Cricket fighting
| Cricket fighting | |||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 鬥蟋蟀 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 斗蟋蟀 | ||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | dòu xīshuài |
Cricket fighting is a blood sport involving the fighting of male crickets. Unlike most blood sports such as bullfighting and cockfighting, cricket fighting rarely causes injuries to the animals. It is a popular pastime in China and dates back more than 1,000 years to the Tang Dynasty. However, the sport has been losing its popularity in China.
Cricket fighting was nurtured by Tang Dynasty emperors more than 1,000 years ago, and later popularized by commoners. In the thirteenth 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.
Many famous hotels around Macau hold cricket fights where bets up to thousands of patacas would be waged on a single fight. Prized crickets become famous and actual funeral services would be held for them.
Cricket season begins in summer and championships take place after the autumn equinox in late September. In Beijing, the Association for Cricket Fighting organizes cricket fighting events and championships.
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. 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 would be carefully bred by knowledgeable keepers. Each cricket must be 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.
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Wikipedia