In this world, no life is great, and no life is insignificant.
I am a cockroach, named Little Digu. I lived with several hundred brothers and sisters in a magnificent big mansion. Every day, in all kinds of dark corners, we played and fooled around without a care in the world. You could say we were childhood buddies. Among them, the one I was closest to was a pal named Little Moji. We were almost inseparable every day, eating together, sleeping together, biting sugar crumbs into cubes to use as dice, lying on steamed buns pretending to be red dates to scare Xiaoyu, the silly kitchen girl...
And so the days passed happily one after another, until one day, the older generation of cockroaches lectured us and said it was time to find a mate and start a family.
I had absolutely no concept of starting a family in my head. I asked Little Moji, and he couldn't explain it clearly either. He just told me I should find a female cockroach, and from then on live with her and stop paying attention to him. Because two male cockroaches can't live together. As for what "live together" means, it means having lots of baby cockroaches. If it were two male cockroaches, there'd definitely be an argument over who should get pregnant, so it had to be a male and a female.
He also told me that after finding a good female cockroach, I should bring her to the crack in the wall where I lived and do that, and after that was done there would be lots of little cockroaches. I asked him what "that" meant. He was confused for a long time, and in the end gave me a rather uncertain conclusion: it's about the same as humans. Like how Old Gao at the gatehouse and Xiaoyu, the silly kitchen girl, often do it—in the middle of the night they run to the back garden, take off their shells, then press themselves against each other desperately until broth squeezes out from underneath.
I half understood and half didn't, but I was too embarrassed to ask further, so I said I'd think about it and turned to leave. At a corner of the wall, I tried lifting my own shell a bit. It hurt terribly. I couldn't imagine taking the whole shell off—that would hurt me to death. I thought, isn't this just asking for suffering? Why do we absolutely have to do that? After thinking for a while, I sighed and said: this damn thing is fate, I guess. Then I lay down and quietly looked at the puddle of water in front of me. Looking at my reflection in the water—my red shell, my long legs, my straight antennae—my heart was filled with fear of that.
For quite a while after that, I sank into endless painful fantasies. Watching the other cockroaches starting to pair off and fall in love, I mostly looked at them sideways with a sense of schadenfreude.
But in the end, countless companions still went off to do that. And I never once heard anyone complain about the pain of that. The terrible part was that by the time I began to feel I had been mistaken and planned to find a companion to ask how exactly to do that, not a single cockroach had any time to teach me—they were all busy doing that. In the end, according to the clan chief's count, there were 501 cockroaches of marriageable age in this batch, forming 250 pairs, including Little Moji and his partner, and I was the one left over. So the old chief pointed at me and said: You, wait till next year.
And so I was lonely. I began to like lying by myself at the entrance to the courtyard, looking outside, not eating, not drinking, not moving. Even when the people going in and out kept stepping over me, I had no reaction, like a tank that had run out of fuel.
That day, I saw a ground beetle.
She was so beautiful, her shell black and shiny, her walk light and gentle, her soft antennae swaying charmingly. I stared blankly at her until she disappeared into the grass on the other side.
At that moment, I knew my heart no longer belonged to me, Little Digu alone, but to both of us. Her image kept appearing in my mind, one after another, making me forget food and sleep, leaving me absent-minded.
The next day, I went to the entrance again at the same time to wait for her. Sure enough, she appeared again. My heart was so excited it felt like it would explode. I wanted to greet her, but stupidly didn't know how to begin. Just as I was feeling awkward, she turned her head and saw me. The two of us looked at each other for two full minutes. Then she suddenly smiled and softly said, "Hello."
I fainted with joy.
I don't know how much time passed. When I woke up, she was actually still there, looking at me with a strange and concerned expression. Seeing that I had awakened, she asked, "What's wrong with you?"
I struggled to turn over (I had been lying there on my back with all four feet in the air) and said awkwardly, "Nothing, nothing."
She felt relieved. "It's good that it's nothing. I thought you were having some kind of attack." She giggled, turned her head to look across the way, then turned back and said to me, "Then I'm going. I still have things to do."
"Wait..." I panicked. It had been so hard just to speak with the one I loved—how could it end after only a couple of lines? My mind was racing in circles, but I just couldn't think of anything to say to her.
"What do you want to say?"
"I... I like you!" Dear heaven, I was trembling.
And the two of us began stupidly staring at each other again.
"How is that possible?" she finally snapped back to herself. "I'm a ground beetle, and you're a cockroach."
"So what? When we do that, we'll take off our shells—who'll be able to tell whether we're a ground beetle or a cockroach?"
"What do you mean?" There was a trace of panic in her eyes. "Why would we take off our shells? And what do you mean by that?"
I roughly told her Little Moji's original theory about that. It was obvious that in the end, her understanding of that was no deeper than her understanding of general relativity.
"It's what you're supposed to do after starting a family. I call it that." In the end I still summed it up simply like that.
At last she understood, and burst out laughing. "What are you talking about? That's called mating." Then she suddenly blushed, but still continued softly: "You don't need to take off your shell."
"Really? Then what exactly is that? Could you teach me?"
"As if." She stamped her foot (of course, all six feet at once), turned around, and quickly ran toward the other side of the road.
I looked at her retreating figure in despair.
Just as she was about to disappear into the grass on the other side, she suddenly stopped. She stood there hesitating for about a minute, then turned around and called to me with a smile: "Come over here!"
I don't know what words I could use to describe the joy in my heart. Without even thinking, I dashed toward her. In the middle of the road there seemed to be a few people standing vaguely there, but I didn't think much of it and just ran straight for the other side.
By the time I realized the danger, it was already too late. A human foot dropped from the sky and stomped me flat. My mind still retained consciousness. When I looked around, I found that I was already flattened, my shell shattered too, scattered all around my body, and broth was flowing out from underneath me. The first thought in my heart was: it's over, I got that-ed by this person. That thought depressed me to the utmost, so much that I even forgot the pain in my body. I struggled to look across to the other side, searching for the beautiful ground beetle whose name I still didn't know.
She seemed to be frightened silly, lying there motionless, with an expression that wanted to cry but couldn't.
I knew my life had reached its end, but I didn't want to see her this upset. I desperately wanted to squeeze out a smile for her, but I couldn't. My head was already crushed.
So this is how it is, I thought. After all, I saw her smile, I heard her speak to me, and I know she was willing to teach me what that means. That means we could have started a family.
"I love you." I closed my eyes and silently repeated it in my heart, feeling my life slowly drain out of my body.
In the haze, a hand—a human hand—pinched up my flattened body, and I heard someone wailing in my ear: "Xiaoqiang, Xiaoqiang, what's wrong with you, Xiaoqiang? Xiaoqiang, you can't die! We've depended on each other through thick and thin for so many years. I've always raised and taught you like my own flesh and blood. Who would have thought that today an old man would have to bury the young..."
I am a cockroach, named Little Digu. I lived with several hundred brothers and sisters in a magnificent big mansion. Every day, in all kinds of dark corners, we played and fooled around without a care in the world. You could say we were childhood buddies. Among them, the one I was closest to was a pal named Little Moji. We were almost inseparable every day, eating together, sleeping together, biting sugar crumbs into cubes to use as dice, lying on steamed buns pretending to be red dates to scare Xiaoyu, the silly kitchen girl...
And so the days passed happily one after another, until one day, the older generation of cockroaches lectured us and said it was time to find a mate and start a family.
I had absolutely no concept of starting a family in my head. I asked Little Moji, and he couldn't explain it clearly either. He just told me I should find a female cockroach, and from then on live with her and stop paying attention to him. Because two male cockroaches can't live together. As for what "live together" means, it means having lots of baby cockroaches. If it were two male cockroaches, there'd definitely be an argument over who should get pregnant, so it had to be a male and a female.
He also told me that after finding a good female cockroach, I should bring her to the crack in the wall where I lived and do that, and after that was done there would be lots of little cockroaches. I asked him what "that" meant. He was confused for a long time, and in the end gave me a rather uncertain conclusion: it's about the same as humans. Like how Old Gao at the gatehouse and Xiaoyu, the silly kitchen girl, often do it—in the middle of the night they run to the back garden, take off their shells, then press themselves against each other desperately until broth squeezes out from underneath.
I half understood and half didn't, but I was too embarrassed to ask further, so I said I'd think about it and turned to leave. At a corner of the wall, I tried lifting my own shell a bit. It hurt terribly. I couldn't imagine taking the whole shell off—that would hurt me to death. I thought, isn't this just asking for suffering? Why do we absolutely have to do that? After thinking for a while, I sighed and said: this damn thing is fate, I guess. Then I lay down and quietly looked at the puddle of water in front of me. Looking at my reflection in the water—my red shell, my long legs, my straight antennae—my heart was filled with fear of that.
For quite a while after that, I sank into endless painful fantasies. Watching the other cockroaches starting to pair off and fall in love, I mostly looked at them sideways with a sense of schadenfreude.
But in the end, countless companions still went off to do that. And I never once heard anyone complain about the pain of that. The terrible part was that by the time I began to feel I had been mistaken and planned to find a companion to ask how exactly to do that, not a single cockroach had any time to teach me—they were all busy doing that. In the end, according to the clan chief's count, there were 501 cockroaches of marriageable age in this batch, forming 250 pairs, including Little Moji and his partner, and I was the one left over. So the old chief pointed at me and said: You, wait till next year.
And so I was lonely. I began to like lying by myself at the entrance to the courtyard, looking outside, not eating, not drinking, not moving. Even when the people going in and out kept stepping over me, I had no reaction, like a tank that had run out of fuel.
That day, I saw a ground beetle.
She was so beautiful, her shell black and shiny, her walk light and gentle, her soft antennae swaying charmingly. I stared blankly at her until she disappeared into the grass on the other side.
At that moment, I knew my heart no longer belonged to me, Little Digu alone, but to both of us. Her image kept appearing in my mind, one after another, making me forget food and sleep, leaving me absent-minded.
The next day, I went to the entrance again at the same time to wait for her. Sure enough, she appeared again. My heart was so excited it felt like it would explode. I wanted to greet her, but stupidly didn't know how to begin. Just as I was feeling awkward, she turned her head and saw me. The two of us looked at each other for two full minutes. Then she suddenly smiled and softly said, "Hello."
I fainted with joy.
I don't know how much time passed. When I woke up, she was actually still there, looking at me with a strange and concerned expression. Seeing that I had awakened, she asked, "What's wrong with you?"
I struggled to turn over (I had been lying there on my back with all four feet in the air) and said awkwardly, "Nothing, nothing."
She felt relieved. "It's good that it's nothing. I thought you were having some kind of attack." She giggled, turned her head to look across the way, then turned back and said to me, "Then I'm going. I still have things to do."
"Wait..." I panicked. It had been so hard just to speak with the one I loved—how could it end after only a couple of lines? My mind was racing in circles, but I just couldn't think of anything to say to her.
"What do you want to say?"
"I... I like you!" Dear heaven, I was trembling.
And the two of us began stupidly staring at each other again.
"How is that possible?" she finally snapped back to herself. "I'm a ground beetle, and you're a cockroach."
"So what? When we do that, we'll take off our shells—who'll be able to tell whether we're a ground beetle or a cockroach?"
"What do you mean?" There was a trace of panic in her eyes. "Why would we take off our shells? And what do you mean by that?"
I roughly told her Little Moji's original theory about that. It was obvious that in the end, her understanding of that was no deeper than her understanding of general relativity.
"It's what you're supposed to do after starting a family. I call it that." In the end I still summed it up simply like that.
At last she understood, and burst out laughing. "What are you talking about? That's called mating." Then she suddenly blushed, but still continued softly: "You don't need to take off your shell."
"Really? Then what exactly is that? Could you teach me?"
"As if." She stamped her foot (of course, all six feet at once), turned around, and quickly ran toward the other side of the road.
I looked at her retreating figure in despair.
Just as she was about to disappear into the grass on the other side, she suddenly stopped. She stood there hesitating for about a minute, then turned around and called to me with a smile: "Come over here!"
I don't know what words I could use to describe the joy in my heart. Without even thinking, I dashed toward her. In the middle of the road there seemed to be a few people standing vaguely there, but I didn't think much of it and just ran straight for the other side.
By the time I realized the danger, it was already too late. A human foot dropped from the sky and stomped me flat. My mind still retained consciousness. When I looked around, I found that I was already flattened, my shell shattered too, scattered all around my body, and broth was flowing out from underneath me. The first thought in my heart was: it's over, I got that-ed by this person. That thought depressed me to the utmost, so much that I even forgot the pain in my body. I struggled to look across to the other side, searching for the beautiful ground beetle whose name I still didn't know.
She seemed to be frightened silly, lying there motionless, with an expression that wanted to cry but couldn't.
I knew my life had reached its end, but I didn't want to see her this upset. I desperately wanted to squeeze out a smile for her, but I couldn't. My head was already crushed.
So this is how it is, I thought. After all, I saw her smile, I heard her speak to me, and I know she was willing to teach me what that means. That means we could have started a family.
"I love you." I closed my eyes and silently repeated it in my heart, feeling my life slowly drain out of my body.
In the haze, a hand—a human hand—pinched up my flattened body, and I heard someone wailing in my ear: "Xiaoqiang, Xiaoqiang, what's wrong with you, Xiaoqiang? Xiaoqiang, you can't die! We've depended on each other through thick and thin for so many years. I've always raised and taught you like my own flesh and blood. Who would have thought that today an old man would have to bury the young..."
