Shanghai-ed - Crickets

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Crickets Crickets -- the long-legged insects that make such a racket on a summer evening as they rub their legs together in chorus with their brethren -- are one of the great traditional passions and passtimes in the Yangtze River delta. They are kept for their chirping, just as birds are kept for their twittering. And cricket fighting, while banned, is a sport still keenly followed by many.

For the full details of the gentle art of cricket raising, one has to go to the expert, in this case noted Shanghai-ologist Tess Johnston:

KEEPING CRICKETS

There are references to crickets in the earliest Chinese literature, but it was only in the Tang Dynasty (613-905 A.D.) that the Chinese began to keep them in cages, and that the care of crickets really developed into an art. In the Sung Dynasty (960-1280 A.D.) the sport of cricket fighting started. The story of cricket culture in China, with its gourds, cages, feeding pans, ivory and pigshair ticklers, tweezers, traps, etc., is a very interesting one.

The fighting crickets (called qu-qu, as in Chattanooga Choo Choo) are captured toward the end of summer by dealers who scour the countryside for the best specimen. Some counties are famous for having especially fierce fighting crickets, and these traditionally command enormous prices, even today when cricket fighting is outlawed. There are 67 varieties of fighting crickets, and those that chirp the loudest are considered to be the boldest and bring the highest prices.

In the olden days "young Chinese fanciers have been known to ruin themselves by investing in large studs of these insects, which are not only expensive to buy, but also to keep. Very fine specimens are as expensive as racing ponies. They require special attendants, as horses require grooms, and separate stalls--earthenware pots lined with fine mould and fitted with a microscopic cup for their drinking water." These special clay pots are still manufactured today, and antique ones still available in the market. Singing as well as fighting crickets can be kept in them.

There were special diets for the fighting crickets, special medicines if they caught cold, and even conjugal visits, with "every male allowed to have a lady in his tiny earthen cage for two hours each evening." Before the big fight started, the combattants were tickled with cricket ticklers. When they were released they flew at each other in a rage at having been so harrassed. The winner bore the proud name of "Conquering Cricket" and upon his death he was buried in a silver coffin, "with the hope that more good fighting crickets, attracted by the honorable funeral, will be found next year near its grave." We have, alas, never seen one of the silver coffins in China.

What are still available, however, are the most wonderful of all the cricket containers, the cricket gourds. These are hollowed out, incised with designs, or grown in molds, which form them into weird and exotic shapes, often with the mold's designs pressed into them. The tops can be of ivory, jade, tortoise shell or simple bamboo, but are almost always carved with a design. The ones belonging to the emperors are truly exquisite and in museums, but really fine examples can still bought (for high prices) in China's antique markets.

Also available, and at more moderate prices, are the contemporary cricket carriers for the smallest of the species, the jinlingzi and huanglingzi (loosely translated as "golden bell singers"). Their homes are of plastic or wood, about the size of half a cigarette case. The plastic ones come in imaginative designs, such as a TV set, an automobile, a pistol, and the wooden ones have sliding lids, usually elaborately carved, over their glass windows. They all have little plugs into which the food is inserted.

The most spectacular--and certainly most audible--of the many cricket varieties is the biggest of all, a gigantic green one called jiao gu-gu in Shanghainese. These resemble our grasshoppers in the west. They are kept in cages and sold by itinerate vendors who carry about a hundred woven wicker ones on a fishing pole. He has no need to call out his wares as he passes by; you can hear him before you see him.

These crickets live out their days in cages, often large and elaborate, where they often hang upside down like lumpy hammocks. Their "song" (screech would be more accurate) is earsplitting and they are mostly relegated to outdoor locations. They are partial to green beans for some reason, but also like melons and cucumbers, from which they get their liquid. It is, in fact, not necessary to put water in any of the cricket containers, as long as they get their veggies or wet rice.

In the cricket season of late summer you can buy these and many other varieties in the local Bird/Fish/Flower Market. You then can place them in various rooms in your house, or out of doors for the giant greens, so that you will have altos, sopranos, tenors, baritones, bases --a veritable chorus--singing away at you all day. Alas, they all live only a hundred days or so, and when their short span is over you will find that you miss their cheerful chorus.