Children of the Dragon and Fairy

Every storm and flood season, the radio and the newspapers call out once more with one warm word: đồng bào. Đồng bào of the central region. Đồng bào of the highlands. Then people all over the country turn toward one another, sharing every packet of noodles and every piece of clothing. People of the mountains and people of the sea may never have seen each other's faces. Yet as soon as they call each other by those two syllables, they feel close, like people under one roof.

Just two small syllables, and somehow they draw strangers to stand close together. Few people notice that Vietnamese people call each other đồng bào because of a very old story. It is a story about a sac, and about one hundred children.

This is a legend, a tale grandparents have told their grandchildren from one generation to the next. It is not a page of history with days and months attached. An old book, Lĩnh Nam chích quái, records it in the tale of the Hồng Bàng clan. It is also mentioned in an old chronicle of the country, the Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư.

The story goes that long ago, when the country was just beginning, a young man of dragon blood lived in a land of rivers and sea. His name was Lạc Long Quân. His world was the endless water, the salt wind that never rests, and the white-capped waves rolling one after another onto the sand. Up in the mountain forests lived a gentle fairy named Âu Cơ. Her world was cloud and mountain wind, morning mist lying white along the hillsides, and streams softly murmuring under the green trees.

One of the sea, one of the mountains. It might seem those two worlds could never touch. Yet people of old say that Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ met and grew fond of each other. They became husband and wife, and from then on they shared one home.

Then Âu Cơ gave birth, not to a baby, but to a sac. It was round, and it lay perfectly still. No one yet knew what was inside.

Some time later, the sac opened. Inside was not one egg, nor ten, but one hundred eggs. Then the eggs hatched, one by one, and each egg became a son. So from a single sac, the Dragon father and the Fairy mother had one hundred healthy sons.

A full hundred of them. And every one of those brothers came from the same sac, with the same father and the same mother.

Those hundred children were no strangers to one another. They were true brothers, born of one sac. They shared the same laughter and the same embrace of their parents. Brothers from one sac love each other like hand and foot, like lips and teeth.

The children grew up, strong as forest trees after rain. But their father belonged to the sea, and their mother belonged to the mountains. As the legend tells it, one day their parents divided the hundred children, each group heading toward its own horizon. Fifty sons followed their father down to the sea. Fifty sons followed their mother up into the mountains.

The word "divide" can sound like parting. But this was not a sad farewell. It was more like a family opening both its arms, one arm reaching out to the sea, the other reaching up to the mountains. Out by the sea, some of the brothers opened up new lands along the waves. Up in the mountains, others built villages and hamlets among the green forests. Wherever they went, that land had family on it.

Before they set out, the father, Lạc Long Quân, left them a promise. Whether they went up to the mountains or down to the sea, whenever something happened, they would send word to each other and never forget. It sounded like such a simple promise. Yet it followed the children to every corner of the land, and it has stayed in the hearts of Vietnamese people to this day.

Mother Âu Cơ led her fifty sons to the land of Phong Châu. Legend says that there, they all came together and raised the eldest son to be their king. The eldest brother stayed in Phong Châu and took the royal title Hùng Vương. He named the country Văn Lang. The other sons spread out in every direction, to the uplands, to the lowlands and to the coast. Little by little, they made a whole beloved land.

So when one Vietnamese person calls another đồng bào, they are recalling something very beautiful. Đồng bào means born from the same sac. That other person has always been a brother or a sister, whether they live in the forest or by the sea, in the uplands or in the lowlands. It is from that same tale of the sac of a hundred eggs that Vietnamese people call themselves children of the Dragon and grandchildren of the Fairy. They are the children of a Dragon father and a Fairy mother.

To remember these roots, Vietnamese people have a place they come back to together. It is the Hùng Temple historic site in Phú Thọ. Within the site, on Sim Hill, stands a temple to the National Ancestor, Lạc Long Quân. He is the very Dragon father of this story. Every year, on the tenth day of the third lunar month, descendants from near and far stream back for the death anniversary of the Hùng Kings, whom Vietnamese people honor as their ancestors. An old folk verse handed down by the grandparents goes: "Whoever travels upriver, whoever travels down, remember the day of the Ancestors, the tenth day of the third month."

On a morning in the third month, at the foot of the Hùng Temple, crowds climb the stone steps shoulder to shoulder. People come from the mountains and from the sea, from the far south and from the north. Their faces are strange to one another, but their hearts are not, because everyone knows they are standing beside one of their own đồng bào. And amid that stream of people, the call heard on the radio every storm and flood season comes back, quiet but warm: đồng bào, all from the same sac.