There is a saying in the cockfighting circle: the number of cockfighting in the country is Henan, and the number of cockfighting in Henan is Kaifeng.
In Kaifeng, Lao Cai is a celebrity in the cockfighting industry, one is because he raises chickens well, and the other is because he has been fighting cocks for a long time.
He said that he was "tripped up" by cockfighting, and if it were not for cockfighting, he would have made a fortune in his own business.
But he said he couldn't change it, and he was like cockfighting.
<h1 class="ql-align-center" > people who live in chicken coops</h1>
Cai Shanghai is 70 years old and lives alone with 127 fighting cocks.
He has a dog at the entrance of his small courtyard, which can guard the home and protect the chickens; the courtyard has geese to prevent weasels from eating chickens.
Friends who know him well will jokingly say when they talk about where Cai Shanghai is: in the "chicken coop".
△ Cai Shanghai's chicken nest
Old Cai has been raising chickens for 60 years and has raised a nest of good fighting cocks.
In the cockfighting arena, the Zhongyuan chicken has always been "killed and not run", while Lao Cai has the most complete variety of Zhongyuan chicken.
Lao Cai's cockfighting was notoriously large and burly in Kaifeng, and he had 127 chickens in his chicken farm.
16 years ago, Lao Cai used the remaining part of his relative's factory building to transform it into this chicken farm.
Because it is remote, it seems to be hidden in another world.
But compared to the previous family building, a family of five and a few chickens he raised, he was very satisfied with here, and since then he has moved here.
The chickens in front of and behind the house were crying one after another, and the yard where he lived had only one bedroom and a kitchen, and the rest of the place was filled with densely packed chicken coops.
△ Cockfighting with a strong walk
The yard is cramped, walking here, indispensable to the smell of chicken, can not avoid floating chicken feathers, inevitably under the feet.
Over the years, because the city has built buildings, there are fewer and fewer places to raise chickens.
Recently, he got the news that this small courtyard is also facing demolition, and his wife advised him to raise less and continue to go home to raise.
Old Cai said that he would look at it later, but he began to find a suitable place by himself, and he planned to raise more cockfighting.
<h1 class="ql-align-center" > tough guy chickens</h1>
Old Cai was fascinated by cockfighting at the age of 9, and today in addition to finding a new chicken farm, he also has to fight against whether his increasingly insufficient physical strength can support him to continue to raise chickens.
When Lao Cai was young, he sang martial arts in the troupe, sang high-pitched acrobatics, practiced a good kung fu, and his body was stronger than the average person.
He likes to talk about himself at that time, and has unlimited physical strength to train chickens: picking chickens, sneaking chickens, chickens, jumping stoves, and working for half a day is not tired.
△ Old Cai washed the chicken's paws
The biggest change came in 2016, when the old Cai checked out the pancreas, was given three critical illness notices, and underwent an operation.
The twists and turns of the treatment were carried by him, and he smiled and told us that he had not returned to his home after being discharged from the hospital, and directly returned to his own "chicken coop".
During his hospitalization, he assigned the task of taking care of cockfighting to his family, and he was anxious to come back to check how the work was done.
When he got home, he began to direct his wife and son in bed how to feed.
Old Cai is a tough guy in other aspects of life, but he takes care of the chickens most carefully.
What grain should each chicken eat at various stages, and the normal diet is still supplemented with eggs, beef, vitamins, etc., and Lao Cai has a number in mind.
Now Lao Cai gets up every day in the morning light, first comes to the yard to see the chickens, feeds them some water, and then starts a day of chicken life.
△ Old Cai massaged the neck of the chicken
The 127 chickens fed have to carry several buckets of water and several bags of grain a day, the big chickens are fed once a day, and the chicks are fed twice a day.
Originally, these jobs were nothing to the former Old Cai, but after that serious illness, Old Cai's health was not as good as before.
He was exhausted and out of breath after all the busyness, but he still said it didn't matter in his mouth, and he was cleaning up the chicken coop as he spoke.
<h1 class="ql-align-center" > stolen chicken</h1>
The fact that Lao Cai's chicken was stolen was rarely mentioned by relatives and friends around him.
He rarely mentioned it himself, because his head buzzed at the thought of it, and it was a nightmare that he had been haunting.
On May 14, 2016, Lao Cai's mobile phone wrote down this date.
He distinctly remembers that morning he was woken up by the barking of the dogs, and he heard that the sound of the dogs barking was not right, and he was about to go out to look, but found that the door was plugged in from the outside.
△ Lao Cai, who has spent his whole life raising fighting cocks
His first reaction was bad.
Jumping out of the window, the chicken coop open, the dog drugged, and he felt his head explode.
One by one chicken coop inspection, those cockfighters he had taken care of since childhood, which one was in which cage, how old was, and he knew exactly how many times he had been on the "battlefield".
More than eighty chickens were stolen, sixty or seventy chicks, and fifteen large chickens, including two of his breeders.
Saying that he also pointed us to the picture wall, the breeder he was holding.
"How can it be so coincidental that all the cockfighting that is lost is particularly good?" He suspected that someone around him who was familiar with his situation had stolen it.
After the incident, relatives and friends came here to see him, and my sister and brother and family all cried, worried that he had a bad temper and high blood pressure, and he couldn't stand losing so many chickens at once.
△ Old Cai and his wife
Old Cai really couldn't stand it, he couldn't sleep those days, he closed his eyes were those chickens, and he could smoke seven packs of cigarettes in one night.
He went to check it himself, and also asked his friends at the train station to help him stare at it, and when he heard that this batch of chickens had been resold to Xinjiang, he looked for friends in Xinjiang to help him find it on the cockfighting rink.
He had been trying to investigate the matter, believing that sooner or later the horse's feet would be exposed. Now he has four cameras in front of and behind the yard, and there are also cameras on the road outside.
The only thing that pleased him was that he put a batch of chicks next to the bed that night, and only then did he continue some of the breeds of the original chickens.
But what hurt him the most was that the blow came from the people around him, who he firmly believed that their purpose would not be achieved.
"The more they are jealous of me, the better they have to develop." Two years later, Old Cai slowly eased up from that loss.
<h1 class="ql-align-center" > cockfighting is fighting people</h1>
On the lawn next to the Kaifeng City Wall, the first cockfighting competition of the Kaifeng Cockfighting Association since the beginning of winter in 2018 was launched on the day of the winter solstice.
As the president of the Kaifeng Cockfighting Association, Lao Cai still plays every game.
△ Cockfighting ground under the city walls
Early in the morning on the day of the race, Lao Cai rode a tricycle to transport the prepared banners, materials and three large iron cages to the race site.
But when he arrived at the place of the game, old Cai immediately became angry.
The people who had originally arranged to clean the site had not yet started to clean up, and the site was still a mess.
Anxious and angry, old Cai put away his things and began to scold and grin and take a broom to clean himself, while cleaning, he scolded these people for being irresponsible, angrily saying that he would remove them from their positions in the association.
When Old Cai cleaned up, the cockfighting arena began to slowly increase.
Before the official match began, there were already one or two hundred people gathered here.
Cockfighters carry coops with ointment, water and eggs, and spectators who do not have fighting cocks bring their own small benches and wait for a fight to begin.
There are many rules for cockfighting, and the two chickens before the fight must be weighed, and the fighting cocks of the same age and weight (the weight gap is controlled within three or two) can only be played.
△ Chickens on the field should measure their weight
A cockfighting competition is as short as half an hour, and some are as long as three or four hours, and the people on the scene stand in a circle around the cockfighting.
They talked about the techniques and footwork of the two chickens fighting, and when a fighting pecked at the opponent's eyes steadily, there was a roar of applause at the scene.
In a cockfighting competition, some people saw the cruelty of letting two chickens fight, some people watched a lively atmosphere, and some people applauded the spirit of fighting cocks to kill and not run.
Until noon, many of the people who lingered in the cockfighting did not go home to eat dumplings, bought a burnt cake nearby and hurried back to the cockfighting arena.
Lao Cai said that cockfighting is actually fighting people, compared to the technology and vision of chicken farmers.
△ Cockfighting
For the 70-year-old, it is time to find a suitable person to be the president of the association, but he has always been unwilling to compromise with reality.
Because no one put cockfighting in the main position like he did anymore, most of them came for profit.
Ning Que is not indiscriminate, and Old Cai has to fight to the end.
Old Cai's house in his hometown has been built, and he pointed to the spacious yard in the photo, saying that here can raise fighting cocks, where you can play games, all planned.
He will soon be 71 years old, and he is still imagining raising more cockfighting.
Director & Post-production / Shen Jiaxin
Camera / Zhao Yu Duan Tianbo
Copywriter / Shi Yunjie Yi Ming
Producer / Li Jiang