About crickets
I've been wondering for a long time how they settled in a 2-storey office, and I don't know where they came from, hiding in downtown areas and thriving in my office.
it wasn't until one day in the year, when the cleaning staff moved the heavy flowerpot which was half a person's height before the table, and when sweeping the ground, a few cute little crickets popped out from the groove under the flowerpot, that I suddenly realized.
It turns out that they came from flowerpots and trees. At the table in front of the window on the ground in the house, pots of lush green plants such as green radish, asparagus and Guanyin, as well as other miscellaneous flowers and idle grass, have already created a small and closed imitation natural environment for crickets, so they can survive in this air without grounding gas.
With crickets around, when I sit at my desk or work hard, I don't feel lonely and upset. I know in my heart that there are several lovely elves who depend on me to accompany me in this impressive market.
occasionally listening to crickets sing makes me feel quite imaginative and illusory in the countryside. Every year, from the beginning of the fright, I began to expect their summer music festival to be held as scheduled.
Crickets are called crickets in the rural areas of western Henan, and they often inhabit the ground, under bricks and stones, in soil caves and among the grass. Stay up at night and eat all kinds of crops, saplings, vegetables and fruits.
When I was a child in the countryside, after harvesting corn, fat crickets were densely packed among the straws. To catch crickets during the day, you need to dig their nests with your fingers, close your palms or take off a shoe, and then you can buckle them. At dusk, crickets come out of their holes and are easier to be caught. They are strung with dog tail grass and brought home, fried and sprinkled with some salt, which tastes delicious and delicious.
There is also a kind of "domestic" white cricket, which is very different from the dark brown or tan cricket in the field. Because it often hides in the kitchen stove, it is also called "stove chicken". White crickets are small, mild-mannered, ivory-white, as big as peanuts and as small as wheat, and some are transparent and exquisite, very cute, with a flat head, a splayed tail at the ventral end and four degenerated little wings on their backs. This little creature can climb and jump, clever and clever. Occasionally, it catches one and puts it in the palm. It will dance its tentacles, make eye contact with people, make a chirping sound, and then quickly jump out of the palm to escape.
Catch a chicken with a stove, put it in a small gourd, and you can still hear its cry in the winter when it is snowing heavily and dripping into ice. It was my childhood playmate in winter.
when I was studying, I knew that crickets were also called weaving promotion. It is an ancient insect with a history of at least 14 million years. That is to say, the little cricket has been singing for many years before there is any human activity on this earth.
Crickets are withdrawn and like to live independently. Generally speaking, they don't live with other crickets, so they can't tolerate each other. Once they meet, they will fight. Its big jaw is developed, stronger than a bite bucket. When the two males meet, they first sing with their vertical wings to gain prestige, and then head to head, biting each other with their jaws open like pliers and kicking each other with their feet.
The middle school textbook selected Pu Songling's famous article "Promoting Weaving" from Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio. A pedantic and honest scholar became famous. His younger son was afraid of being punished for suicide because he accidentally killed the cricket that his father was preparing to pay tribute. His soul became a cricket, and he was brave and aggressive, which brought fame and fortune to the famous family and boss, and then he changed from a cricket to a human, which impressed me deeply.
I thought that the ancient bad habit of "fighting insects" criticized by the teacher in class had long been extinct. Who knew that one year I went to Changyuan in northern Henan on business and heard that the farmers here had a new "economic growth point"-catching crickets and selling them to make money during the slack season.
I was quite surprised, so I asked where the crickets I caught were sold. Local friends said that some of them were responsible for catching, purchasing and selling, which suddenly formed a mature market, and finally they were mainly sold to players in the rich areas of Beishangguang and Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. Some buyers are still squatting in the fields and local farmers' homes, in order to harvest exotic things with excellent appearance.
this is a modern serial story.
I was even more surprised. In order to find out, I began to pay attention to collecting information. I really didn't know it. As the saying goes, "There is no market in the river", so what my friend said didn't exaggerate the facts. However, I learned from my understanding that "playing with crickets" is not a disaster for the country and the people, as the teacher said in class. There is a long-standing "insect culture" on the little crickets.
Crickets, water hyacinths and grasshoppers are called the three major songbirds in China. Among the three major singing insects, crickets are the best, most exciting and most culturally attractive ones. The ancients paid attention to three realms when playing cricket. The first realm is called "paying attention to things". The most typical representative of this is Jia Sidao, the prime minister of the Southern Song Dynasty, who accidentally lost his country by playing with insects. The second realm is called "entertainment as gambling" and cricket fighting as a means of gambling; The third realm is called "meaning in things", which is the highest realm, and is mostly done by literati.
As early as 2,5 years ago, in The Book of Songs in July: "July is in the wild, August is in the house, September is in the house, and October is the cricket." Later, in ancient literary works, crickets have the symbols of literati's chanting of life, autumn lament, homesickness and missing relatives and friends.
For example, in The Book of Songs Crickets, "Crickets are in the hall, and they are old. I'm not happy today, but I'll get rid of it in the sun and the moon. "This poem is to exhort myself and others to be diligent when the poet feels hurt by things. In A Dream of Red Mansions, "Hong Gui's sting disease can make you homesick", which means cricket.
Just after I finished writing this essay, I saw an article by a literary friend, Duckling, and I knew for the first time that the cricket had such an elegant name. Since Wei and Jin Dynasties, it has been called Duckling, such as "Seven Sorrow Poems" written by Zhang Zai in Jin Dynasty: "Listen to the sound of the dragonfly and listen to it." Fu Liangzhuan, Book of Song Dynasty: "Listen to the duckling in the front, and learn from the moon in the room." The third rhyme of Tang Lu Guimeng's "A new autumn in harmony with the United States is a matter of secondary rhyme": "The cormorant array is less than the setting sun, and the dragonfly sings high, cold and rainy." It's really endless to learn, and you get something every day.
However, I am more interested in the custom of "fighting insects". The rise of fighting insects started from the Tianbao period of the Tang Dynasty, flourished in the Song Dynasty and flourished in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
People in Beijing always keep the custom of playing cricket, and players from all walks of life often get together to talk about crickets and fight crickets. The well-known varieties recorded in historical records, such as white tooth blue, white tooth purple, favorite flying spider, iron marble, etc., are all favorites of Beijing players.
Nowadays, it seems to be a fashion to enjoy crickets. No matter whether it is a metropolis such as Beishangguang or even Hong Kong, a medium-sized city such as Nanjing, Hangzhou and Suzhou, or a county-level city such as Yancheng and Sheyang, the market for singing insects has actually developed. This can also reflect the modern people's desire to return to nature.
In August 21, the Shandong Ningjin Cricket Culture Festival, the first county of Chinese crickets, was grandly opened. Ningjin is the first county in China to hold a cricket cultural festival. As early as 1991~1993, it held three cricket festivals in succession.
It seems that this little cricket, in the long history of human development, has brought all kinds of fun and companionship to the world not only by singing, but also by its aggressive nature.
I can't help but sit up and take notice of this little gadget. However, I don't know how many stories are deduced from crickets. Now there is a serial room where we can listen to more rural anecdotes and record them.