Education Publishing House explains the story "Saint Giong bathing in West Lake"

On March 17, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Education Publishing House Nguyen Van Tung issued a written response to the information about the detail "After fighting the enemy, Saint Giong jumped into West Lake to bathe" that is causing a stir in public opinion.

Regarding the article "After defeating the enemy, Saint Giong jumped into West Lake to bathe"? Regarding this issue, the Vietnam Education Publishing House (VNE) and Professor Nguyen Minh Thuyet (editor-in-chief of Vietnamese Textbook 5) have given their official opinions.

Accordingly, the exercise mentioned is in the Vietnamese Language Learning Guide for Grade 5 of the Ministry of Education and Training, taken from Vietnamese Language 5, volume 2 (Education Publishing House, 2010, p. 86).

Excerpt from Vietnamese 5, volume two (Education Publishing House, 2010, p. 86).

The passage in the exercise is taken from the famous article by writer Nguyen Dinh Thi - "The vitality of Vietnamese people in folk songs and fairy tales" (Nguyen Dinh Thi complete works, volume IV, Literature Publishing House, 2009, p. 148).

The goal of the exercise is to train students in the skill of linking sentences in a paragraph, thereby learning how the writer uses flexible words.

The quoted passage shows the writer's rich and unique imagination. Right in the opening sentence, Nguyen Dinh Thi clearly stated that he imagined a different ending to the story: "Listening to the story of Phu Dong Thien Vuong, I often imagine a man...".

However, most of the details in the passage are details found in legends about Saint Giong. According to the book "Hoi Giong at Phu Dong and Soc temples", The Gioi Publishing House, Hanoi, 2010 (pp. 153-154), the local folk legend and the Phu Dong Thien Vuong legend currently preserved in the Giong temple in Xuan Tao village (Cao village), Xuan Dinh commune, Nam Tu Liem district, Hanoi, say: "On the first day of the fourth lunar month, on the way back from fighting the An invaders, Saint Giong stopped, tied his horse to a banyan tree at the village entrance, sat down to rest on a rock, then jumped into the lake to cool off, then went back up to bathe again with the village's well water at the foot of Con Phuong hill. The villagers told each other to bring rice and eggplants to offer the Saint for lunch. When he hurriedly rode his horse to the top of Soc Son to fly back to heaven, the Saint forgot his iron whip next to the rock. To remember the merits of Saint Giong, the villagers built a temple together."

Thus, the only difference between the legend and the article by writer Nguyen Dinh Thi is that according to the legend, Saint Giong flew to heaven, while Nguyen Dinh Thi believes that the hero sacrificed himself on his motherland.

Nguyen Dinh Thi's passage can inspire students to think beyond the framework of the folk tales they have heard, thereby stimulating their imagination and creative potential - one of the contents included in the educational goals of Literature, starting from primary school.

According to Vietnamnet