Nguyen Hien, the Boy Laureate

A boy of thirteen still holds a record that has stood for nearly 800 years. Of all who earned the title of Trạng nguyên in Vietnam, he was the youngest. Trạng nguyên was the title of the top graduate of the royal examinations. No one has ever broken his record. The boy was Nguyễn Hiền. He came from the village of Dương A, in the region of Thiên Trường. Today that village is part of Ninh Binh province.

That part is plain fact. He passed as Trạng nguyên in the examination of the year Đinh Mùi, that is, 1247. It was the reign of Emperor Trần Thái Tông. That examination was also the first in the country to set three top ranks. Trạng nguyên came first and Bảng nhãn second. Thám hoa came third. At the very top, highest of the three, stood a child not yet past thirteen. Around that name, people long ago told many more tales, both strange and merry.

People say that Hiền lost his father when he was small. He was sent to Hà Dương Pagoda to learn his letters from a monk. He learned astonishingly fast. One explanation and he knew it by heart. One reading and he remembered it. It was as if the words already lay in his head, ready to spring out when called. But Hiền was also a real little rascal. Once he secretly wrote cheeky lines on the backs of the statues in the pagoda. The monk did not know whether to laugh or cry. By about the age of eleven, the whole region was calling him a child prodigy.

The strange thing is that this bright mind did not grow up in red-lacquered mansions. It grew up among the rice fields. Legend tells that on days without lessons, Hiền played on open ground by the road with the children who herded buffalo. They shaped wet clay into elephants, into buffalo, into every kind of animal. Those hands were caked in mud. Yet the same hands would later hold the writing brush and stand first in all the land.

At thirteen, Hiền went to the capital to sit the examination, and he passed at once as Trạng nguyên. The emperor was glad to have found such talent. But he looked at the new top graduate, a tiny boy who did not yet speak with proper court manners, and he thought it over. His talent was plain. But he had not yet had time to learn the rites an official must know. So the emperor sent Hiền home for three more years, to learn those rites thoroughly, before calling him to serve the country. The little laureate packed his bundle and went home, back to the open ground and his buffalo-herding friends.

Not long after, something happened at court that left a great many grown men scratching their heads. The old tellers say an envoy came from the great country to the north. He wanted to test whether the southern land truly had so many talented people. He brought something tiny but fiendishly tricky, a spiral snail shell. Inside, it was hollow, but the passage wound round and round like the inside of a spinning top, and it was open at both ends. Then he challenged the whole court to pass a fine thread through it. It had to go in one end, wriggle through the twists, and come out the other.

The thread was soft and limp, and the path inside the shell was crooked, winding like a mountain road. Pushed in, it jammed almost at once. The high officials put their heads together and fumbled. One tried this way, another tried that. But the thread only bunched up, and nothing could get it past the bends. The emperor grew impatient. Then he suddenly remembered the young Trạng nguyên, far away in Thiên Trường. He sent an official galloping to the village to find him.

When the official arrived, he found a crowd of children playing on the open ground. In the middle, the top graduate of the southern land was squatting with his hands all smeared, busy shaping an elephant out of clay. The official told him about the envoy and his riddle, and asked the boy to come to the capital and solve it.

Hiền only smiled. He recalled that the emperor himself had found him lacking in the rites and sent him home to learn them. So if the emperor now wished to call him, he must do it with the full rites too. There should be a proper welcome. A single word was not enough to summon him. So he did not go with the official. Still, he could not bear to leave the court stuck forever. He turned to his buffalo-herding friends and taught them a children's rhyme. His clear, ringing voice carried across the open ground.

The rhyme went like this: Catch a big ant and tie a thread around its waist. On one side, cover it up with paper. On the other side, smear on some fat, and the glad ant crosses over.

It sounds like a game, but it hides a clever trick. Each line is one step toward solving the riddle. Tie the thread around the waist of a big ant. Seal one end of the shell with paper. Smear a little fat on the other end, so it gives off a tempting smell. The ant catches the scent and patiently feels its way through the passage, dragging the thread behind.

The official heard the children singing and suddenly understood. Overjoyed, he turned his horse and rode back to the capital. The court did exactly as the song said. The little ant worked its way through every winding bend. After a long while, its head poked out at the far end, with the thread trailing behind it. The thread had gone right through the shell. The envoy froze. He had traveled a long, hard road with a riddle he was so proud of. He never dreamed the answer would come from a buffalo pasture, in the song of a few children whose hands were still muddy.

This time the emperor understood the rites he himself had once taught the boy. He ordered everything prepared for a full ceremony. He sent carriages and horses to the village to welcome the young Trạng nguyên with great honor. Only when the rites were complete did Hiền calmly follow them to the capital. The emperor had once made him learn the rites. Now the boy had reminded the emperor of them, gently, in a way that truly sank in.

Those are the tales people have told about Nguyễn Hiền, generation after generation. What is certainly true remains, plain and simple. A boy from Thiên Trường came first in all the land at thirteen. He has held the record as the youngest Trạng nguyên for nearly 800 years, and no one has surpassed it. In his home village of Dương A, a temple to him still stands today, and its incense has never stopped burning. People from the area come and stand before the name of the thirteen-year-old laureate. Then they tell their children and grandchildren about the boy who played in the mud with the buffalo herders, yet came first in the land and was clever enough to remind the emperor himself of a lesson in the rites. Nearly 800 years on, that record still stands. It seems to be waiting for some other child, muddy from the roadside, bold enough to step forward and claim it.