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.