Sim Cheong

On the dirt road to the market, a walking stick tapped against the ground.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The man holding the stick had been blind for many years. He felt his way one step at a time, setting his foot wherever the stick had touched. Beside him walked his small daughter, her hand holding on to her father's elbow.

Storytellers in old Korea called the girl Sim Cheong.

Father and daughter were very poor. So poor that every meal had to be counted. The father could not see the road, so work was hard for him to find, and his daughter was still far too young. But in all that poverty, the two of them kept one thing. They had each other.

Then one day, walking alone, the father fell into a deep ditch and could not climb out.

An old monk from the temple on the mountain passed by and heard him calling. The monk told him something strange: his eyes were not past saving. If he offered the temple 300 bags of rice, he would see again.

The father was overjoyed and promised at once. Only when he got home did it strike him that there was not a single grain of rice in the house to eat. When the monk came to the house to collect, the father had no choice but to tell his daughter everything.

Three hundred bags of rice. It was more rice than she and her father could gather in a whole lifetime.

That night, she sat alone and thought.

This is where storytellers of old would often pause for a beat, so their listeners could grasp what the girl was facing. It was worse than a hard puzzle. It had no solution at all. Her family had no rice, no fields, nothing to sell. In her hands she held exactly one thing.

Not long after, a fleet of merchant ships at the river landing was getting ready to put out to sea. Sim Cheong went to find the merchants and made them an offer. She would sail with them on that voyage. In return, they would give her exactly the amount of rice the temple needed.

The merchants agreed.

The rice was carried to the temple, and the father's promise was paid in full.

And Sim Cheong stepped aboard the ship.

Before she left, she told her father the truth. He held her tight and did not want to let her go. Father and daughter wept. The neighbors heard, came over to weep with them, and promised to look after him in her place. Still, she did what she believed she had to do.

Out in the middle of the sea, the ship ran into a storm.

The waves reared up, the wind lashed the side of the ship, and in that storm Sim Cheong fell into the water. The sea closed over her head.

At this point, anyone hearing the tale would think the story had ended.

But it had not.

For the tale says that at the bottom of that sea stood the palace of the Sea King, and she was rescued and carried down to it. When the day came for her to return to the world above, a lotus was brought to her. Not an ordinary lotus. It was a magic lotus, large and sweetly scented, and Sim Cheong hid herself inside it.

Then one day, the lotus rose to the surface of the sea.

It drifted on the waves with its petals closed, until the same merchant from before sailed by, lifted it from the water and brought it to the king as a gift.

The king looked at the lotus and saw that this was no ordinary flower. He treasured it, and had it set in a glass house in an inner courtyard. Then one moonlit night, the king came upon Sim Cheong stepping out of the lotus. The lotus vanished, and only she was left standing there. Before long, the king married her and made her his queen.

Once a poor girl walking to the market with her father, she now lived in the king's palace.

But she was not happy.

Because somewhere out there was still a blind man, feeling his way with a stick, with no idea where his daughter was.

The king saw her weeping and asked why. She asked to do something for the blind people of the country, and the king agreed at once.

Together they ordered a great feast. No officials were invited, and no rich people either. Only one kind of guest was asked: the blind people of the whole country. Anyone who could not see the road was welcome to come and eat.

Blind people came from everywhere. Some were led by their children and grandchildren. Others made their own way with a stick.

There was real wisdom in this plan. She did not know which village her father lived in, and she had no way to search the whole country. But she knew one thing about him for certain. He could not see. So instead of looking for one man among millions, she opened a door and invited everyone like him to walk through it.

Among the crowd was a poor old man leaning on a worn stick. He had come from a village very far away, and he did not know why anyone would lay out a feast for him today.

Then a voice rose, calling out to him.

It was a voice he had not heard in so very long, a voice he had thought he would never hear again.

That was the moment father and daughter recognized each other.

In that same instant, the father's eyes cleared. The old monk's words had come true. For the first time in so many years, he saw his daughter's face.

Koreans of old told this story to speak of a child's devotion. What the tale honors is how much she loved her father, not the path she chose. It is an old tale, and old tales tell everything at their largest, so that the heart inside can be clearly seen.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The tapping of that stick now lived only in memory. He could see the road, and the hand that once held his elbow had come home.