Cricket Fighting

This was my first introduction to the ancient art of cricket fighting. This fellow was a famous cricket trainer and had a cricket that was worth 10k yuan because of its strength and power.

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 traditional Chinese pastimes.

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.Read more