Big Bag, Small Bag

There were once two brothers who lost their parents young. When the time came to divide the family's belongings, the elder brother claimed nearly everything — the house, the fields, the savings — and left his younger brother a single patch of land with one old starfruit tree on it (in Vietnamese, the cây khế). The younger brother did not argue. He built a little hut beside the tree, tended it patiently, and waited for it to fruit.

And fruit it did — bough after bough heavy with ripe, golden-green stars. But before the brother could pick a single one, a great bird came swooping out of the sky and began to feast on the harvest, day after day. Heartbroken, the young man stood beneath the branches and pleaded: this tree was all he had in the world; if the bird ate everything, what would he live on?

To his astonishment, the bird answered him. "Eat one fruit, repay with gold," it said. "Sew a bag three spans wide, and come ride upon my back." The brother thought it a strange dream, but he stitched a small bag exactly three spans across, just as he was told. The next morning the bird returned, knelt low, and carried him soaring over the sea to a far island that glittered from shore to shore — a whole land of gold and silver and gemstones.

He filled his little three-span bag, no more, climbed onto the bird's back, and was flown safely home. Almost overnight he became rich, yet he stayed the same gentle man he had always been, sharing freely with his neighbours.

When the elder brother heard the tale, envy gnawed at him. He begged to trade everything he owned — house, fields, fortune — for that one humble plot with the starfruit tree, and his younger brother, kind to the last, agreed. Sure enough, the bird came again and made the same promise: "Eat one fruit, repay with gold. Sew a bag three spans wide." But three spans was nowhere near enough for a man like him. He sat up all night sewing a monstrous sack nine spans across, the Túi 9 Gang of the card's name, big enough to swallow a fortune whole.

On the island of treasure he lost all reason. He crammed the giant bag until the seams strained, stuffed gold into his sleeves, his shirt, his belt, even tied bars around his waist. So loaded down was he that he could barely crawl onto the bird's back. The poor creature beat its wings and struggled into the air, sagging lower and lower under the impossible weight. Out over the open water its strength gave way — it lurched, it faltered, and the greedy brother and his bag of gold tumbled together into the deep, dark sea and were never seen again.

He had owned everything and traded it for the chance to own more. In reaching for it all, he lost it all — pulled down, in the end, not by the bird or the wind, but by the sheer dead weight of his own wanting.