Vanishing Worlds

One summer I went to Shanghai, where the distinction between modernisation (in the form of the skyscraper forest) and tradition (bamboo scaffolding omnipresent elsewhere) is stark. Wandering around the Dongtai Lu antiques market, I was roused from my fascination with waving Maos by the sound of squawking birds and dogs yapping. Heading towards the noise, I found myself in what seemed to be Shanghai’s premier pet market. A warren of cages, crates and tanks housed all varieties of the earth’s animals; if you wanted to buy it, it was there, from cats to birds to snakes to terrapins. There must have been a recent trend for poodles with neon-dyed fur, although these dogs looked like they had just come back from a Full Moon Party rather than a kennel.

Amongst the cacophony of noise and stench, I stumbled across a crouched circle of about 20 Chinese men. Unnoticed and enthralled by their concentration I wandered closer to the edge of the ring to see a table laden with what looked like small baked beans cans secured by elastic bands and a white square in the centre. As I continued to watch the group, a man at random picked up one of the cans, prised off its band and exposed a tiny cricket, which he then proceeded to poke with a kebab stick. The circle of men hushed their chatter, all ears turned in the direction of this tiny insect, the absorption was so complete that even I forgot that I was a mere observer and felt the gravitas that hung in this moment. The cricket chirped. The men remained still. And then suddenly, by a communal but silent decision, the cricket was hurled backwards out of its container and over the heads of the crowd. Without a moment to lose, one man detached himself to stamp resolutely on the insect, leaving its carcass mangled on the floor.

Back at the table the attention had moved on, to two more fortunate crickets who had been judged to make sufficiently pleasing sounds and thus had been placed in the white square ‘fighting ring’. Bets were placed, Yuan exchanged and noise levels rose (joined by the nearby dogs and birds) as the crickets were forced to face off, each owners’ hope and pride in his insect pinned to his face. Whilst the excitement grew, I left the scene and the complexities of cricket fighting, to be jolted back to the modern day by a screeching motorbike.