Crickets

Stories of Chinese Insect Pets

“Crickets” deals with a thousand-year-old tradition that lives on in China: raising crickets to hear them “sing” or involve them in tiny fights. I spent weeks browsing the largest insect market in all of China. I followed cricket hunters in the darkness of remote cornfields in Shandong Province and met mafia members buying millions of yuan’s worth of crickets for illegal fights. Immersing myself in this tradition, I learned the symbolism of flowers in traditional Chinese painting to compose my still lifes and I went for a walk in the streets of Shanghai – as amateurs traditionally do – with a singing cricket in my pocket.

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