李琪 / Li Qi

李琪 appears in 114.又到持螯赏菊时，聊聊螃蟹的趣闻史话 as the Yuan-period writer of [[XunXieshu|《讯蟹书》]]. The episode uses him as the key authorial example of defending a maligned animal through personified legal argument: the crab is accused of ugly form, sideways walking, aggression, and moral defect, then answers that its body is natural and that human beings are often guiltier than the animal they judge.

For the wiki, Li Qi matters less as a biographical node than as a hinge between Crab Cultural Symbolism and Animal Moral Projection. His crab defense turns literary play into an ethical reversal: if humans use crab bodies as moral insults, the crab can also expose human hypocrisy.

Key Claims

• Li Qi’s source role is anchored by 《讯蟹书》 rather than by a full biography.
• The episode treats his crab defense as a witty but serious answer to animal-based moral stigma.
• His writing makes the crab a speaking defendant, shifting attention from animal strangeness to human judgment.

Connections

• [[XunXieshu|《讯蟹书》]] - work discussed in the source.
• [[Crab|螃蟹]], Crab Cultural Symbolism, and Animal Moral Projection - main object and concept branches.
• Eating And Killing Moral Ambivalence - adjacent ethical branch in the same episode.