I haven't been able to find a source making the claim you discuss here about Yue Fei's mother teaching him to read and write. Since Yue Fei, as you say, became a famous folk hero, there are many different versions of his life so it can be difficult to entangle the details. However, I'll try to address your question broken down into two parts: 1. Was Yue Fei's mother literate? 2. How did Yue Fei get his education?

Yue Fei's Mother

As I said, I have not been able to find a reference to Yue Fei's mother teaching him to write in the sand. There is, however, another story about Madame Yue which suggests she may have been literate.

The earliest account of Yue Fei is from Song shi, the History of the Song. Although the text is 14th century, the biography of Yue Fei is thought to incorporate much earlier material from a text written by Yue Fei's grandson, Yue Ke. Song shi includes this famous dramatic scene:

Qin Hui sent a messenger to arrest Yue Fei and his sons so they could testify about the Zhang Xian affair. When the messenger arrived, Yue Fei said: "Heaven and Earth can attest for this loyal heart." At first, they ordered He Zhu to interrogate him. Yue Fei tore the shirt off his body and showed his back to Zhu. There were four big characters: "Exhaust one's loyalty in service of the state" written in lines that were deeply carved into his skin. And since the investigation brought no proof against him, Zhu realized Fei was not guilty.

The Song shi account does not say who gave Yue Fei his tattoo. Tattoos with dramatic sayings like this were ostensibly expressions of loyalty to the state, but they could also be a way for a military leader to gather loyalty around himself. Tattooing in Song Dynasty China was typically a form of punishment inflicted by the government on criminals who were then conscripted as soldiers. By coming up with their own tattoos, soldiers like Yue Fei expressed a level of autonomy the state usually denied them even while paying lip service to the state with the text. Yue Fei was far from the only prominent soldier from the Song Dynasty who had a tattoo like this.

Yue Fei's life story became embellished in later retellings, with many details filled in that are not present in earlier accounts. By the Qing dynasty, one of the staple scenes of a Yue Fei story became the moment when his mother gave him his famous back tattoo. Parents were not normally supportive of their children getting tattoos. Indeed, the main reason tattoo was seen as such an effective punishment in China was because it violated the Confucian ideal of keeping one's body pristine so as not to offend one's parents. The body was a gift from the parents, and besmirching it with tattoos dishonoured the family. In a time of great stress for the Northern Song dynasty, though, such as the Jurchen invasions, this dynamic was put on its head. Here's an excerpt from the Qing play Duo Quikui:

Yue Fei: I want to carve the four characters Jin zhong bao guo on my skin, as a way to show my loyalty and appreciation to the emperor and as a vow not to follow treacherous people. What do you think, mother?

Madame Yue: My child, if you are really devoted, you needn't worry about achieving it. Why do you want to tattoo those characters? If you harm your body, it is not filial.

Yue Fei: Mother, loyalty and filial piety are one thing. My will is to make a name, not to harm my body... Mother, let me take off my shirt and kneel in the front hall. Please use the embroidery needle to tattoo the four characters "jin zhong bao guo" onto your son's body...

Madame Yue (sings): I raise the embroidery needle but cannot carve. The skin is blue and white. Lines of words and drops of blood make the heroic text--all line up as loyalty and filial piety. So solid and permanent that even Heaven can take it as standard.

The story as imagined in Qing fictionalizations like this play certainly imply that Madame Yue could read the characters she was carving into her son's skin. Embroidery needles -- women's tools -- are historically documented as being used to tattoo people, although the people documented as administering tattoos are almost always men in the Tang and Song dynasties. Soldiers and criminals not only received tattoos from their (male) superiors to mark them for their crimes and to show what part of the army they were in; but they often also elected to have their own tattoos, whether for decorative or devotional purposes. Zealous soldiers fighting the Liao Empire tattooed "Kill all Khitans" on the faces of themselves and their families. Some men tattooed themselves with images of gods to protect themselves from beatings. Others tattooed defiant messages about how they didn't fear the gods of death onto their own arms. So while some tattoos were applied punitively, soldiers did choose to tattoo texts on themselves which presumably they could read themselves.

Since the story of Yue Fei's mother being the one to apply the tattoo is a product of romanticized folk narrative and is not attested in Song shi, it's possible that this was a made-up detail. I know of one other account of a Song Dynasty man whose tattoo was applied by his mother. Wang Ze led a soldiers' rebellion. When he left his hometown, his mother tattooed the character fu "fortune" on his back as a parting farewell. Wang Ze died in 1048, and this story was recorded in an 1183 text. We can see it was certainly believed to be possible for a poor soldier's mother to give her son a textual tattoo.

However, I would still be cautious about accepting the story of Yue Fei's mother at face value. The warrior masculinity of ambitious men like Yue Fei provides a better explanation for the tattoo than a story of the importance of nationalism even over filial piety. Yue Fei was shaped in later legends into an extremely nationalistic figure. But there were many soldiers like him who took advantage of the instability of the late Southern Song Song state to upend the social order and earn themselves a place in the upper levels of the Chinese military. Some of these men started out on the side of the Song state but defected to the Jurchens when the opportunity presented itself. Rather than a straightforward expression of nationalist loyalty, these tattoos are better read as symbolizing the defiance of men against the Song state, who had lost their monopoly on using tattoos to force people into line. The reclamation of tattoos was an act of defiance, forcing the Song state to reckon with the power of men like Yue Fei. In this context, the image of a man reasoning with his mother to mark his body in an ultimate filial sacrifice for the state is harder to believe.

In conclusion, there is certainly a tradition of Yue Fei's mother being literate, even if it does not take the form of the story you mention. However, the story is not particularly historically reliable, and so I would hesitate to take it as confirmation that she could read and write.

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