Tu Thuc and the Fairy

He left home for only one year. But when he came back, no one knew who he was. His friends were dead, his house was gone. Eighty years had passed.

This is the story of Tu Thuc, the man who married a fairy. And it all began with a single peony.

At the end of the fourteenth century, under the Tran dynasty, a young man named Tu Thuc was governor of Tien Du district. Near his district stood a temple with a peony bush famous across the land, and every spring, when it bloomed, crowds came to see it.

That year, a girl of about fifteen reached for a blossom and accidentally snapped the branch. The monks seized her and demanded she pay for it. No one stepped forward to help.

Tu Thuc took off his brocade coat and gave it to the monks to pay for her release. The girl looked at him for a moment, then quietly slipped away into the crowd. He thought no more of it.

But Tu Thuc was never made for life as an official. He loved poetry, wine, mountains and rivers. Before long, he hung up his official’s hat and left.

He took his lute and a gourd of wine and travelled the country by boat. Wherever he found a beautiful place, he stopped to recite poems and play.

One morning, at the Than Phu estuary in Thanh Hoa, he saw a strange mountain rising out of the sea, wrapped in clouds of five colours. He rowed toward it.

At the foot of the mountain, the cliff opened into a round stone door, and golden light poured out. He stepped inside.

Inside was another world: jade palaces among the clouds, fairies holding lanterns. A fairy queen came to greet him, smiling.

Do you remember the girl who broke the peony branch?

The girl stepped forward. She was a fairy named Giang Huong, the queen’s own daughter. That spring she had come down to earth to see the flowers — and got herself into trouble.

You saved my daughter. Let me repay you.

And she gave Giang Huong to Tu Thuc as his wife. They were married among the clouds, under a full moon.

In the fairy realm there was no ageing, no sickness, no worry. Only flowers, music, and the one you love.

A year slipped by. One night, looking down through a gap in the clouds, Tu Thuc saw rice fields and villages far below, and suddenly he missed home terribly. He asked to visit his family.

If you go, I’m afraid nothing will be the same.

But she did not stop him.

As they parted, she gave him a letter written on silk and told him to open it when he got home. Then he stepped into a carriage made of clouds and flew back to the world of men.

When he arrived, he froze. The roads were strange, the houses were strange, and the people passing by looked at him as if he were a stranger. There was not a single face he knew.

He asked around. An old man heard his name and thought for a long time.

When I was little, I heard that one of my ancestors was named Tu Thuc. He went into the mountains and was never seen again. That was more than eighty years ago. The Tran dynasty fell long ago — now the Le dynasty rules.

One year in the fairy realm, eighty years on earth. Everyone he had known was gone.

He wanted to go back. But the cloud carriage had turned into a great bird. It spread its wings and vanished into the sky.

Then he remembered the letter. It held only a few lines: their destiny together had ended; the clouds lay a thousand miles between them; they would never meet again.

She had known all along. When she wept as he left, she knew it was the last time.

Tu Thuc put on a light hat and walked into the mountains of Hoang Son. The mist closed behind him, and no one ever saw him again.

The story was written down in the sixteenth century by Nguyễn Dữ, in his collection Truyền kỳ mạn lục — A Vast Record of Strange Tales — from older folk legends. Today, in Nga Son, Thanh Hoa, there is a real cave called Tu Thuc Cave, said to be the very door he walked through. And the Vietnamese still say “Tu Thuc comes home” of someone who returns after a long time away to find everything changed.

The West has Rip Van Winkle, who slept for twenty years. Japan has Urashima Taro, who visited a palace under the sea. And Vietnam has Tu Thuc, who was given paradise for a single act of kindness — and lost everything for a single moment of homesickness.

If it were you, would you go home, or stay?