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.
Under the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD), the Chinese began keeping
crickets as musical pets. "Ladies of the palace" would catch
crickets and carry them either in their bosom or suspended from
their girdle. At night, the women would place the crickets near
their pillow to provide solace during moments of loneliness. It's
said that the cricket's song mirrored the concubine's own sadness.
With as many as 3,000 women per emperor - each hanging out with her
own cricket - this made for very noisy evenings at the palace.
As the pastime grew more popular, citizens began sending thousands
of their best crickets to the capital each year as gifts for the
emperor. Then painters, poets, musicians, and politicians alike
followed the emperor's lead and began to keep crickets as pets,
storing them in containers developed specifically for the little
songmakers - containers that ranged from tiny cages wrought of
bamboo and fish bones to clay pots, beautifully carved wooden
boxes, and decorative gourds inlaid with ivory and gold.
Eventually, cricket societies and clubs grew, encompassing all
levels of hobbyists. Thus this appreciation, as with so many other
customs throughout the world, began in the palaces but soon spread
to the lower classes and to the villages.
In ancient Chinese agricultural societies, however, crickets were
appreciated for an entirely different reason - their chirping was a
crucial indicator of climate change. When farmers heard the Jingzhe
(the waking of the insects) in spring, they knew that the time was
right to begin plowing the fields. To pay tribute, farmers wrote
proverbs and songs about the insects, artists rendered paintings of
them, and children were told cricket fables. There was even the
belief that, because crickets lay hundreds of eggs, the key to
success in life was to have as many children as possible.
China developed the sport of cricket fighting during the Song
dynasty (960-1279 AD); the fight is a natural outgrowth of
interaction between two males who are competing for territory. The
brave and valiant warrior spirit of a cricket in battle captivated
audiences - and the cricket's reputation as an intelligent and
competitive insect with an added talent for making beautiful sounds
grew.
Fighting was at first a sport for the upper class, as a means to
display wealth. The lower class was attracted to the gambling
element, though, and eventually the sport became aligned with
slackers and societal problems. When the government prohibited the
fights, the sport went underground. Only in recent years has the
sport of cricket fighting again been officially allowed, and then
only if no gambling is involved - or discovered.
A cricket fight in China is as ritualistic as a bullfight is in
Spain - and there is equal respect for both of the creatures
involved. As has been the tradition for centuries, two crickets are
weighed and then matched up according to size, weight, and color.
Both combatants are placed in a small fighting arena, with walls
high and thick enough to prevent desertion. The cricket trainers
stimulate their charges with a straw or a fine-haired brush, and
then the insect warriors go at each other, antennae waving and jaws
snapping.
Over the years, experts have outlined three main fighting styles: A
cricket might stalk his enemy slowly, in a strategy of "creep like
a tiger, fight like a snake." Another cricket might lie in wait,
attacking only when its opponent chirps, in the "listen for sound,
look for the enemy" technique. A great fighter will use the "charge
like the wind, valiantly forging straight ahead" method of
champions.
Fights are usually face-to-face and eerily silent, except for the
chirping and the scuttling of feet and wings, and they can be quite
mesmerizing. A bout usually doesn't last long, and it's
surprisingly PG, with minimal gore and carnage (a more fierce
confrontation, though, might include one cricket flipping the other
across the arena). The loser often runs away or simply stops
fighting. Only occasionally does a match end in a fatality, with
decapitation as the humiliating finale.
American expat journalist
Aventurina King witnessed her first
cricket match in the kitchen of a friend's home in Beijing.
"White-collar workers in their 20s generally don't participate in
this activity," King explains. "I would say it's people [from]
families that are still quite traditional who take this up as a
hobby. On the weekends, they get together with their friends and
see which one of their crickets is the best."
It was King's first cricket match, and her immediate impression was
that, in China, having crickets as pets is nothing unusual at all.
"It was cute. … Each cricket had its own water and food in a tiny
bowl made of white-and-blue Chinese ceramic." After some friendly
wagers were placed, the match began.
"My cricket, the one I had bet on, bared its fangs and made a lot
of noise - it sounded like the opera star Renée Fleming when she
reaches the high A. It turned the other cricket over once or twice.
After that, it seemed like a game of cat and mouse, with the
opponent running around the bowl as my cricket chased it." King's
cricket ultimately was defeated, and both gladiators were returned
to their respective containers and rewarded with food and
water.
"[Since neither] of these was my cricket, there wasn't much emotion
involved," she says. "But I can imagine that for someone who has
spent a lot of time training a cricket, things [could] get pretty
heated during fights."
Especially if there's money at stake: The forbidden element of
gambling is one of the causes behind the contemporary resurgence of
cricket fighting. At matches where money is exchanged, the pressure
is as intense as at a heavyweight
boxing match in Vegas. Cheating -
such as giving the insects stimulants - is not uncommon.
Occasionally, cricket-fighting dens are even raided, resulting in
police arresting the gamblers and confiscating cash and crickets.
So-called luxury games, held in outlying provinces, switch venues
for each match in order to avoid the police.
The majority of today's cricket culture is aboveground, though -
and accepted in society. There are even some cities, like Jinan,
where fights are broadcast live on television. And Chongming
Island, off the coast of
Shanghai, hosts a six-day national
cricket-fighting competition, drawing hundreds of fans and their
combative insects from all over the country.
Beijing's Chinese Culture Club also sponsors cricket matches.
Mariel Escudero and Sonia Dupont, expats who live in the city and
work on the Latin American website GRILA.net (Grupo de Residentes
Ibero Latino Americano), recently attended a cricket lecture and
workshop at Beijing's culture center, which provides
English-language services for non-Chinese residents. The class
culminated in cricket bouts for all participants. "I found it
fascinating," Escudero tells me. So fascinating, in fact, that she
and Dupont collaborated on an article about it for their website
and even posted a fight video on YouTube.
It's said that there are as many as 900 species of crickets in the
world, and the Chinese cricket culture includes a number of
variants.
The best singing crickets are said to possess thick wings with wide
veins. (Only mature males make the chirping noise, produced by
rubbing their forewings together.) A cricket can create as many as
five distinct calls, including an after-mating sound and sounds
that signify courtship or attack. Some insect keepers will alter
the wings of their favorite crickets, applying a tiny amount of wax
(at the correct temperature) to amplify the sounds.
Chirping has been calibrated in certain species to be able to
actually calculate the temperature of their environment, which is
known as Dolbear's Law. (Depending on the species, a rough method
is to count the number of times a cricket chirps in 15 seconds and
then add 38; the sum should equal the correct temperature in
Fahrenheit.)
For fighting, the Gryllus bimaculatus is favored for its aggressive
nature, thick body, and length of up to one and a half inches.
Found throughout
Asia,
Africa, and southern
Europe, this cricket is
considered the best chirper of all the species; it has a strong,
clean sound, which adds more excitement to the fight.
Like a boxer or a wrestler, a fighting cricket undergoes training
and medical care. Keepers observe their crickets' behavior
carefully, watching for signs of disease and extremes in
temperature, which can injure them. Their strict dietary regime
ranges from flies and blood-filled mosquitoes to boiled chestnuts,
ginseng, and calcium tablets. Some keepers prefer to feed the
insects corn, wheat flour, and sliced apple. Training might include
putting a female in the jar with the male, to create agitation and
aggression. Other keepers will have the fighter fast prior to a
match, and as soon as the cricket starts acting sick, they'll
quickly feed it small red insects to rebuild its strength. There
are no instances in modern cricket fighting of the use of illegal
steroids. Not yet, anyway.
Victorious fighters are treated with the respect of sumo champions.
A winning cricket is referred to as a general. Owners of such
warrior crickets will often travel great distances to meet one
another and to ensure that their heroes are well matched for
another bout. The best crickets will fight as many as six times
before they are retired or defeated.
A particularly noble fighter may be preserved under glass for
eternity, or his likeness may be rendered in a painting. In 1999,
in Shandong Province, one champion, dubbed King of the Insects, was
valued at 100,000 yuan ($12,920) - a shocking amount, considering
that the annual income in Beijing, one of the wealthiest urban
centers, averages just 7,000 to 30,000 yuan ($904 to $3,876).
Commercial and residential expansion in China has led to the slow
decline in the number of agricultural fields (where crickets
originally were collected), so breeders now supply many of the
country's crickets used for retail purposes. Yet there are still
specific areas where champion crickets grow in the wild.
Many great cricket fighters come from Zhejiang Province, from a
town called Yuhang, where the pepper fields are said to lend a
fiery disposition and incredible strength. Crickets from Luhua's
watermelon and soybean fields are also said to possess power and a
hot temper.
But Shandong Province, south of Beijing, is still considered the
ultimate birthplace for a fighting cricket. Folklore tells us that
during an enemy invasion some 800 years ago, a Song dynasty emperor
scattered his cricket collection at the foot of the sacred Mount
Tai. The descendants of these crickets are said to be the world's
best fighters. It's estimated that nearly half a million people
travel to the county of Ningyang for crickets each year. Local
farmers earn their main income just from plucking crickets from
their fields and selling them to buyers from
Singapore,
Japan, and
Hong Kong.
Demand for the insects is so high that many have been able to make
a comfortable living as a cricket breeder in the big markets of
major cities. One popular business model is to buy or capture young
crickets, feed them special concoctions twice a day to increase
their strength, and then resell them for profit.
It’s unlikely that citizens will once again send thousands of prized crickets to the emperor’s palace — nor will 3,000 concubines clasp a cricket to their bosom as they sleep in fitful loneliness — but it’s obvious that the hold this chirpy little insect has on this country is as strong as ever. And worth a buck or two.