The Cricket
“The Cricket” by P’u Sung Ling, from Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies (Pantheon Folklore Series), translated by Moss Roberts.
In this story, cricket fighting is popular in the court, and the people have to provide the crickets. The story itself is a fantasy, but cricket fighting is real. The system of oppression of the people depicted here is also real.
The story is about a local official named Make-good who was unable to meet his cricket quota. He was unwilling to use the same brutal tactics that other officials used of raiding people’s homes and forcing others to hunt crickets for him. He tried to do his own cricket hunting, but he wasn’t very successful.
From there we enter the realm of fantasy when Make-good’s wife consults a fortune teller. Make-good finds a prime fighting cricket, loses the cricket, almost loses his son who falls into a coma for a long time, finds another cricket, enters that cricket into fights that lead all the way to the palace and to prosperity for the family, and finally ends with the son waking up to tell about his dreams of being the champion cricket while he was in the coma.
This is such a beautiful tale. There’s a lot of reality in it. We get a pretty good glimpse of what life is like for the common people who are oppressed for the sake of the entertainment of the wealthy. But then we are also shown the fantasy in which the humble are rewarded.
By society’s standards Make-good is not making good. He is not tough enough, ambitious enough, or assertive enough to make good. Yet in the fantasy he is rewarded for his lack of cruelty and his persistence and faith.
It’s pretty to believe that the meek shall inherit the earth.