The origin of the watermelon

Once upon a time, there was a young man called Mai An Tiêm. Coming from a country all the way in the southern seas, he was sold into slavery. Drifting from land to land, finally one day the merchants brought him to Hùng king (1). Mai An Tiêm quickly learned how to speak Vietnamese. He had many a story to tell, knew many nifty things of daily life, and skillful in many crafts, so much so that the king adored him, rarely ever let him leave his side. At the age of thirty-five, he was a close personal servant of the king and had his own quarters by the palace. Mai’s wife was the king’s ward, and had given birth to a young boy, by then five years of age. Mai (2) had servants of his own and no lack of goods and foods and specialties from all over the lands. Many did oft come to his side to serve. However, many also grew jealous of him and the status he had secured.

One day, during a feast held for nobility and officials in his own home, amidst relentless praises and flattery, Mai An Tiêm humbly said:

“Oh, it is nothing! All that I own in this house is just meant for me due to my past life!”

Mai spoke in utter innocence, for the religion of where he came from told him that whether you are happy or miserable in the present depends on your deeds in your previous life. Yet figured among his guests a few other close servants of the king, who had long resented Mai. Believing that statement to be one of arrogance, they came back to whisper it to the king.

Hùng King, upon hearing of this, was enraged. He bellowed: 

“Huh! How insolent! Today he says that; who knows what more disrespect he might spew tomorrow. Treacherous slave, what a fiend! Put him in chains, I order you!”

That afternoon, Mai was thrown into the dungeon. It was only then that he realized he had misspoken. He told himself, “If from here on I shall suffer, it would have been because I had committed wrongdoings in my previous life.”

Meanwhile, the king held court to discuss a fitting sentence for Mai. Quite a few of them suggested death. Some mentioned cutting the heel of his feet. But the proposition of an old official caught Hùng King’s attention:

“He does deserve death. But, before he deceases, we ought to make him feel the consequences of his own foolishness to the bones; make him realize that his wealth right now has been bestowed upon him by Your Grace’s immense generosity, not by his past life or some such. I heard that outside the Nga-sơn port (3) there is a desert island. We could leave him there with one, two months worth of subsistence, so that he could reflect on his “past life wealth” while taking his last breath.”

The king nodded his assent. After giving out his order, he insisted: “Give him just enough food for one season, you hear me?”

On the day of exile, despite all dissuasions, Mai An Tiêm’s wife was determined to follow her husband out to the island, bringing their young child along. Everybody who knew called her decision foolhardy. As for her, she trusted in her husband’s words: “Where the skies let elephants breed, grass also grows. Why worry!”

Yet when she set foot on the sandy, misty, desolate land, she couldn’t help the feeling of misery and sorrow that rose to her chest. She sobbed into her husband’s shoulders. “We might have to resign to our fate; we are going to die here.”

Mai held his child, told his wife:

“The skies have eyes. Dry your tears, my dear. Worry not!”

For over a month, they settled into their new life. They had a stone cave for shelter, with bamboo-woven panes for doors, to keep them warm and dry from rains and night dews. They found freshwater in the brooks; and though they had no salt, they had seawater. But how were they to subsist themselves otherwise? They both turned to the half-empty jar of rice. “If only we had a handful of seeds, we would make it all work.”

Some days later, a great flock of birds from the West flew over and landed all over the beach. Then they came screaming and screeching before the couple, dropping five, six beady seeds. Within little time these seeds grew into vines that curled across the beach, covering the sand in deep green. Where the vines grew, sapling-green fruits began to bud. Yet another few days passed, and when they came to the beach once more, they found that all the fruits have grown round and smooth, larger than a man’s head, the skin a deep green. Mai cut one from the vine; when sliced open, the fruit turned out to have red-pink flesh and beady black seeds. All three of them - father, mother and son - tasted the fruit, marveled in the elegant, gentle sweetness. The more they ate, the more they felt cooled, calmed to the core. Mai exclaimed:

“Oh! What a strange sort of melon, that I have never seen before. Let us call it Western melon, for it had been brought over to us by birds from some inland in the West. The skies are giving us life!”

From there on, the couple did their best to grow more of these melons. They planned to have melons for meals, as they had nearly run out of rice by then.

One day, they came across a fishing boat that perchance washed up on the beach. After helping the crew fix the sails so that they could return to land, Mai gifted them a few melons to bring back to their families and friends. He suggested that they bring back rice in exchange for more melons. Only a few days later, the first boat returned, bringing to the Mai couple quite a lot of rice. They made a deal: one took the rice, one loaded melons onto the boat. 

From there on, their meals improved. Settled by the steaming white pot of rice, Mai’s wife cradled their child to her chest, murmuring: “The skies are truly giving us life!” The couple carried on, planted more melons. And so, trading galleys, fishing boats, they all came anchoring at their island, bringing to the Mai family rice, clothing, poultry and cattle, working tools, even other types of seeds, all in exchange for melons.

All the people who came told Mai:

“Truly there has never been a type of melon that is so precious. In our land we all wished to have just a taste of these “watermelons”, so no matter how much rice we must trade, we wouldn’t regret.”

Meanwhile, in the mainland, one time Hùng King tasked a serving official to surveil a group of builders. The official turned out to be absolutely incompetent, and the construction was deemed a failure. The king reproached him gravely, and - by a slip of the tongue - complained: “If only Mai An Tiêm were the one to carry out the task!” For the rest of that day, the king kept mentioning Mai. Twice he asked the Chancellor (4) where Mai might be. The Chancellor took a shot in the dark: “He must have ceased to be.” 

But the king did not believe so. He ordered for a slave, gave him food and a boat, told him to go to the Ái province to find Mai An Tiêm. A moon’s turn later, the slave came back with a boatful of Western melons, and said: “These are the offerings from Lord and Lady Mai to Your Grace.” 

He then recounted Mai’s tales, from the hardships of the first few days to their current life. Then he said:

“Now the Lord and Lady Mai have a quite beautiful house out there on the island, with over ten servants, and a field of melons, and rice paddies, and many pigs and chickens…”

The more the king listened, the more astonished he became. He sighed and shook his head, said to the officials who had reported Mai back in the days:

“He said wealth came to him from his past life, and he turned out to be right!”

The king then ordered a delegate of servants and soldiers to escort the family back, restoring Mai his status. He even gave Mai two serving girls, as a token of apology.

From there on, they called the beach on that island the An Tiêm beach. The people who once served Mai on the island remained there and continued to cultivate the earth and populate the land. They established a village, naming it Mai-an; and they built a shrine out of Mai’s old house. The folks called Mai and his wife “the origin parents of the Western melons (or watermelons)” [1].

—

Translator’s note:

(1) Hùng king (Hùng Vương): title given to ancient Vietnamese rulers of the Hồng Bàng period (c. 2879-258 BCE). More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B9ng_king

(2) In Vietnamese naming customs, the family name comes first, then middle names, then the given name. As such, Mai is the family name. The character is referred to as Mai throughout the story out of archaic literary formality. This is not the common custom in Vietnamese vernacular or modern literature.

(3) Nga-sơn (or Nga Sơn in modern orthography) is a coastal district in Thanh Hoá, a mid-northern province in Vietnam.

(4) Lạc hầu in the original text.

Author’s note:

[1] According to section “Thanh Hoá province” in Lĩnh Nam chích quái (lit. “Selection of Strange Tales in Lĩnh Nam”, a 14th century Vietnamese semi-fictional work; more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C4%A9nh_Nam_ch%C3%ADch_qu%C3%A1i) and Đại Nam nhất thống chí (the official geographical record of Vietnam’s Nguyễn dynasty, compiled in the late 19th century).