Crab, Spider, Warrior

Author: Qiancang Shui

Lu Xun said in "Two Impressions of This Spring": "The person who eats crab for the first time is very admirable, who dares to eat it if he is not a warrior? Crabs are eaten, spiders must have been eaten, but not delicious, so posterity does not eat. People like this we should be extremely grateful for. This plain and simple sentence contains the classic quotes of "warriors" and the classic examples of "crabs" and "spiders" that support it, which complement each other perfectly, so they are widely accepted and popular.

Qiancangshui "Crab Fun" with picture Ding Houxiang / painting

Crabs and spiders are originally two unrelated animals, however, crabs have four pairs of foot on both sides of the head and thorax, and spiders are also similar in form, so people often think of spiders when talking about crabs. Subsequently, the Ming Dynasty Xu Chong's "Warm Shu Yu Pen" volume 1 tells a story of "coincidence and strangeness":

In the inn, he smelled a person downstairs coming out of the clouds: "The rat steals the cocoon like a lion throwing a ball." "Thoughts cannot be right, until death." The soul often came and went to the building to recite this pair, and no one dared to come. After the last move, he forced himself to go upstairs, and in the middle of the night there was a pair of reciters, but he replied: "Crabs enter the fish but are like spider webs." "It's weird.

Without saying anything else, I only said that the answer of the latter move was correct: "Crabs enter the fish but look like spider webs." What is "Fish"? A net for catching crabs, boxy, propped open with cross-crossed bamboo poles, the small ones only the size of a chopping board, tied with iron stones, and sunk into the water to catch. The answer is that the "fish" is used as a metaphor for "spider web", and the "crab into the fish" is described as a "spider knotted web", which is a vivid image and the scene is present, especially the reference between "crab" and "spider", indicating that the two are connected due to the similarity of morphology. This couplet and story, Hui Si, and Strange, have been quoted by Ming Feng Menglong's "Ancient and Modern Tan Overview", Zhang Dai's "Fast Garden Daogu", Qing ChuRen's "Jianhuan Supplement", Liang Zhangju's "QiaoZhilu" and other quotations, and have been widely circulated. In addition, some people refer to crabs as "spiders with big bellies" (Ming Rufu's "Folks Don't Know Crab Songs") and "Big Spiders in the Water" (Qing Li Shihong's Notes on Ren Shu Tang). It can be seen from this that Lu Xun said that "crabs are eaten by people, and spiders must also be eaten by people", which is not only appropriate and natural, but also directly hits people's hearts.

So why do you say that "the person who ate crab for the first time" is "a warrior"? Because of its strange and ugly appearance, the outer carapace, no head and no tail, grinning teeth, suddenly angry, because its behavior is obedient and fierce, partial and not direct but going to run amok, encountering hostility, spitting bubbles, four pairs of steps tiptoeing up, hanging in the air, two claws like pincers swinging, revealing a fighting posture, so the ancestors said that it was "disgusting", "abominable", and even more said that it was "terrible", Song Shenkuo", "Mengxi Pen Talk" volume 25 "dry crab":

There are no crabs in Guanzhong. Yuanfengzhong, Yu in Shaanxi, Wen Qinzhou people received a dried crab, the natives feared its shape, thinking that it was a monster, and each person who had a diseased malaria in his family borrowed it to hang on the portal, often sent a difference. Not only do people not know, but ghosts also do not know.

A dried crab, no one knows, because its shape is terrible, Qinzhou (present-day Tianshui, Gansu) natives actually "think of it as a monster", and then, whoever has malaria in the family, borrowed and hung on the portal, even the ghost did not know, was frightened, the patient was cured. This is a record, until Qing Li Shihong also talked about "Ugly Xia, sent zheng huang to accompany his children into the capital gate, saw the city crabs, Guo Suo was full of baskets, Zheng Gong was afraid, and he did not dare to face it.", a Gansu messenger Zheng Huang, when he arrived in Beijing, saw the crabs in the basket on the market for the first time, and was "afraid" to "dare not face it". This kind of record, see also Qing Chen Qiyuan's "Notes on Yong Xian Zhai", "Jia Mei Ting Fang Bo, Ren Sichuan arrow furnace tongzhi, where people occasionally see crabs, called plague gods, playing drums and gongs and sending them to the suburbs." Fang Bo ate it, everyone was shocked, saying that the official can eat the plague god, and the four realms are subdued"; see also the Qing Chang Bai Xiqing "Heilongjiang Waiji" "... He also does not know crabs, smells those who have brought them from within the customs, and the crowd is a monster and does not dare to eat." All the memories are the impressions of people in non-crab-producing areas in history when they first saw crabs, but they also indirectly reflected the people in crab-producing areas, and at the beginning, they also regarded crabs as "monsters" and "did not dare to eat". In this regard, Lu Xun, who has read a lot of books, did not reach anything, but switched a more simple angle and said that "crabs are eaten, spiders must have been eaten by people", the appearance and behavior of spiders, compared to crabs, its horror is far worse, of course, "must have been someone has eaten", may wish to imagine, for ourselves, do you dare to eat spiders today? I am afraid that everyone will be creepy and afraid to avoid it, so let alone eat more terrifying crabs? Further, even if we break through the psychological barrier that is difficult to accept, and we are faced with the problem of whether we can eat it, whether we will eat it sickly, whether it is poisonous or non-poisonous, and whether it will not die, how much risk we must take, how much courage we must have to fight to the death, ready to take our lives, so it is reasonable to say that "the person who eats crabs for the first time" and "is a warrior" is reasonable, reasonable, and insurmountable.

By the way, why should we be extremely grateful to "people who eat crab for the first time"? Because once you eat it, you feel "delicious", so you go to eat it twice or three times, so you drive everyone to eat, so bi Zhuo, Yang Guang, Li Bai, Su Shi, Lu You, Xu Wei, Li Yu, Cao Xueqin and other crab eaters have poured out in history, and left a colorful crab culture. Of course, "we" include Lu Xun himself, who once copied and proofread Fu Humerus's "Crab Recipe" in the Song Dynasty, wrote the animal sketch "Crab", especially he also loved to eat crabs, and was a skilled crab eating expert. "Admiration" and "very acceptable", "grateful" and "extreme" reveal the heartfelt respect of Lu Xun and his descendants.

From the above, it can be seen that Lu Xun's remarks quoted at the beginning of this article seem to be popular and plain, as if they were picked up at will, but in fact they are thick and thin, and their weights are light, and their true insights and outstanding ideas have aroused the resonance of many people, captured the hearts of many people, and become one of the most influential words in the history of modern culture.

Guangming Daily (2021-05-14, 16th edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily