Three Generations of Chicken

Loud, clear reading rang out from a small house at the edge of the hamlet. A faint smell of dry Chinese ink hung in the air. Children sat in a row on a mat, backs straight, eyes on the board. The teacher sat in front in his long tunic and neatly folded turban, tapping a bamboo rod on the table in time with the reading. He looked very grand.

This teacher had once been an ordinary young man of the village. He had picked up a handful of characters, far fewer than anyone who had really studied, but a good deal more than the farmers around him, who had never held a brush. So he reasoned that he knew more writing than anyone in the village, and surely that was enough to teach. He dared to set himself up as a village schoolmaster.

Pupils came from the hamlet one after another. Their parents could not read, so they had no way to check whether the teacher taught correctly. He taught the characters he knew, and the children chanted them back in a rumbling chorus. At first everything went smoothly.

Vietnamese families have long told this comic tale of a teacher, one hard word, and a piece of reasoning nobody else could have thought up.

One day the teacher opened the book to teach a new lesson. He came to two strange characters, the pair that reads "dủ dỉ." He looked at them. He looked again. He looked once more. He had no idea what they meant.

His stomach dropped. The pupils sat watching, waiting for him to teach. He cleared his throat and said, very calmly, that they should read softly, because he wanted to look after the sound and not let it fly far away. Then he shut the book and said that was enough for today, and they would go on tomorrow.

The pupils nodded. They did not know that their teacher could not read those two characters.

That night he lit a lamp and stared at the pair again. He thought and thought, and nothing came. He knew there was a small shrine to the earth spirit in a corner of the garden, and people said the earth spirit knew everything. He burned incense, pressed his palms together, and prayed in a low voice. Honored earth spirit, he said, I have met two characters and do not know their meaning. Please instruct me.

That night he dreamed. An old man with snow-white hair and beard appeared and said in a deep, warm voice that the characters "dủ dỉ" were the word "kê," and that it meant a chicken.

The teacher woke up delighted. A chicken! He muttered it over and over so he would not forget: dủ dỉ is a chicken, dủ dỉ is a chicken.

The next morning he walked into class, opened the book, and could hardly wait. He pointed at the two characters and announced in a ringing voice: "Dủ dỉ is a dù dì!"

The pupils echoed him, bright and clear: "Dủ dỉ is a dù dì!"

The teacher nodded with satisfaction. The lesson passed without trouble.

But that evening one of the boys went home and recited it in front of his father. The father heard it and was briefly stunned. He had little schooling, yet he had heard people say that the character kê meant a chicken. He frowned and asked his son whether the teacher really taught it that way. The next day he went to find the teacher and asked him straight out. Sir, he said, this "dủ dỉ" was taught as "a dù dì," but I have heard it is a chicken. Please explain.

The teacher stood still for a moment. In his heart he knew he had taught it wrong. The earth spirit had said a chicken, and he had said a dù dì. But he could not admit a mistake in front of a parent.

He cleared his throat. Then he looked the father full in the face and spoke very calmly and very confidently, like a man explaining something obvious. That question comes from not understanding my meaning, he said. I taught it that way on purpose. Then he asked whether the father knew what the three generations of chicken were.

The father was taken aback and asked the teacher to tell him what they were.

The teacher answered slowly, in the tone of a man giving a lecture.

Three generations means three lifetimes, he said. And a chicken has three lifetimes. A rooster is a chicken. A hen is also a chicken. And a chick is a chicken too.

All three generations are chickens. That is the three generations of chicken!

I taught "a dù dì," he went on, so that the pupils would remember that whatever the generation, every one of them is a chicken. That is the deeper meaning.

The father heard him out and stood there, not knowing what to say.

Seeing the father fall silent, the teacher gave a nod, as if the explanation were finished, and strolled back into the house.

The scholar Nguyễn Đổng Chi collected this comic tale, "Tam đại con gà," in his anthology of Vietnamese comic tales. It has long been included in the middle school literature textbook.

And in the small house at the edge of the hamlet, the pupils were still reading aloud, loud and clear, exactly as their teacher had taught them. Dủ dỉ is a dù dì! All three generations are chickens. Three generations of chicken!