this war inflicted destruction.
King Hung had to call up his reserved troops to strengthen a strong army and sent many special envoys to all parts of the country to look for a man or woman with extraordinary, military skills to lead this army to defend the country and to kill foreign invaders.
Many years before the An Barbarians invaded Vietnam, at Phu-Dong village lived a young female peasant. She was not married yet because she had not found a man, who could match her idealized picture of a husband. In fact, she had refused many good marriage proposals in her region.
She had a small thatch roof house facing east. The walls of the house were made of yellow clay and the door of hard wood. Many kinds of flowering plants, flowery bushes, orchids, dahlias, lilies, chrysanthemums, and roses abounded the front garden yielding her humble abode the beauty of a fairyland.
The scenery of the back side of her house was also as beautiful as that of the front. Banana trees clustered around her two bamboo windows rending the whole house a pleasant coolness during the summer.
She was quiet, diligent, and very active. In the morning she came to work in her rice field. In the afternoon, she worked around her house tending her flowers, two vegetable beds, and a few fruit trees. At night, she practiced some kung fu, took a bath, and went to bed.
Early one morning when she came to her rice paddy to weed the rice plants, she was aware of two new, huge footprints left on the soft mud. She came close to look at them and wondered, “Who was that that had such big feet?” Curiously, she stepped right on those footprints to compare how much bigger they were than hers. As soon as she was standing inside those footprints, she felt a strange frisson, which made her feel both at ease and sick
And at the end of that year, she gave birth to a chubby baby boy. She fed her son with her milk and rice gruel. Her son grew like all other normal children. But he never cried, cooed, smiled, sat up, walked, or talked at all. The superstitious villagers believed that her son was a ghost or a devil incarnate. And they dared not venture near her house. Even though her son never talked, she really loved and cherished him.
The boy just lay on his back and did not say a word until when he was three. The day he began to talk was the day the king’s envoy came to his village. The Royal Crier cried aloud the king’s decree as follows,
“I, King Hung request all the people of this beautiful country stand up to fight foreign invaders. Whoever had special talent or strategy that could help defeat the invaders and protect his fatherland would be made Commanding General of my army. All requests concerning defending our fatherland will be satisfied by my envoy.”
A long while before the Royal Crier read the decree; the boy had already sat up, called his mother in, and told her, “Mom! In a short while when the Royal Crier has finished reading the king’s decree, please tell the envoy to come in to meet me, so I can give him my order.”
His mother was astonished that he could speak so clearly. But she just stood there staring at him in awe for she dared not tell the envoy what her son wanted. She knew from all along that any one, who dared lie to the king, would be beheaded.
To calm down her fear, he said,“Don’t be afraid, Mom! I am your own son, and I will do you no harm at all. I am “truly a general from Heaven. I am here to defend our country and to destroy the “invading enemies.”
Half doubtful, the mother came out and told the envoy all his words. On hearing this order, the envoy became very confused, but he decided to come in to see for himself.
Inside the house, the boy had the envoy stand in front of him and asked,
“Are you the Special Envoy of King Hung?” “That’s true!”
“Yes, Sir!” The boy corrected. “Yes, Sir!”
“Are you sure that the king and you will satisfy all my requests concerning killing the foreign invaders?”
“Yes, Sir! I believe so because the decree says that.”
“That’s great!”
“Hmm …”
“You tell the king I want a giant, iron war horse and a fighting stick, which is two arm- stretches long exact and made of pure iron.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Now, you may leave!”
The envoy had his blood up, but somehow he did what he was told.
Meanwhile, in the capital, the king had sat up several nights to think of a possible way2 to save the people from the calamity of war. One night, he dozed off for a while and heard a voice telling him that in the very near future, a general from Heaven would help him defeat the enemies.
When the king heard of the boy Giong3 and his strange demand for war material, he was still thinking of the voice in his dream. As a consequence, the king himself supervised the making of the iron horse and the fighting stick.
While the king’s army camped on the open rice fields of the village of Phu Dong waiting for its Commander in Chief, a bach (a group of 100 soldiers) was carrying the iron horse and the fighting stick to the boy’s house.
The villagers were astonished at the news that Giong was able to sit up and talk.
In addition, he had already given order to the king’s envoy, and he would go to war to kill the enemies. The villagers packed their small court to witness their own village’s historic event.
On hearing that everything was ready for the war, Giong walked out of his house to greet his village people and the king’s envoy.
When the boy walked out, he had a stately carriage. He bowed at the people and stated gravely, “My fellow-countrymen! Please don’t be afraid of me or my mother! I will kill the enemies and stamp out the disaster of war.” His voice rang sonorously like the rings of a pagoda bell. “Now I need you to feed me before I can go to war,” he said.
The crowd began to discus noisily because they did not know how and what the boy wanted to eat. Finally, an old man ventured a question.
“What do you want to eat and how much is enough?”
“Rice, I want rice! I will eat fifty bowls of rice,” answered the boy. People were whispering again, “How could a boy eat fifty bowls of rice?”
When the rice was cooked and brought in, Giong sat down and began eating.
After a while, the fifty-cup cooker was empty. When he had eaten all the rice, he stood up and stretched. The whole crowd could not believe in what they saw: The little boy stood ten feet tall after his rice eating. He bowed to the villagers and thanked for the rice.
Giong,the young general approached his mother and quickly knelt down and solemnly gave his mother three kowtows.4 Then he picked up his iron fighting stick as if he picked up a straw and mounted his iron horse. The horse gave out a merry, sonorous neigh and trotted toward the king’s army. The whole village followed closely behind his miraculous horse.
Giongstopped his horse in front of the king’s army and said briefly.
“To all my soldiers, you don’t be afraid of me. I am a general from Heaven. And “today, I am your Commanding General. I will lead you to kill and defeat our “enemies in one single battle and then you will go home to your wife and “children.
“Don’t be afraid of the enemies! We will kill them as easily as chopping the “banana trees.
“Now, follow me and charge at the enemy lines!”
As soon as he stopped, he prodded his horse on. His horse gave out a thunderous neigh, spat out fire, and charged at the enemies. The whole army fought with great fortitude closely by their saintly leader.
Wherever Giong’s army came, the enemies were killed, their camps burned. Within one day, the invaders and all the stationed occupying troops were destroyed.
Some time during the course of his mighty fight, his iron fighting stick broke. Giong had to uproot many bamboo clusters on the sides of the roads to strike the enemies down. The bamboo trunks could not stand so many repeating impacts and broke to
pieces.
Each time his army left a battlefield, the ground was almost covered with enemy corpses and strewn with countless pieces of yellow bamboo.
After the enemies and their invading forces were totally destroyed, he rode his horse into the mountains. At the foot of Mount Soc, he shed off his bloody war dress. Then his horse gave out a long, thunderous neigh, kicked hard on its hind legs, and soared into the sky belching out fire. Then they disappeared in the heavenly clouds.
Legend has it that after having saved his motherland, Giong and his horse returned to their previous positions in Heaven.
To honor his glorious feat of arms and to observe his services rendered to his peoples and to his mother land, King Hung had sumptuous temple built for him.
He also issued a decree to award him the title “The Heavenly King of Phu-Dong.” The villagers venerated this name and preferred to address him as Saint Giong.
Post Script
At present, there are two large depressions on the huge rock of Mount Soc, which people believed to be the vestiges of the hind hooves the holly horse left when he took off to Heaven.
In addition, the species of big, straight, yellow bamboo with several green stripes running along its body abounded in many villages in North Vietnam. Tradition has it that when Giong killed the enemies with yellow bamboo clusters, he broke a huge number of bamboo trunks. As a consequence, where a broken piece of yellow bamboo hit the ground sprang up a large, yellow bamboo bush.
From now on, if you see such phrases as Phu Dong Youth, growing as fast as Phu Dong, or growing as fast as Thanh Giong in a Vietnamese written work, you will know that the author wants to mention the ability without bound of Vietnamese youth.
Adapted from Vietnamese oral folk tales and non-official oral history
by Quy Nguyen. July 2005