There is a Japanese folktale
about a monkey and a crab.
(life.ou.edu/stories/sarukani.html)
The first time I read the story
I sort of laughed
and sort of cringed
at how absurdly violent it is
in so far as the vengeance
of the crab children
in no way outdoes
the cruel ingenuity
of the monkey.

The second time I read it,
I was more directly impressed,
by how that ingenuity is like a reversal
of the classic ant and grasshopper tale,
such as if the grasshopper had figured out how
to make the ant work for him.

The fable thus seems even
more poignantly pointedly relevant
to contempory contempt for
bankers' bailouts and excessive executive compensation.

In that sense, it is even reminiscent
of the kind of absurdity
that kept the CCP
(and Mao, in particular)
second-guessing Lu Xun's intentions.
His madman simply gets better,
without ever really ascertaining
who eats who,
while the marvelous obliviousness of AhQ,
like all the spectators at his execution,
never realizes that many things are done,
for all the wrong reasons.

It's nice to imagine
that the conniving monkey
would get his come-uppance,
but it begs the question
if the baby crabs
ever get any persimmons?