Bamboo shoots are delicious, nutritious, and are just one of the many gifts from the Bamboo plant that are cherished and intertwined into multiple aspects of Vietnamese culture. But did you know that our ancestors also had a classic folklore dedicated to the strong but flexible Bamboo stalks called “Cây Tre Trăm đốt,” or “The Hundred-Nodes Bamboo Stalk”, which is a cautionary tale about labor exploitation? The legend has it….

Once upon a time, there was an honest, hard-working, but penniless orphaned young man, who worked as a farm hand for the village farmers. One day, he fell in love with the daughter of the rich landlord who had hired him to work the fields, and the couple wished to marry, but the young man had no money.

The greedy landlord saw an opportunity to exploit, and promised the young man: “If you work for me without pay for 3 years, I will let you marry my daughter.” The naive young man was grateful for the chance, and for the next 3 years, he toiled from dawn to dusk with back-breaking work to fulfill his dream.

The end of the 3 years came, but the deceptive landlord had secretly arranged for his daughter to marry into another rich family. On the day of the wedding, the young man confronted the landlord, visibly upset. The landlord once against promised: “If you go into the forest and bring back a Bamboo stalk with 100 nodes, I will take that as a wedding gift and let you marry my daughter.” (Of course, there is no such thing as a 100-nodes Bamboo stalk.)

The trusting young man went into the forrest and after futilely searching high and low for 3 hours for something that doesn’t exist, he collapsed and sobbed in exhaustion. His cry echoed throughout the walls of the forest and mountains, and an angel was summoned to help.

The angel smiled and waved his wand towards a group of Bamboo stalks and commanded: “Assemble! Assemble!” And just like that, the individual Bamboo stalks assembled on top of each other, uniting their strength to create one single stalk with 100 nodes.

Excited with gratefulness, the young man perplexed, “But angel, this Bamboo stalk is too long for me to carry back to the village by myself.” The angel smiled again and commanded to the Bamboo stalk: “Dis-assemble! Dis-assemble!” And immediately, the 100 nodes dis-assembled so the young man could tie them up and haul them back to the village, where he used the spell to re-assemble them into a 100-node Bamboo stalk infront of the flabbergasted landlord and witnessing villagers.

Belligerent and furious, the landlord hurled towards the majestic Bamboo stalk and attempted to kick and tear it down. With calm confidence, the young man once again commanded: “Assemble! Assemble!” The magical Bamboo stalk obeyed and against his resistance, the petrified landlord was pulled like a magnet towards the Bamboo, and he was merged into the stalk as another node.

The landlord desperately pleaded to be released, with a promise to let the couple marry. The couple married, lived happily, and the young man was truly compensated for his years of blood, sweat, and tears.