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King of the Insects

Some are lauded for singing. Some are lauded for fighting. (A few are lauded for both.) Some tell you the temperature. As a collective bunch, they indicate when it's time to plow a field. Talk about a wonder bug. Maybe that's why the right cricket in China can fetch nearly $13,000.
. Photographs by Steven Harris.

Construction for the 2008 Summer Olympics is only one of the many signs of modernity in China's second-largest city. Today, not only is Beijing home to traditional cultural sites like the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, but it's also increasingly an international hub for the high-tech, pharmaceutical, and electronics industries.

Outside the city's Central Business District, however, a much older industry is still very much alive. A visitor strolling through Guanyuan Market might initially linger to take in the wondrous variety of rare flowers, birds, and reptiles. It's the crazy noise, though, that will eventually win the spectator's attention. A cacophony of incessant chirping carries over the hum of the crowd. It's a familiar sound amplified to a deafening level - and it beckons everyone walking by to come and check out the crickets.

The merchants here display hundreds of their chirping wares right on the street, each inside a bamboo cage or a plastic container. Some crickets are for singing, others are for fighting - and all are for sale. Prices can reach the equivalent of several thousand U.S. dollars, an astonishing amount for an insect that will live only two to three months.
     
For centuries, China has regarded a cricket chirping around the house as good luck; a deluge of crickets means wealth will come to the family.