In Debt Like Lord Chom

Close to busy Hàng Bông Street in Hanoi, a small lane carries a name that sounds strange to the ear. It is called Cấm Chỉ Lane. In the late afternoon, the whole lane fills with the smell of food stalls, of rice noodles, of noodle soup, of grilled meat sending up smoke. People come and go in a steady stream, and everyone stops for a bowl of something warm. Yet the name itself is stern, like a ban hung across the street. Cấm Chỉ means forbidden, not allowed. It is hard to guess what such a cheerful place could forbid.

To explain why this happy eating lane carries such a stern name, older people in Hanoi often tell a story. It is the story of a young man named Chổm.

Long ago, Chổm was desperately poor. There was not a single grain of rice put aside in his house, and his stomach was always empty. Every time he passed the market, the smell of rice and soup rose from the food stalls by the city gate, and hunger gnawed at him. But there was not one coin in his pocket, and there was nothing he could do about it.

So Chổm ate on credit. That meant he ate first, had it written down, and promised to pay when he had money. He would stop at a rice stall and eat a bowl. Then he would press his palms together and speak honestly to the woman who ran it. "I am so hungry, but I have no money yet. Please let me eat on credit. When I make something of myself, I promise to pay it all back." Anyone who saw it felt sorry for him. A young man living on other people's kindness, one meal at a time, could hardly be happy.

The strange thing was that the stall women did not have the heart to send Chổm away. Some even welcomed him in cheerfully. People whispered that this Chổm was good-natured. Whenever he sat down at a stall, they said, it suddenly filled with customers and sold far more than usual. So the rice stall, the tea stall, the cake stall and the porridge stall all gladly let him eat on credit. After every meal, the women picked up a counting stick and added one more mark to his debt book.

Year after year, his debts for meals kept growing. He owed the stalls at the head of the market and the stalls at the far end, and he owed at every city gate. There were so many that Chổm himself could not remember how many stalls had fed him on credit. But every time, he said exactly the same words. "When I make something of myself, I will pay everyone back in full, not one coin short."

Time passed, and life turned. The poor young Chổm met with great fortune. He rose high and became grand and wealthy. Once he had been a hungry man who owed for every bowl of rice. Now he went everywhere with horses and carriages, hammock litters and parasols, and servants following behind. People no longer called him plain Chổm. They respectfully called him Lord Chổm.

Many people who grow rich forget their days of hardship, and forget those who sheltered them when times were hard. But Chổm was not like that. He still remembered every hot bowl of rice and every bowl of green tea that the stall women had let him have on credit in the hungry years. He remembered his old promise too, that once he made something of himself, he must pay.

So one day, the lord had the road cleared and went back to the old market, to the city gates where he had once eaten his meals on other people's kindness.

As soon as they heard the news, the stall women of the old days poured out joyfully on both sides of the road. One of them even brought her old debt book, its edges worn, still crowded with the tally marks from long ago. The woman from the rice stall, the woman from the porridge stall, the woman from the cake stall all craned to see what had become of poor young Chổm. They wondered whether he still remembered his old debts.

The lord not only remembered, he was overjoyed. He had his procession stop. Calmly, he told the officials attending him how he had once gone hungry, and how the stall women had kindly fed him on credit. Then he sent his men to bring out money and paid each woman one by one, fairly and in full. Whoever had once given him a bowl of rice, he paid back many times over. He paid his debts with a light heart, as if he had set down a worry he had carried for years.

But paying his debts turned out to be messier than he expected. Word that the lord had come back to pay spread very fast. Some people had truly fed him on credit in the old days. Others had only heard the rumor. Seeing how generously he paid, they pushed in to claim money too. More and more people crowded around, one after another. Every hand was held out, and everyone insisted that Chổm still owed them something. The crowd grew so large that a whole stretch of road was blocked. No one could tell the true debts from the false ones any more, and he paid and paid without ever finishing.

In the end, to calm the chaos, a sign had to be put up right at the crossroads. It bore the words Cấm Chỉ. It meant that from this point on, enough was enough: stop here, and claim no more debts. Only then did the crowd thin out, and the road open again.

From that tale of Lord Chổm, who owed so much that he could never finish paying, people in Vietnam got a saying: in debt like Lord Chổm. Some people are buried in debt, borrowing from one place to patch a hole in another. They owe so much that a whole lifetime seems too short to pay it all. When someone owes that much, someone else is sure to shake their head. "Well," they say, "in debt like Lord Chổm."

The name of Lord Chổm is still spoken today, but not because he once owed so much. People of old remembered him for a different reason. When he was poor and hungry and living on borrowed meals, he promised to pay. And when he became rich and grand, he kept that promise in full. He did not forget a single person who had given him a bowl of rice in hard times. What people valued in Chổm was his good faith and his grateful heart, never his debts.

This tale was collected by the scholar Nguyễn Đổng Chi, who recorded it in his Treasury of Vietnamese Folktales. And in Hanoi, right beside Hàng Bông Street, the small lane still carries the name Cấm Chỉ, as it did in the old days. Every afternoon, it still smells of snacks and noodle soups, as people come and go and eat in cheerful company. Few would guess that beneath that stern name lies such a warm story. It is the story of a man who was once poor and hungry but never forgot a kindness, and of a promise kept in full.