Explore "The Fighting Cricket" by Pu Songling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
During the reign of Hsüan Tê,[1] cricket fighting was very much in vogue at court, levies of crickets being exacted from the people as a tax. On one occasion the magistrate of Hua-yin, wishing to make friends with the Governor, presented him with a cricket which, on being set to fight, displayed very remarkable powers; so much so that the Governor commanded the magistrate to supply him regularly with these insects. The latter, in his turn, ordered the beadles of his district to provide him with crickets; and then it became a practice for people who had nothing else to do to catch and rear them for this purpose. Thus the price of crickets rose very high; and when the beadle's[2] runners came to exact even a single one, it was enough to ruin several families.
[1]: Of the Ming dynasty; reigned A. D. 1426-1436.