with mad skills: I need your help.
A couple of days ago, I stumbled into a market with birds, fish, and
turtles for sale, along with thousands and thousands of crickets. Most
of the folks in the market (hundreds by my estimate) were hunched over
little jars or other containers, each containing a single cricket. One-
by-one, a jar would be opened, the little cricket would be prodded
with a slender stick, the lid would be replaced, and on to the next one.
I asked my new Chinese friends about it -- showing the pictures I
took, drawing a little cricket, even attempting my first cricket
impression -- to no avail.
So my challenge to those of you who choose to accept is this: explain
what was happening in this market and with these crickets. Post your
answers in the comments. And thanks for your help!
“Cricket Culture in China encompasses a 2000 year history of both singing insects and fighting crickets.”
ReplyDeleteBeing more of a film buff than a bug buff, I googled that last scene from “The Last Emperor of China,” which is my only recollection of anything significant having to do with China and crickets. This particular page was fascinating! Hope this helps fill in your puzzle.
http://www.insects.org/ced3/chinese_crcul.html
Falling asleep to the cicadas,
Julie
More facts I've learned about crickets: First, there is actually a national cricket website (www.xishuai.net), which was cited as a source in a few articles I found. The site is reported to estimate that 10 million Chinese people raise crickets between July and November -- though I couldn't verify this, as I don't speak Chinese; -- which are kept for cricket fighting or for singing pets.
ReplyDeleteApparently, there are 20 of these cricket markets just in Shanghai.(Guess you found one!)
So a single male cricket can be purchased for just 5 yuan ($0.60), but they might go as high as 8,000 yuan ($967) or even more. Because only the male crickets that fight(and sing), female crickets go for only 1 yuan ($0.12).
Are you seeing a lot of little cricket cages, too?
Oh -- I also learned that while cricket fighting is legal (and apparently, encouraged) in China, gambling on crickets is not.
I see, too, that there are many unique cricket cages currently up for auction on eBay. There is a wide variety of shapes, as you'd expect; and in my limited research, I found some made of tortoise shell, bone, china, brass, silver, and wood.
ReplyDeleteThanks for coming through con gusto, baby! I sat next to a guy on the first leg of the train ride to the Yellow Mountains who had a couple of crickets. His friend explained, in English, the difference between the (very small) singing crickets and the larger ones used for fighting. He also described the bond created by walking around with the little ones in your shirt pocket: one's body heat keeps them alive, and deprived of it, they would die in their little cages.
ReplyDeleteHe cited both as examples of <insert Chinese word that I didn't grasp here>, which he loosely translated into "a little element of Chinese hertiage and culture." He talked about his concerns that many of these elements are being eroded: younger generations are more interested in the internet than crickets, and so he worries that it may not last.