grasshopper

Although we don't know exactly why Li is chosen to dance, we witness a man assuring officials that the child isn't from bourgeois stock. Phew. There are no known landowners in the family, so the grasshopper passes some cultural purity test, in a state often fixated on class warfare, driven by the cult of personality, and bullied by paranoia.

John Geib […]patented the hopper with two separate escapements, one of which soon became adopted in the grasshopper of the square piano