Hello everyone, welcome to this issue.
Fighting crickets, one of the Chinese folk fighting plays, is an ancient entertainment activity, which is commonly known as fighting crickets, today I will take you to understand this historic activity.
Crickets, scientific name crickets, also known as promoting weaving. Insects, Orthoptera, Crickets, Singing, Aggressive. "Monk" is the name given to crickets before they give birth to wings. According to research, crickets are an ancient insect that has been around for at least 140 million years and is an object of fighting between ancient and modern times. Insects in this family grow older than 3 cm and lack scales; antennae are filamentous and longer than the body; tarsal segments are 3 segments, the forefoot is a walking foot, the tibia are often ear ear auditors, and the hind feet are jumping feet; and the forewings of most species of males have vocal structures. Male cockroaches are very aggressive, and they are very fun to fight, so they are caught back, so that they can fight and watch their victory and defeat. White dew, autumn equinox, cold dew, it is the season to play with clams. "Brave battle for three autumns" refers to these three solar terms.
Among the flowers, birds, fish and insects, there are many types of "worms", including grasshoppers, golden bells, oil gourds, chirping birds, Futianer, etc., the most attractive of which is crickets. Crickets have many names, and Beijingers are accustomed to calling them crickets.
Fighting crickets, also known as fighting crickets, is an entertainment activity that originated in the Tang Dynasty, mainly the prevalence of literati and scholars, and later introduced to the court, "Kaiyuan Tianbao Testament" records that the Tang Dynasty court women will raise crickets every autumn.
The ancients played with crickets in three realms: one is called "paying attention to things", such as Jia Xiangdao and the like, playing insects to mislead the country; the second is called "gambling with entertainment", using crickets as a gambling means, which is "Jia Zhiliu poison"; the third is called "allegorical to things", which is the highest realm, which is the work of many literati and scholars. "Listening to its song, you can forget it; watching its fight, you can be pleasant." Only the latter can make the fighting crickets become an entertainment for cultivating interest and self-cultivation.
The Ming Dynasty had a famous cricket emperor, Zhu Zhanji, emperor xuanzong of the Ming Dynasty. However, while he likes to have fun, he has not forgotten to implement the policy of resting with the people, attaching importance to the development of agricultural production, reducing the land endowment in the disaster area, opening warehouses to relieve hunger, and paying attention to frugality, the national strength is relatively strong, can be regarded as a generation of Ming Jun, which is also a seasoning for leisure.
Similarly, the records in the history of the wild also show the noble status of the fighting cricket: the emperor even set aside a special room for a high-quality fighting cricket, and in order to avoid disturbing the fighting cricket, the palace maid who lived nearby moved to live elsewhere. And sent eunuchs with a high level of breeding to take good care of it, and when the weather turned cold, they also set up heating equipment such as heating stoves. When it came to the time when the cricket "drove the emperor back to heaven", he could not help but wipe away the tears of the emperor. For a cricket, this is really unprecedented.
In the Qing Dynasty, there were more people playing with clams in Beijing. The eunuch family and the children of the Eight Banners have no intention of eating all day long, and the excess energy and money must have a place to consume, so playing with clams has become an option. The princes and nobles of the Qing Dynasty only began to love the cricket drama after entering the customs. Every autumn, Kyoshi sets up a wide shed and starts gambling. During the Japanese occupation of Beijing, there were markets selling crickets at the Beiping temple fairs, ranging from dozens to hundreds of vendors.
And most of the people who like to play with cockroaches and can be called "players" are high-level figures, not Wang Ye, or big officials, or bankers and Famous Peking Opera characters.
Instead of saying "catching clams", we should say that "digging" clams are wild. If you want to play with the cockroach, you have to get it in your hands first
The special tools for digging the clams are: an iron shovel, which can be used to dig soil, pry stones, and probe holes; a willow pot bucket for clams; a clam cover woven of wire or copper wire; and a clam probe with mouse whiskers tied to the top of a bamboo stick. In addition to this, prepare a kettle. It is conceivable that if you want to pick up a good clam, you have to drill into the deep ditches on the high slopes of the barren mountains and wild mountains, and the hot flashes are like steamers, and it is not a comfortable thing to eat and sleep, the sun and rain, and the bites of mosquitoes, which is not a comfortable task, nor is it an easy task.
Real players take cockroaches, not one or two; one is a basket. Ten in a basket, fourteen cans in each jar. How much does that cost? A good cockroach can sell for two silver dollars — the equivalent of a bag of noodles, a basket of one hundred and forty, how much money you say. Therefore, in that era, cockroaches were not affordable and playable by ordinary people.
To raise clams, there must be special vessels. The first is the cockroach jar. There was a saying in the old antique merchants of Beijing LiuliChang: "Six zi jade cockroach jars can be exchanged for a pair of Daoguang Guan kiln pastel dragon and phoenix bowls." "Don't underestimate this small cockroach jar, it can best reflect the value of the owner of the clam, since the ancient masters made the cockroach jar are very valuable, of which Zhao Ziyu made in the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic of China was worth one hundred and eighty oceans."
It's not enough to have an empty jar, there have to be two things: the sink and the cage.
First of all, the sink: there are fine porcelain, there are semi-circular, fan-shaped several kinds, about 3 cm long, 1 cm wide, 0.7 cm high, and 0.3 cm deep inside the slot. This thing is exquisitely made, small, hung with glazes, depicted flowers, goldfish, aquatic weeds, clams and so on, and some of them also have the words written: Brave Battle Three Autumns.
And then there are the cages: slurry and mud-roasted, extremely delicate, fan-shaped, about half an inch high, with a bottom underneath and a lid on top. There are cave doors at both ends of the cage, and the space inside can accommodate two clams. What role does the cage play, one is that the cockroach likes to stay in the dark, which is its nest; the second is that the cockroach cannot raise the male (the second tail), but also the female (the three-tailed child), otherwise it will not fight with the same sex. Passing through the cage is the cave room for the moth to pass the bell (mating).
Fighting cockroaches are very formal. Prepare the "battlefield" in advance; make an invitation. Invited players cannot bring one or two, as few as three or five, as many as seven or eight, and one or two people to take care of their own cockroaches.
When you fight each other, you must win or lose, so you can gamble to win or lose, as a bet.
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