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Phan Cam Thuong
My grandparents told me this story in the form of a poem. It went like this: Tu Thuc was a mandarin in Tien Du, Kinh Bac province. As a scholar, he loved to travel and was easily bored with his life.
During a spring trip to admire the flowers at a pagoda, he met a beautiful woman who accidentally broke a peony branch and was subsequently forced to pay for the damage. Filled with sympathy, he decided to help her, taking off his silk cloak to pay the fine.
Tu Thuc eventually quit his job as a mandarin and began to travel. On a journey to Than Phu Lake, Nga Son district, Thanh Hoa province, whilst admiring the picturesque coastal mountains, he decided to enter a fairy cave. The fairies welcomed him as if he were familiar to them. It turned out that the woman Tu Thuc had helped was Giang Huong, the daughter of this fairy cave’s master.
The Fairy Master offered Tu Thuc his daughter’s hand in marriage as thanks for his kindness. Tu Thuc accepted, and the couple lived a leisurely life in the fairyland, enjoying many travels.
Eventually, Tu Thuc grew homesick. His heart yearned for his homeland, and he asked the Master and Giang Huong if he could return there. They warned him that each day in the fairy realm was a year in the human world and he would have little chance of reuniting with his family. Since Tu Thuc was determined, the Master hailed a carriage that carried him back to the human world.
Upon reaching his hometown and realizing that the scenery was drastically changed, Tu Thuc asked an elderly man for help. The old man said: “I heard that seven generations ago, our great-grandfather traversed the mountains and went missing.”
Realizing that a few years in the fairyland was equal to a few hundred years in the human world, Tu Thuc decided to return, only to see that his carriage had turned into white storks that were flying away…
