Curious About…Chinese Cricket Matches.
(Huge thank you to my colleague Greg Perez for suggesting this topic.)
I haven’t been to Shanghai’s legendary Insect Market yet, but am planning on plucking up the courage to do so. I am a huge entemophobe so the challenge is vast, but I am curious to see the fighting cricket matches that everyone here talks about. (Worth pointing out upfront that unlike many blood sports such as bullfighting and cockfighting, cricket fighting rarely causes injuries to the animals.)
Cricket fighting was nurtured by Tang Dynasty emperors more than 1,000 years ago and was later popularized by everyday Chinese people. In the 13th century, the Southern Song Dynasty prime minister Jia Sidao wrote a how-to guide for the blood sport. Jia’s obsession with cricket fighting is believed to have contributed to the fall of the empire. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) China’s Communist government banned cricket fighting as a bourgeois predilection, but it is now undergoing a revival among a younger generation eager to embrace genuinely Chinese pastimes.
Cricket season begins in summer and the championships take place after the autumn equinox in late September. In Beijing, the Association for Cricket Fighting organizes cricket fighting events and championships. 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. While it is illegal in China to gamble on cricket fights, the fights themselves are legal and occur in most big cities in China. Crickets are sold openly in street markets, with more than a dozen cricket markets in Shanghai alone. Staggeringly, In 2010, more than 400 million yuan (US$63 million) were spent in China on crickets.
The best crickets are from a few counties in northeastern Shandong Province. Crickets have pedigrees and are carefully bred by knowledgeable keepers. Each cricket is kept in its own clay pot and their diets include ground shrimp, red beans, goat liver, and maggots. Before fight night, female crickets are dropped in the pot to amp up the male’s fighting spirit.
What Of It? What interests me here is the renaissance of a Chinese traditional pastime and the notion of a generation reclaiming their ancient sports and making them their own. I’m certainly not condoning animal fighting, but there is something strangely poetic about the idea of two humble insects invoking such vivid patriotism. And of course the paraphernalia, endless discussion online about cricket diets and lineage, breeders criticizing one another and the rabid loyalty that ensues is fascinating.
I Am Curious about the journey of any cultural tradition, about sports in those cultures and the idea of a new generation carrying on the legacy of a previous one.
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