Việt Tỉnh Truyện (Truyện Giếng Việt)

The Story

In the Tang dynasty, in the Zhenyuan era, in the land of Nam Hải that is now Quảng Châu, there lived a young man named Thôi Vĩ, the son of a censor of the Thôi clan. His father died early and left a comfortable estate, but Thôi Vĩ was open-handed by nature. He gave to anyone in need, and before long the money was nearly gone, so he lived hand to mouth among the streets of the city.

One festival day, in the crowd, an old woman selling wine was jostled and knocked down, and her wine jar shattered on the ground. The seller demanded payment, and the old woman had none. Thôi Vĩ, passing by, took off the coat from his own back and gave it in her stead. The old woman looked at him a long while, then said: I have something to repay you. From her bundle she drew out several stalks of moxa, telling him it was moxa gathered on Việt Tỉnh hill, and that anyone with a tumor or a growth need only cauterize it with this and be cured. Then she was gone into the crowd.

Thôi Vĩ kept the moxa, unsure what to do with it. Not long after, a member of the wealthy Nhậm household in the district had a tumor on the neck that no treatment would cure. Thôi Vĩ tried the moxa on it, and the tumor went down. The Nhậm family was overjoyed and kept him in the house. But that household served a fierce spirit named Độc Cước, and by custom it took a living person each year for sacrifice. That year Thôi Vĩ’s turn came, and they marked the stranger under their roof. At midnight he overheard the plan and fled. Running blind in the dark, not knowing the way, he lost his footing and fell into a deep, dry well.

A thick layer of rotted leaves at the bottom kept him from dying. When his eyes adjusted, in the dim light, he saw a great white snake coiled there, a large tumor at the edge of its mouth, and it seemed to be in pain. This was no ordinary snake but a dragon. Thôi Vĩ remembered the moxa on him. He crept close and cauterized the tumor for the dragon. The tumor broke, and the dragon’s pain eased. It raised its head to look at him, then slid ahead to lead him, drawing him through a cave mouth at the bottom of the well.

Beyond the dark passage a splendid palace opened before him, lit bright as the world above but far more magnificent. Four beautiful women came to welcome him and called him an honored guest. They said this was the palace of an emperor, and that the emperor wished to give him in marriage a woman named Lady Điền, who had been the daughter of King Điền Hoành of Qi. Thôi Vĩ bowed his thanks and was wed to her in the palace beneath the earth. For the days he stayed there he was treated as a guest of the highest rank, wanting for nothing.

When the time came to return to the world of the living, an envoy who called himself the Envoy of Dương Thành led him out of the realm of the dead. Before he left, the emperor granted him a precious pearl called the Yangsui pearl and bade him keep it with care. Thôi Vĩ held the pearl, followed the envoy out, and suddenly found himself standing again on the familiar ground of Quảng Châu, as if he had passed through a dream.

He took the pearl to the market. In the quarter of the foreign merchants, where traders from distant lands gathered, an old man of the Dashi people saw the pearl and was struck still. He offered ten myriad strings of cash on the spot, without a word of bargaining. Thôi Vĩ, finding this strange, pressed him for the reason. The merchant then said: this is the Yangsui pearl, a state treasure long lost; it lay in the tomb of Triệu Đà, king of Nam Việt. The well he had fallen into, the palace beneath the earth he had entered, was the tomb of Triệu Đà, the king who had styled himself King Vũ of Nam Việt some centuries before; the emperor who had given him a wife was that king.

Hearing this, Thôi Vĩ understood at last. Later he learned one thing more: the old woman who had sold wine and given him the moxa of Việt Tỉnh hill was no ordinary person, but a Daoist immortal named Bào Cô, daughter of Bào Tĩnh and wife of Cát Hồng, the famous adept of elixirs. The stalk of moxa given for a kindness had led him a full circle, from saving a person, to saving a dragon, down into the realm of the dead, and back with the pearl of a king long gone.

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The Plot per Taiping Guangji and Lĩnh Nam Chích Quái

The tale exists in two versions, one Chinese and one Vietnamese, sharing a frame but differing in their historical core.

The Chinese version, “Cui Wei” (崔煒). This is the original, recorded in Taiping Guangji scroll 34, Divine Transcendents, and attributed at its close to the Chuanqi (傳奇) collection of Pei Xing (裴鉶). The plot runs as in The Story above: Thôi Vĩ of Nam Hải does a kindness for an old woman, receives Việt Tỉnh moxa, cures a tumor, flees a sacrifice and falls into a well, cures a dragon, enters an underworld palace, marries Lady Điền, receives the Yangsui pearl, then sells it to a Dashi merchant and learns it was the tomb of Triệu Đà, king of Nam Việt. The closing lines record the merchant’s recognition of the pearl and his placing of the tomb: the young man had entered “南越王趙佗墓中” (the tomb of Triệu Đà, king of Nam Việt); the pearl was “國寶陽燧珠” (the Yangsui state-treasure pearl), sold for “十萬緡” (ten myriad strings of cash); the divine woman was “田夫人,” daughter of the king of Qi, whose name was “橫” (Điền Hoành); the old woman who gave the moxa was “鮑姑,” daughter of Bào Tĩnh and wife of Cát Hồng. All are verifiable in the original on Taiping Guangji scroll 34.

The Vietnamese version, Việt Tỉnh truyện in the Lĩnh Nam Chích Quái. The Vietnamese version keeps the motif frame but shifts the setting entirely. It opens by locating “the Well of Viet in the Trâu Sơn region of Vũ Ninh district,” and ties it to the legend of the third Hùng king: the Shang (Ân) invaded, were defeated by Phù Đổng Thiên Vương, and their king died beneath the mountain and became a king of the underworld, for whom the people built a shrine. A figure of the Thôi clan, an official passing through, repairs the shrine; later the generals Nhâm Hiêu (任囂) and Triệu Đà also pass through and order it repaired. The fantastic core keeps the motif of a man lost inside a city beneath the earth, meeting the Shang queen, wed to a divine woman, receiving a magic pearl, then led away by an immortal, and it closes with a place-name etiology, the well drying to a pit, called Việt Tỉnh Cương.

Some specific details of the Vietnamese version (the pearl’s name, the name of the immortal who leads him away, the order of the tale within scroll 2) can at present be traced only to popular sites below the standard for citation; they should be checked against the critical translations of Đinh Gia Khánh and Nguyễn Ngọc San, or Nguyễn Thị Oanh (NXB KHXH) before being fixed in quotation. See the note on use below.

Origin: an adaptation of the Tang tale “Cui Wei”

Việt Tỉnh truyện is not an old Vietnamese folktale set down in writing, but a Chinese tale taken up and reworked by Vietnamese hands. The line of descent is clear:

• The original is “Cui Wei” (崔煒) by Pei Xing (裴鉶), a late-Tang author, in a chuanqi collection titled Chuanqi (傳奇).
• The tale was gathered into Taiping Guangji (太平廣記) scroll 34, the 500-scroll encyclopedia compiled under Li Fang by order of Emperor Taizong of Song, begun in 977 and completed in 978. The close of the tale states “出《傳奇》,” that it comes from Pei Xing’s collection.
• In the 15th century, in compiling the Lĩnh Nam Chích Quái, the Vietnamese compiler took this plot as the ground for Việt Tỉnh truyện.

This descent is stated by Dai Kelai and Yang Baoyun in their critical edition Lĩnh Nam chích quái and Two Other Historical Sources (Zhongzhou Guji Press, 1991), and set out explicitly in South Korean scholarship cited in Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies 25/2 (2025), which draws on Ch’oe China’s comparison of 崔煒 with Việt Tỉnh truyện. Việt Tỉnh hill (越井岡), where the old woman gathers her moxa and which gives the tale its name, is a real place in Quảng Châu, not in the land of Viet (see Geography).

The relocation: Quảng Châu becomes Trâu Sơn, Triệu Đà becomes King Ân

This is the most striking part of the tale, because it lays an editorial operation bare. The Vietnamese compiler did not translate the Cui Wei tale, nor copy it whole, but kept the frame and swapped the core:

The motif frame kept. The core chain of events survives almost intact: a man falls into a well, is led into a palace beneath the earth, is wed to a divine woman, receives a magic pearl, and at the end the well becomes the name that explains a place.

The historical core swapped. What changes is the layer of person and historical place. The setting of Nam Hải, Quảng Châu moves to the Trâu Sơn region of Vũ Ninh district in the land of Viet. The owner of the tomb, Triệu Đà the king of Nam Việt, is replaced by King Ân, the Shang king of the Phù Đổng Thiên Vương legend. Triệu Đà, the underworld emperor at the center of the tale, is demoted to a general in passing, stopping in the region to repair a shrine.

The result of this operation: a tale that turned on Quảng Châu and the tomb of a Nam Việt king becomes a tale of the land of Viet, driven into the Hùng king and Phù Đổng legend cycle. Jenkin Leung (UC Berkeley, 2022), writing of three other Sino-Vietnamese tales in the LNCQ, argues that the compiler gave the tales a “Chinese façade” to reconcile them with a Neo-Confucian worldview; with Việt Tỉnh truyện the operation runs the other way, a Chinese core given a Vietnamese face. Set beside Bạch Trĩ truyện, where a Chinese motif (the Việt Thường offering of a white pheasant) is fixed into the Hùng king line, the same compiling tendency appears: the early Lê literati actively built a past out of borrowed material.

Variants: the Chinese and Vietnamese versions compared

The table below compares the core elements. The Chinese column is verified against the original in Taiping Guangji scroll 34; the Vietnamese column follows the common recensions, with items still needing verification marked.

The crux lies in the two middle rows. The Vietnamese version keeps the motif frame but swaps the historical content: Triệu Đà becomes King Ân, Quảng Châu becomes Vũ Ninh. That pair of substitutions turns a Quảng Châu tale into a tale of the land of Viet.

The Nam Việt layer: Triệu Đà and a contested legitimacy

The tale carries within it a figure Vietnamese historiography has argued over for centuries: Triệu Đà (趙佗, Zhao Tuo), who founded the state of Nam Việt in the late 3rd century BCE with its capital at Panyu. The standing of the Triệu house in the orthodox Vietnamese line is an open question, and this is a place to present both sides rather than adjudicate.

The side that counts the Triệu as legitimate. Đại Việt Sử Ký Toàn Thư (Ngô Sĩ Liên, 1479), following Lê Văn Hưu, places the Triệu chapter within the orthodox line of the Vietnamese state and treats Triệu Đà as a king in the succession. In this frame, the tale’s placing of Triệu Đà’s tomb at its center sits within a historiographical tradition that once regarded the Triệu house as its own.

The side that counts the Triệu as foreign. Mainstream modern historiography treats Triệu Đà as an outsider who rose from beyond the land of Viet, conquered Âu Lạc, and whose reign opened the period of Northern domination. Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam (University of California Press, 1983, pp. 23-27) presents Nam Việt as a regime founded by a Qin official after the fall of Qin, then annexed by the Han in 111 BCE. This reading aligns with the stance of independence: Âu Lạc was a state with its own sovereign, and Triệu Đà’s annexation was a conquest, not an internal succession.

These two positions have not been reconciled, and the tale can be read without resolving them. What is worth noting for the tale itself: whichever side one takes, the Vietnamese version deliberately pushes Triệu Đà out of the central place the Chinese version gives him, and puts in his stead a purely Vietnamese legendary figure, King Ân. That editorial act is itself a gesture of placement: the story is drawn back to the land of Viet and driven into the Hùng king and Phù Đổng cycle.

Geography: Việt Tỉnh hill and the Well of the Viet King in Quảng Châu

The name “Việt Tỉnh” in the source tale points to a real place. Việt Tỉnh hill (越井岡) is the chief peak of Việt Tú mountain (越秀山) in Quảng Châu, a low hill in the middle of the city. Tied to it is an old well named the Well of the Viet King (越王井), also called the Nine-Eye Well (九眼井), said to have been dug on the order of Triệu Đà, king of Nam Việt; it is counted among the oldest wells in Quảng Châu. The area is also linked with the immortal Bào Cô and the craft of moxibustion, exactly as in the detail of the old woman giving Thôi Vĩ moxa from Việt Tỉnh hill. In other words, the geography of the Chinese version is the real geography of Quảng Châu; the Vietnamese version borrows the name Việt Tỉnh and attaches it to the Trâu Sơn region.

One note, to prevent confusion. The tomb of Triệu Đà in the tale is a legendary detail, and in fact the tomb of Triệu Đà has to this day not been found. The excavated tomb of a Nam Việt king, discovered in June 1983 at Xianggang hill (象崗) west of Việt Tú mountain and excavated later that year, yielding more than a thousand artifacts including a gold seal reading “文帝行璽” and a jade suit, is the tomb of Triệu Muội (趙眜), grandson of Triệu Đà and second king of Nam Việt, and not the tomb of Triệu Đà. This real archaeological tomb should not be conflated with the “tomb of Triệu Đà” in the tale.

Textual history: Lĩnh Nam Chích Quái and its recensions

Lĩnh Nam Chích Quái (嶺南摭怪) is a collection of old tales in literary Chinese, held by tradition to have been composed by Trần Thế Pháp around the late 14th century, then edited by Vũ Quỳnh (preface 1492) and Kiều Phú. The work was never block-printed and survives through various manuscripts; one (NLVNPF-0651, R.1618) is digitized in the National Library of Vietnam collection on the Nôm Foundation site. The number of tales varies by recension: Vũ Quỳnh’s 22-tale structure is canonical, but one manuscript lists up to 45 tales in its table of contents. Việt Tỉnh truyện sits in scroll 2 in the common recensions.

The foundational bibliography of the LNCQ recensions is Émile Gaspardone, “Bibliographie annamite,” BEFEO 34 (1934), pp. 128-130. The fullest textual study to date is the monograph by Nguyễn Thị Oanh, Lĩnh Nam chích quái (Critical study, annotated translation, Chinese original), NXB Khoa học Xã hội, which surveys all the manuscripts held in the Hanoi libraries. The open translation by Liam C. Kelley on Viet Texts (University of Hawai’i) gives an English point of reference.

Modern scholarship

Scholarship on Việt Tỉnh truyện turns on two questions: its descent from the Chinese tale, and the meaning of the localization.

The line of descent. This is the firmest part. Dai Kelai and Yang Baoyun (1991) and the South Korean scholarship cited in SJEAS 25/2 (2025) both confirm the chain Việt Tỉnh truyện ← “Cui Wei” ← Pei Xing’s Chuanqi. The original text on Taiping Guangji scroll 34 allows direct comparison, so this is not a hypothesis but a verifiable textual relationship.

Localization and invented tradition. Liam Kelley (JVS 7/2, 2012, pp. 87-130) develops the “invented tradition” frame for the LNCQ tales, arguing that 15th-century Đại Việt literati actively built a past on the ground of Chinese texts. Jenkin Leung (2022) reads three Sino-Vietnamese tales through the frame of a “façade,” pointing to the cultural shift at the layer of person and setting.

What remains open. The question of textual descent is closed: Việt Tỉnh truyện derives from the Tang tale of Cui Wei. What remains open is the extent and intent of the reworking: what the Vietnamese compiler reworked the plot for, and whether a local legend of Trâu Sơn and King Ân existed before the Chinese plot was grafted onto it. No textual evidence earlier than the LNCQ has been produced for that local layer, and the parties have not closed this debate.

Notes on use

Historicity. The tale is not a historical source. Three time layers must be kept distinct: (i) the time of the text’s compilation (Taiping Guangji 978; LNCQ 15th century); (ii) the setting the tale claims for itself (the Tang Zhenyuan era for the Chinese version, the Hùng king age for the Vietnamese), which must not be read as historical fact; and (iii) the historical and archaeological record (Nam Việt and Triệu Đà, 3rd to 2nd century BCE; the tomb of Triệu Muội excavated in 1983). The value of the tale lies in the localization and in its place-name etiology, not in the accuracy of events.

Vietnamese-version details to be verified. The name of the magic pearl, the name of the immortal who leads the man away, and the order of the tale within scroll 2 can at present be traced only to popular sites, below the standard for reputable citation. Before fixing them in quotation, check against the critical translation of Đinh Gia Khánh and Nguyễn Ngọc San, or the study by Nguyễn Thị Oanh (NXB KHXH).

Do not conflate the tomb of Triệu Muội with the “tomb of Triệu Đà.” The Nam Việt royal tomb excavated in 1983 at Quảng Châu is the tomb of Triệu Muội (grandson of Triệu Đà), not the tomb of Triệu Đà; the tomb of Triệu Đà has to this day not been found.

The Triệu Đà debate is unresolved. The orthodox standing of the Triệu house in Vietnamese history is a debate of many centuries; this entry presents both sides and does not adjudicate. Citations should draw on the primary texts (Toàn Thư, Tiền Biên) or on scholarly work, not on popular sites.

Misattribution on Thi viện. Some websites, Thi viện among them, misattribute the Lĩnh Nam Chích Quái to Nguyễn Dữ. The LNCQ was composed by Trần Thế Pháp and edited by Vũ Quỳnh and Kiều Phú; Nguyễn Dữ is the author of Truyền Kỳ Mạn Lục, a different work.