Interesting article about crickets in China and Japan and how they are viewed and treated.
“The cricket fancier cocks his ear first at this cricket and then at that, until he decides which have the most promising voices.” After a drop of hot wax is placed under each wing to “smooth and heighten the quality of the cricket’s chirp,” the “available cricket gourds are tested to determine which has the most appropriate acoustics.” Although the insect vocalists—star among them the trilling “golden bell cricket”—were well-tended and fed boiled cabbage and rice, they led short and confined lives. Still, it was slightly better than the crickets subjected to another Chinese pastime: cricket fighting. The blood sport was banned during the Cultural Revolution, yet it’s had a twenty-first-century resurgence.
