Dong Yong, a man from the Eastern Han Dynasty, was recommended as a filial and honest official by the magistrate of Huai County because he sold himself to bury his father. After reviewing the story, the prime minister Cai Mao reported it to Emperor Guangwu, and Dong Yong became a figure in the "Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars" of traditional culture. The legend of Dong Yong is one of the four most widely circulated folk legends in my country (the other three are "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai", "White Snake and Xu Xian", and "Liu Yi and the Dragon Girl of Dongting Lake"). It was first recorded in "Biography of Filial Sons" by Liu Xiang of the Western Han Dynasty. After that, "Lingzhi Pian" by Cao Zhi of the Three Kingdoms and "Soushen Ji" by Gan Bao of the Eastern Jin Dynasty also had relevant records. Gan Bao's record was widely circulated in rural areas of my country because of its prominent theme (filial piety) and complete plot ("deer cart carrying father", "selling oneself to bury father" and "celestial maiden marrying to help the king pay debts"), and became the mother model for the evolution of stories and literary transplantation for more than two thousand years, with a far-reaching influence on later generations. Since the story of Dong Yong and the Seven Fairies is a folk legend that has both educational and romantic elements, its educational content is in line with the Chinese people's psychological needs for long-term peace and stability, and the love story fits the people's inner feelings of pursuing marital happiness, so its artistic characteristics of ingenious integration of magical fantasy and human reality are deeply loved by the people. In the long process of word of mouth, the legend has evolved according to the place, time and people, and has a tendency to evolve into a love story in the process of development and evolution, but the theme and "matrix" have not changed much. In the 100 years since the 20th century, the story of Dong Yong has always been a subject pursued by popular literature (such as rap and opera) with a wide audience and the later film and television literature creation, and there have been works with far-reaching influence such as the Huangmei Opera "The Fairy Couple". In the long process of more than 2,000 years of circulation, the legend of Dong Yong has been constantly combined with the lives of people in various places. Due to the penetration of people's emotions and the association of word of mouth, legends with local characteristics have emerged, leaving behind customs and cultural relics, steles, villages, place names and other relics related to Dong Yong's life experience. There are not only relics related to Dong Yong in Wanrong County, Shanxi Province, Dongtai City, Jiangsu Province, Wuzhi County, Henan Province, and Xiaogan City, Hubei Province, but also many records in local chronicles, all of which claim that Dong Yong is a local. For example, there are Dongjiazhuang and Dong Yong's tomb in Boxing, Shandong Province; there is a plaque of "Dong Yong's hometown" in Xiaohuai Village, Wanrong, Shanxi Province, and the people also weave "marriage cloth"; Wuzhi County, Henan Province holds grand temple fairs to worship filial sons on the third day of the second lunar month and the tenth day of the eleventh lunar month every year; there is Dongjiashe in Dongtai City, Jiangsu Province, which is recorded in the Southern Song Dynasty's "Fang Yu Sheng Lan" as the "former residence of filial son Dong Yong". The "snowball" phenomenon of spreading in many places and constantly making up stories is a common feature of legends. The historical and literary materials contained in the legend of Dong Yong are of certain value to the study of society, economy, politics, culture, especially literature and art in various historical periods in China. The educational function of the legend of Dong Yong has certain practical significance for the practice of building socialist spiritual civilization and building a harmonious society today.