The Tale of Quan Gio

The wind at the end of the year pours through the narrow lanes of Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi. It slips under poor roofs, sweeps along high walls, and is gone behind closed gates.

In an old Vietnamese tale, one man was as quick and as hard to catch as that wind. Rich people who had grown rich unfairly jumped at the sound of his name. In poor homes, the doors stayed ajar and unbolted because of him.

Everyone in the capital called him Quận Gió, and gió is the Vietnamese word for wind.

The old tale does not say how he crossed a wall or opened a door. It keeps only one thing that never changes. Quận Gió never took a grain of rice from a poor house. He never touched a coin that an honest worker had earned with hard labor. He went only to those who had taken from the people first, and he gave what he took back to those in need.

A poor scholar on the road came to the house of Quận Gió and asked for shelter, shortly before Tết, the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam. The guest said he had lost his money. Quận Gió took nothing from him and even offered him money for the road.

The guest asked, "I hear you often take from the rich. Do you go after every house that has a lot of wealth?"

Quận Gió answered, "Having a lot does not always mean it was gained unfairly."

So the guest spoke of a wealthy farmer in the region. That man worked from morning till night and saved coin by coin, until his house slowly grew comfortable.

Quận Gió shook his head at once. "That house has nothing to fear from me."

That was one more door he would not enter.

The guest asked again, "And what about the official in charge of the court's storehouse?"

This time, Quận Gió was silent. That official kept the public silver, but day after day he skimmed off a share. The wealth in his house kept growing. He had also bought farmland, hundreds of mẫu of it. A mẫu is a traditional Vietnamese measure of farmland.

Quận Gió agreed to go.

That night, he came to the door he had agreed to step through. The guest waited outside. Quận Gió slid into the dark lane, quick as the wind.

When he returned, he brought the guest inside and placed five bars of silver in his hands. Each of the five bore the mark of the royal treasury.

The guest lifted the bars one by one and looked. The marks were all still whole. The storehouse official had hidden the public silver in his private home, but he could not wipe out the mark of the place it had come from.

The next morning was the first day of the new year.

The poor scholar of the night before was in fact Emperor Lê Thánh Tông, who ruled from 1460 to 1497.

At court, the emperor sent for the storehouse official. The five bars were laid out before everyone. The royal treasury's mark showed clearly on each one.

The official saw the silver and could not deny it.

The emperor invited Quận Gió into the palace, called him a gentleman thief, and rewarded him richly.

In the middle of the court, five treasury marks still shone on five bars of silver.

Outside, the wind of the new year swept over Thăng Long again. It passed the house of the honest farmer, passed the poor roofs where the doors still stood ajar, and rolled down the narrow lanes. Behind the wind, five bars of silver lay still in the hall.