"Ah Q" is the story of an out-of-work day labourer who ends up executed for a petty crime. As Ruth Rogaski has noted, Ah Q is "a rural simpleton who is easily angered, easily contented, insensitive to the suffering of others, and insensitive even to his own suffering." See "The True Story of Ah Q", Selected Works of Lu Hsun (Beijing, 1956), pp. 76-135; Ruth Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (University of California Press), p. 243.