The Legend of the Sand Crab

Early in the morning on the beach, the sun has just lifted out of the sea and the waves still roll lazily to shore. That is when the crabs come out. They are tiny and the color of sand, and they scurry back and forth. Each one busily rolls tiny round balls of sand around the mouth of its burrow. Before the work is done, a wave surges in and wipes it all flat. The crab quietly starts again from the beginning.

Watching them, people long ago saw the shadow of a story in their work. And they told it, from one generation to the next.

This is a Vietnamese folktale. It has no dates and no named places. There is only one man, two jewels, and a whole lifetime of waves.

Long ago, there lived a man named Dã Tràng. He lived simply, neither rich nor poor, and did his ordinary work day after day. Near his garden, a pair of large snakes shared a single burrow. Whenever he weeded nearby, he quietly watched the pair going in and out of their burrow.

Then one day, something sad happened. The female snake had just shed her skin. Her body was still weak, and she was resting alone. At that moment, Dã Tràng saw a strange snake slithering close. He thought it had come to harm the weakened female, so he drew his bow and shot to drive it away. But the arrow struck the female snake herself by mistake. The female snake died. Dã Tràng stood still, full of regret, because he had only wanted to save her, never to harm her.

A few days later, Dã Tràng was resting in his hammock when a large snake crawled in and wrapped its tail around a roof beam. It was the male snake, the mate of the unlucky female. As the tale tells it, he was a divine snake. He spat out a shining jewel, set it down beside the man, and began to speak.

The snake said he had once meant to find the man and avenge his mate. But when he heard Dã Tràng honestly tell everything that had happened, he understood. The man was not an enemy. He had only wanted to protect the snake's mate, and it had all been a sad mistake. So the snake gave him this precious jewel to repay that kindness. Whoever kept the jewel close would understand the speech of every creature.

Dã Tràng kept the jewel with him. From then on, his life changed completely. He heard the birds chatting on the branches. He heard ants talking things over in the ground, and fish whispering in the water. The world opened before him like a book whose pages never ran out, full of things that ordinary people never knew.

But knowing a great deal can sometimes bring trouble.

One day, a flock of crows perched in a treetop and called to him. On the mountain to the south, they said, a tiger had killed a goat and left it behind. They asked him to go and take the meat, and they only begged him to leave the innards for them. Dã Tràng did as they said, and he called the people of the village to come along. But the villagers were greedy. They took everything, innards and all, and left nothing for the crows.

The crows thought he had broken his word. They flew to his garden, cawing loudly and scolding him in every way. Annoyed, Dã Tràng again drew his bow and shot to chase them off. The crows then carried off an arrow carved with his name. They dropped it onto a dead body floating down the river, as if to pay him back.

Then disaster struck. People pulled the body from the water and found the arrow carved with the name Dã Tràng. They arrested him, believing he was a killer. He was led away and could not clear himself, because no one would believe a man who said he understood the voices of every creature.

Yet the voices of the creatures were also what saved him. On the way, when the soldiers stopped to rest, Dã Tràng heard a flock of sparrows chirping about big news. An enemy army from the north was on its way, they said. But its supply carts had just broken down near the border, so the army had to stop and wait for new supplies.

Dã Tràng hurried to tell the officials. The officials pressed him on whether he was sure, then sent men to find out. Everything turned out exactly as he had said, so Dã Tràng was cleared of the charge and set free. Once wrongly suspected, he had become a man who had served his country.

On his way home, Dã Tràng stopped to visit an old friend. The friend was overjoyed and was about to catch a pair of geese to cook for his guest. But Dã Tràng could hear the two geese murmuring to each other. The gander begged to die in place of his mate. The goose wept and insisted on dying for her partner instead. Then the gander slipped out of the pen to give their goslings a last word of advice before he went into the pot.

Seeing this, Dã Tràng was deeply moved. He hurried to stop his friend. He said his heart could not bear to watch a family torn apart, and that friendship did not need to be paid for with a life. He asked his friend to spare the geese. The friend understood and let them go, then bought shrimp to cook for the meal instead.

The geese were spared, and they were endlessly grateful to him. They gave him a second jewel. This one had magic powers too. Whoever carried it could move under water as easily as on land. The gander also said that from then on, the descendants of the geese would never eat shrimp again, in memory of the meal that had saved the lives of their ancestors. And geese would wear a tuft of white feathers on their heads, like a sign of mourning, as a promise to remember their rescuer forever.

That, the old tellers say, is why geese have a tuft of white feathers on their heads and never touch shrimp.

Now Dã Tràng had two precious jewels. One let him understand every creature, and the other let him walk under water. He kept them with great care, like treasures.

But one day, a last misfortune came, and this time it came from under his own roof. That day Dã Tràng was away, and he had left the bag of jewels at home. When he returned, all he found was a message from his wife. She said that an envoy had come up from the palace under the sea. The envoy promised that she would be made a queen beneath the sea if she brought the two jewels down to King Thủy Tề, the ruler of that palace. She had gone along with the promise and taken the jewels away.

Dã Tràng was very sad. The two jewels had been gifts of gratitude and friendship. Now they lay deep on the bottom of the open sea.

He came up with a plan. He would carry sand to fill in the sea and build a road all the way to the palace under the sea, to find his jewels again. The villagers tried to talk him out of it. The sea was so vast, they said, and no human strength could ever fill it. But Dã Tràng moved his house right down to the shore. Every day he worked away, shoveling sand, hauling sand, and pouring it into the sea.

The waves came and the waves went. However much sand he poured in, the waves carried just as much away. The shore stayed just as it was. But he did not stop. Day after day, he kept hauling sand, kept building, kept pouring, until his very last breath.

The tale says that after he passed away, his heart was still set on filling the sea and finding the jewels. So he became a small crab that lives on forever on the sandy shores. People call that crab the dã tràng.

Ever since, the dã tràng has kept at its work every day. It heaps up the sand grain by grain and shapes it into small round balls, one by one. It works carefully and patiently, as if it were building a road out to sea. But the waves do not wait. Each wave that washes in wipes everything clean.

It goes on like this, day after day and season after season, with no pause, no rest and no end.

People long ago looked at the little crab and saw Dã Tràng in it. They saw a whole life of toil, spent on a task too vast ever to finish, a task that never came to anything. From that story, the Vietnamese have a saying that is still passed down today. It goes:

Dã Tràng hauls sand to fill the sea. He wears out his heart, and nothing ever comes of it.

The saying still lives in the Vietnamese language. It speaks of hard work that comes to nothing.

Yet the little crab on the sand does not know that its work is in vain. It only knows how to keep going. When the waves wipe its sand away, it builds again. It does not complain, it does not give up, and it is not sad. It just goes on, quietly, diligently and steadily, under the early sun and the sea wind.

That picture is not wholly sad. There is something steadfast in it, something faithful to itself.

On mornings at the beach, the little sand crabs busy at their burrows still bring Dã Tràng to mind. He was a man who once heard the voices of every creature, who once saved a pair of geese, and who loved so much that he wanted to fill the whole sea. The waves keep coming and going, wiping everything away and coming back again. And there is the little sand crab, under the early sun, busily rolling new balls of sand once more.