Legend of the Ink Pond

Among the students of Teacher Chu in the village of Huỳnh Cung, there was one boy whose home nobody knew. He arrived first every morning, waiting for the teacher while dew still clung to the bamboo hedge. His clothes always looked damp, as if hung out to dry but never quite dry. A cool breath of water drifted from his sleeves. Once, the boy beside him gently picked a tender green speck of duckweed from his hair, the kind that grows only on ponds and rivers.

Where that boy came from is told in an old story of Quang Liệt, the home village of Teacher Chu. Today the place is called Thanh Liệt, and it lies beside the Tô Lịch River in Hanoi. People there still tell it whenever someone asks why there was once a strangely dark pond in the middle of the fields.

The story goes that all this happened in the time of the Trần dynasty, which ruled Vietnam from 1225 to 1400. The teacher Chu Văn An had opened a school in Huỳnh Cung village. It stood right on the bank of the Tô Lịch River. His school was crowded, as people eager to learn came from everywhere. He taught them letters, and also how to live as good people. Everyone who studied with him held him in deep respect.

But the strange boy was the most diligent of all. He read without tiring, wrote each character with care, and remembered every lesson by heart. There was only one odd thing. As soon as class ended, he walked quietly toward the riverbank and vanished from sight. No one could ever keep up with him.

Teacher Chu watched him for a long time. Then one day, as the boy bowed his head in farewell, the teacher caught sight of a speck of duckweed on the crown of his head. It was just like the duckweed drifting on the river. Suddenly the teacher understood. This diligent, well-mannered student was no ordinary person. He was a son of the Water King, come up from beneath the river to study the teachings of the sages.

Knowing this, the teacher had no misgivings, and did not change how he treated the boy. From first to last, he taught him with the same care as every other student, perhaps with even more affection. He understood that a deep love of learning had carried the boy across a whole river to reach his class.

That year, the rains failed. Month after month went by without a single drop. Then the drought dragged on from one year into the next. The fields around Thanh Đàm cracked open, the young rice seedlings scorched yellow, and the village wells ran dry to the bottom. People carried home buckets of muddy water and saved every mouthful. In the blazing heat of noon, the crying of thirsty children rose all around.

Seeing all this, Teacher Chu was deeply grieved. One day he called the son of the Water King and gently asked whether he knew a way to help the people through the drought.

The boy fell silent for a long while. Then he answered his teacher, his voice full of both pity and worry. Making rain was the work of Heaven, he said. A being from the waters below who made rain on his own would defy the heavenly court and surely face heavy punishment. But he could not bear to stand by and watch the dry fields and the thirsty people. He asked to do it, to save the harvest and the villagers who had taken him in.

With that, he stepped up to the teacher's writing desk. On it lay the inkstone the teacher always used to grind ink for his lessons, and his writing brush. The boy lifted the inkstone and took up the brush. He dipped it in the ink and flicked it hard toward the sky. He flicked it again and again, and black and red ink flew upward like a fine drizzle.

Then a wonder happened. The moment the drops of red ink touched the clouds, they turned into lightning, and into thunder that rolled across a whole corner of the sky. The drops of black ink spread out into clouds, pitch-black clouds that gathered and piled up high. Moments later the wind roared, and then came the rain. Real rain. It poured down in torrents onto the thirsty fields, filling the ponds and the wells and soaking into every cracked furrow.

All of Thanh Đàm cheered in the rain. Grown-ups turned their faces up to catch the water, and children ran and jumped in the downpour, laughing. The rice came back to life, and the fields turned green again. The son of the Water King had saved a whole region from the drought.

But now that the people were saved, he knew he had to leave. He had defied the order of Heaven, and he could not linger there any longer. While the rain still fell, he bowed low before his teacher and thanked him for teaching him all this time. Then he turned quietly toward the river. He stepped down into the river and went home to the waters that had given him life. His figure faded behind the white curtain of rain, and he never came back.

Teacher Chu stood still on the bank. He grieved for the gentle student who had dared to give up everything to bring the people one rainfall. To remember the boy's kindness, the villagers built a small shrine, and incense burned there morning and evening. People still call it the Gàn Shrine. To this day, people from seven nearby villages worship there with reverence.

The teacher's inkstone had tipped over while the boy flicked ink to make rain. The ink spilled out and spread away with the flowing water. It seeped into a low-lying pond in the village of Quỳnh Đô and stained its whole surface a deep black. From then on, it became a pond that stayed dark as ink all year round. People named it Mực Pond. Mực means ink. The brush drifted downstream all the way to the village of Tó. In later times, that village became known for its many learned people.

Along the old course of the Tô Lịch, the village elders still tell the story of Mực Pond and of the student who came up from the water long ago. The incense of the Gàn Shrine still burns warm. It reminds passersby of a student who, out of love for the people, dared to make it rain.