Cao Bien Rising Too Soon

On a patch of bright red earth, just as the sky began to lighten, an old man squatted and pressed black beans into the ground, one into each hole. He worked slowly and tenderly, as if every tiny bean were something very precious. Morning dew still clung to the tips of the grass, and the soil was soft and cool under his hand. The old man moved along row after row, sowing bean after bean, until the whole patch was dotted with little holes.

The old man was named Cao Biền. People of long ago said he was a famous sorcerer, and his magic was stranger than anything anyone had ever seen. He did not sow beans to cook a sweet bean dessert, nor to grow bean sprouts. He sowed beans to raise an army.

It does sound hard to believe. But in this story, that is how his magic works. Each bean was buried in the earth and left to sleep for its full days and months. Then he chanted a spell to call it up, and it stretched and stood, a soldier of flesh and blood, a spear gripped in hand. A handful of beans in his palm, sown and called at just the right moment, became a whole line of soldiers standing perfectly straight.

Yet every kind of magic has its own rules. For the soldiers to be steady on their feet and strong in their arms, the beans had to lie in the earth for a full hundred days. Every day the old man came by and gave the bean rows a sip of water. Then he bent down and whispered a spell, softly, the way someone sings a child to sleep.

He knew that rule well. It was like a rice plant that must wait out its full season before its heavy heads turn golden. It was like a chick that must stay in its shell for its full days, kept warm long enough, before it has the strength to peck its way out. Hurry even a little, and everything is spoiled.

In the first days the old man was very patient. Every morning he went out to visit the bean rows, bent down to look them over, and counted in his head how many days had passed. But waiting is the hardest thing in the world. The closer the appointed day came, the more restless and eager he grew.

He kept imagining the morning when his army would rise all together, spears and blades flashing in the sun, marching in step wherever he pointed. Just thinking of it made a hundred days feel endlessly long. He paced in and out, glancing at the bean rows, then up at the sky, silently wishing the days would pass a little faster.

Then one morning, when the beans were only a few days short of their hundred days in the ground, the old man could hold back no longer. He clicked his tongue and told himself it must be nearly enough. A little early could do no harm. So he rolled up his sleeves and stepped out into the middle of the red earth. He cleared his throat and chanted the spell to wake the army, loud and clear.

The ground trembled slightly. From the little holes, bean shoots popped up in specks of green. Then, just as the spell promised, soldiers really did begin to rise out of the earth. First came a head, then a pair of shoulders, then a whole body.

But oh dear. The soldiers who came up did not look grand at all. Every one of them was still green and tender, as limp as a bean sprout just poking out of the seed. As soon as their feet touched the ground, their knees buckled. Their hands shook so badly that they could not hold their spears. One soldier had barely lifted himself up when he toppled into the man beside him. Both of them rolled flat on the ground, their legs tangled together.

When the old man called out for them to advance, the whole army staggered. Some fell forward, others fell back, and not one of them could manage a single step. They wobbled and trembled just like toddlers learning to walk, tripping over their own feet, clutching at each other and still falling. The whole patch of earth rustled and stirred, and not one soldier stood up straight.

Only then did the old man see what he had done. He had called up the army too soon. The beans had not lain in the ground for their full days and months. They had not had time to grow sturdy, and that was why the soldiers were so weak and shaky.

He hurried to set things right, but the spell was already spent. Once they had been called up, they could not be called again. The tender soldiers grew softer and softer. Then they quietly lay down and sank back into the earth, as if no one had ever stood up. A moment later, the patch of red earth was smooth and still again under the early sun, just as it had been on the morning he first sowed the beans.

The old man stood silent for a long while, sick with regret. All that work of sowing, all those days of watering, of bending down to whisper the spell. And because he could not bear to wait those last few days, it had all come to nothing. If only he had waited a little longer for the full hundred days, that army would surely have stood up firm and proud.

When people heard this tale, they found it funny and wise at the same time, and they kept telling it to one another. From then on, whenever they saw someone with shaking hands and wobbly legs, someone who rushed at every task and never quite got it done, they would smile and repeat a saying. In Vietnamese that wobble has its own word, lẩy bẩy, a shaky, trembling unsteadiness. The saying runs: as wobbly as Cao Biền rising too soon.

Grandparents handed the saying down, from one generation to the next, and it can still be heard today. So whenever someone in a household rushes at something and fumbles it, the whole family has a good laugh. Then someone gently says the very words the old people left behind: as wobbly as Cao Biền rising too soon.