The Dharma Force

Cricket

That last entry was too dreadful and gloomy.

So I decided to post another one. One thing I do not want my kids to learn, at least from me, is depression.

You can only play the cards you are dealt with.

I'd like to tell another story from the Chinese Ghost Stories book. It turns out, my father has a copy of the book in his library. I was flipping through it today. This one is named "Cricket".

In Ming Dynasty, (Which is about 500 years ago) there was an emperor who loved crickets. He decreed that each province was to send a fixed number of crickets to the Palace each year.

Now, the decree became a burden to the people. A child's play became a curse. Crickets are used as entertainments for the emperor. They were to fight each other. So a good strong cricket became priceless.

In a province, a poor man was given the task of catching a good cricket for the emperor. He looked high and low, and all the good crickets were caught and hoarded by the gangs in the city. He could not find any.

As the deadline approaches, he became desperate. It was one thing to not catching a cricket, but it was quite another matter to defy an emperor's decree. He could be beheaded.

So he took the last bit of money from his house and went to a temple to ask an Oracle. The Oracle gave him a painting, nothing more.

He looked at the painting. It was showing a deserted backyard at midnight. With the moon high above the sky, and a cricket hid in the grass. But there was no words, no hints, nothing but a painting.

He looked at it for two days, without any luck. He asked all around, and nobody could see the meaning of the painting.

Then on the third day, as he was getting sick, his son came into the room. He was a boy of 10 years old. He saw the painting and said, "Daddy, isn't it the backyard of the temple?"

The man jumped from the bed and ran out.

He ran to the temple, and it was just around midnight. He went to the back, and sure enough, the scene was just like the painting. Just then, the moon was high in the sky, and he heard the singing of the cricket.

His heart leapt. He carefully parted the grass and saw the most beautiful cricket in his life. He said a prayer of thanks and reached for the cricket.

The cricket jumped away. The man ran after it, not caring all the debris that was hurting his hands and knees.

Finally, after a chase, he caught the cricket. He put it in a bamboo tube, and went home.

The whole family was in celebration. Both his wife and his son begged him to see the cricket, but he was tired. He put it on the shelf and went to bed.

Soon after, the cricket began to sing in the tube. That woke up the boy. He was too curious to sleep. So he went to his parents' room to find the bamboo tube.

He carefully took it off the shelf, and slowly opened the end. He just wanted to see it.

But of course, as you guessed, the cricket jumped out. The boy panicked. He grabbed at the cricket, and luckily he caught it.

However, unluckily, he used too much force, and he crashed the cricket in his hand.

He woke up the parents and showed them what he did. Both of them started to cry. That meant the end of the father.

The son got scared, and he ran away.

The parents was so busy with their sorrow, they did not notice that until the next day. As the boy did not return for lunch, they got worried. They searched for him high and low, and finally they found him.

They found him in a well. He was so frightened and he felt so guilty that he jumped into a well and was drowned.

Now the parents' anger turned into sorrow and regret. They cried and prayed, and they were ready to end their own lives when the mother noticed that the boy was still breathing shallowly.

They put him into the bed and watched over him all day.

By night, the father was too tired to continue. As he walked out of the room, he heard the singing of a cricket. For a moment he thought his cricket was not dead because the sound was so familiar. But as he parted the grass to look, he found a little cricket. It was thin, small, dark and ugly.

He signed, and he was ready to leave when the cricket jumped onto his sleave. The father thought that a small cricket is better than the alternative, so he put it into the bamboo tube.

The next day, a visitor came. He was a member of the local gang. He had caught a bunch of crickets, and he was hoarding them for a better price. He heard that the father caught a good one, so he came to challenge the man.

The father was going to refuse, but he thought that his little cricket was useless to the task, he might as well get a fight out of it.

So he agreed. They went to the gang member's home to fight it out. When they saw the little cricket, all the people laughed. Then the other guy put out his own cricket. It was a beast!

They teased the big beast with a little straw, and it began to sing and huff and puff. But when they tease the little cricket, it was motionless. The people laughed even more. The father was impatient, so he poked his cricket a little bit.

Suddenly, the little cricket charged the big one, and jumped at it. He started to bite and to chew. The big one did not even realize what was going on when the little one bit off its leg and became the victor.

All the people was stunned. The gang member was shocked and angry. He got out of the crowd, and when nobody was noticing, he threw a rooster towards the father. All the people gasped as the rooster eyed the little cricket and pecked at it.

They all thought the little cricket was a goner. The father even closed his eyes. But the cricket jumped onto the rooster's crown and bit down hard. The rooster plucked and screamed, ran around in pain.

Finally, the people caught the rooster and pulled the cricket away from the hapless rooster.

The father was happy. When he got home, he got even more happier. His son woke up. But the boy was maim. He did not say a word, and he did not even recognize his parents. He just ate and slept, as if his brain was dead.

Father turned in the cricket to the local governor. When the governor saw the little cricket, he almost ordered the father's execution on the spot.

"What kind of fool do you take me for?" he said, "How dare you to turn in such a little sickly cricket!"

The father begged for an explanation, and he told the governor of all the extraordinary the little cricket did. The governor decided to test it out.

Sure enough, the little cricket not only beat all the other crickets, but it beat a rooster as well.

The governor was delighted. He sent the cricket to the emperor immediately. And when the emperor tested the cricket, he was more than delighted. He rewarded the father handsomely.

But the father was not happy. Even though he had money now, and he was forgiven the chore of catching more cricket, but his beloved son was still brain dead.

Then two years had passed, one day, suddenly, the boy, as if awoke from a long sleep, called out to his parents. The parents were overwhelmed. They rushed to his bed, and the son was alive and whole again.

He told his parents that he dreamt that he was a little cricket. And for two years, he was the emperor's favorite, until he woke up here in bed.

Kind of weird and interesting, huh?