Viet Nam

In Vietnam, there is a crab that, according to legend, is still trying to fill the sea with sand.

In the folk tale, a man called Dã Tràng loses a magic pearl in the sea. He refuses to give up. If he fills the sea with sand, he thinks, he can find the pearl again.

He carries sand until he dies and is turned into a tiny crab. It still lives on the beaches, where it sifts the sand for food and leaves little balls of sand in patterns around its hole. The waves wash them away, and the work begins again.

In Vietnam, the crab is still called dã tràng, and “Dã Tràng’s work” means toil that never leads anywhere.