Pubdate: Sun, 22 Sep 2002
Source: Arizona Daily Star (AZ)
Copyright: 2002 Pulitzer Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.azstarnet.com/star/today/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/23
Author: Julie Chao, Cox News Service

CRICKETS: ROYALTY OF CHINESE BUGDOM

Pocket-Sized Pugilists Bring Small Fortunes

BEIJING - If you want a champion cricket, there's just one thing to know:

"The most important thing, to put it simply: You have to find it a wife," 
said Li Liangqi, 61, a retiree who says his stable has never lost a cricket 
fight. "Just like a man, a cricket needs to build up his strength."

But a mate is not all that's needed to ensure victory. Because a female 
cricket, for all her talents, can't clean the house, and that's where the 
master comes in.

"You also have to scrub the floors every day, clean his water dish," he said.

The $1,574 cricket

Autumn is the cricket-fighting season in China. By winter the little 
creatures will be dead and bug buffs will have to wait until next summer 
before they can indulge in their passion again. It's a pastime steeped in 
history, and big bucks.

It's not unusual to spend the equivalent of a few hundred dollars on a 
single cricket. One went for more than $1,574 in Beijing last year, 
according to newspaper reports.

Wu Jichuan, an entomologist at the Chinese Academy of Science, who has been 
dubbed the "saint of insects" by the Chinese media, says China has 10 
million cricket lovers. On any weekend, hundreds can be found at the 
Tianqiao bird and animal market on the south side of Beijing.

Past the pigeons and puppies and assorted rodents is a row of cricket 
vendors, each with dozens of little clay canisters spread out before them. 
Shoppers - all of them men and boys - squat down and take off the lids one 
by one, looking for a prize bug that will vanquish the weak and bring 
riches to its owner.

Although they all look the same to the untrained eye, a cricket connoisseur 
will note differences in size, color, shape and quickness of movement. A 
serious buyer will run a long, thin brush made of a few mouse whiskers on 
the cricket's head, getting him to open his jaws and expose his chewing 
mouth parts.

Bugs high on pot

Informal cricket associations sponsor fights where the only prize is a 
trophy and bragging rights. The match is projected on a large television 
screen for easier viewing. Crickets, like boxers, fight according to their 
weight class.

The real high-stakes fights take place in private homes. Doping is not 
unheard of. Marijuana, for example, is said to make crickets immune to pain.

At Tianqiao, dozens of informal bouts take place every day. With a dozen or 
so men hunched over a small plastic box that serves as the fight arena, two 
crickets go at it - grabbing at and jumping on each other - until one is 
maimed, dies or runs away. The loser is tossed out. The winner can fight 
again, but only after a week's rest, according to Li.

The finest crickets come from Shandong, a coastal province 300 miles 
southeast of Beijing. Pesticides, pollution and development have destroyed 
Beijing's breeding grounds.

Li, a fourth-generation Beijinger, has been playing with crickets since he 
was 5. When he was young, he'd walk to the fields from his home in central 
Beijing and run through the tall grasses with his homemade net, catching 
more than a hundred critters in a day. But at Tianqiao, vendors say it's 
been decades since they caught a good cricket in Beijing.

A 1,000-year-old pastime

Cricket fighting dates to the Tang Dynasty more than a millennium ago, 
according to entomologist Wu. It was a folk custom that eventually became 
popular in the imperial court. In the Ming Dynasty 500 years later, 
crickets were so admired the emperor collected taxes in the form of both 
money and crickets.

"You could get away with not paying tax but not with not paying crickets," 
Wu said. "If you didn't pay you were either executed or forced into labor."

Wu has published several books on all manners of bugs, from crickets to 
katydids to grasshoppers, many adorned with photos of him and various 
officials and foreigners. He's mapped all the veins in their wings, done 
spectral analyses of their songs and says he understands what they're 
singing. He comes to an interview with a camera-toting assistant and piles 
of newspaper clippings about himself.

But in the ring, it takes more than books to be a contender.

"You talked to Wu Jichuan?" asked Liu Jianjun, president of the Beijing 
Cricket Association, as he sat at his stall at the Tianqiao market. "We 
taught him everything he knows. He's only good at writing books."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom