Mai An Tiem and the Watermelon

On a scorching summer noon, a family cuts open a watermelon and sets it in the middle of the tray. As the knife presses down, the green rind splits with a crisp crack. Inside, the flesh is a deep red, full of juice and dotted with black seeds. One cool slice slides down the throat, and more than half the heat melts away. Few people suspect that this sweet fruit belongs to a very old story. It is the story of a man sent to a deserted island, who still raised a whole season of red melons there.

This is a tale handed down by Vietnamese grandparents. It is a legend, not a chronicle with days and months. It tells how the watermelon first came to the country.

The story begins in the days when the Hùng Kings were founding the country. Vietnamese people honor the Hùng Kings as their ancestors. At the royal court there was a man named Mai An Tiêm. He was clever, hardworking and honest, so the king trusted him and gave him rank and title, a house, fields and gardens. His life was full, the kind anyone would envy.

But in the middle of all that plenty, he let slip a remark that displeased the king. Looking over all he owned, he said that most of it had been made by his own two hands. He was proud of his strength and forgot to choose his words with care. The king was hurt. He felt the man had grown arrogant and forgotten the favor he had received. He wanted to see what those two hands could do without the king's kindness.

So the king sent Mai An Tiêm, with his wife and children, to a deserted island. It lay out in the sea off Nga Sơn, in what is now Thanh Hóa. There was only sand, wind and waves on every side. He was allowed to bring just a little food to get by. Standing on the strange sand, with not a single roof in sight, anyone would have felt uneasy.

But Mai An Tiêm did not sit down and weep. He looked at his wife and his children and spoke calmly. "Heaven gave us life, so surely it will keep us alive. As long as I have these two hands, I can still work." With that, he rolled up his sleeves. He and his wife built a hut against the rain and sun. They looked for fresh water, gathered snails and caught fish, dug up roots and picked wild greens. Day by day, the deserted island came to feel lived in, with smoke from the cooking fire and children's laughter.

Then one day, something wonderful happened. A bird flew in from far away and landed on the sand. It dropped a few small black seeds from its beak, then flapped its wings and flew off again. Mai An Tiêm picked them up and looked them over. If a bird could eat them, he thought, they must be good. So he buried them in the sand and watered and tended them every day.

Before long, green vines sprang up where he had buried the seeds and crept across the sand. Then they bore big round fruits with glossy green rinds. He split one open to try it. Inside it was bright red and full of juice, and it tasted wonderfully sweet and cool. His whole family was overjoyed. Surely Heaven had sent this strange fruit to feed them on the lonely island.

Mai An Tiêm sowed more seeds and planted more vines. Soon a whole stretch of the island was covered in green and heavy with fruit. There was more than they could eat, and he came up with a clever plan. With a sharp stick he carved his name on the rinds of the melons, then set them adrift on the sea. He trusted the waves to carry them to shore. People on the mainland would find them and learn that someone still lived on the far island and could grow a fruit this good.

Sure enough, the carved melons drifted on the waves to the shore. People picked them up, split them open and tasted them, and everyone praised them. Word spread from mouth to mouth about the strange fruit with the green rind and the red heart. The news traveled until it reached the king. When he heard about the melons carved with the name Mai An Tiêm, the king was stunned.

He thought it over, and his heart softened. He came to see how precious they were, those hardworking hands and that spirit that would not give in. So the king sent boats across the sea to the island to bring the whole family home. On the day he set foot on the mainland again, Mai An Tiêm still held the melons in his arms, with a handful of precious seeds. From then on, those melons were planted far and wide, spreading across the whole coastal region of Nga Sơn.

People of old gave the fruit the name dưa Tây Qua. Little by little, people came to call it dưa hấu, the Vietnamese word for watermelon. The people of Nga Sơn, in Thanh Hóa, still remember him with gratitude. They honor him as the founding ancestor of watermelon growing. At the foot of a mountain looking out to sea, they built a temple to Mai An Tiêm. Every year in the third lunar month, the villagers hold a festival there. They offer incense and tell his story to their children and grandchildren.

So each time a watermelon is split open on a summer noon, bright red and cool and sweet, it carries a very old story. It is the story of a man pushed into the hardest place of all, who did not give up and kept faith in his own two hands. The red slice in the hand is not only sweet. It is warm too, as if it still held a little of the sun and wind of that faraway island, where melons carved with a name once drifted ashore on the waves.