Shanghai Pathways Blog

Those who have seen the film of The Last Emperor will remember this closing scene. When an elderly Puyi, the last emperor of China, returned to the Forbidden City, he took out a dust-covered cricket pot from under his chair and passed it to a boy who watched him with great curiosity. This scene vividly illuminates the Chinese cricket culture. The tradition of enjoying the sounds of singing insects and fighting crickets has ancient roots and has been handed down throughout the centuries to the present day.

Summer was my favourite season when I was young, it is filled with all kinds of warm memory, the taste of salty-sweet popsicles, the look of pretty red dress, and more importantly – the never ending noise from the singing crickets. Same as all of the kids in my lane, I am looking forward to see my new special summer pet, wondering if this time my daddy will bring home a chubby cricket or a small one? Is it going to be more green or more black?

But no matter how it really looks, I am always happy with whatever I get. It is common for the kids to compare each other’s beloved crickets. I usually feel really proud about my “little guy” and believe it is either the biggest, smartest, prettiest or going to enjoy a really long and happy life with me feeding him delicious green beans every day.

Cricket Culture in China encompasses a 2000 year history of both singing insects and fighting crickets. During the Tang dynasty (618 – 906 A.D.), people started to keep crickets in cages and enjoy their songs while in captivity. Under the Song dynasty (960 – 1278 A.D.), cricket fighting flourished as a popular sport. Therefore it is not surprising to learn that the primitive Chinese words of Summer ,”Xia” in “Jia-Gu-Wen”(oracle bones) take on the form of a cicada. Autumn “Qiu” words are in the shape of crickets.

While I know so much about the singing cricket, I was never really into the fighting games until I met with Master Chu. Chu Dehua is over 50 years old and consider himself a professional cricket trainer and breeder.

“Through playing with crickets, you can get to know a wide range of knowledge, like history, pottery, art, physics, geography and geology,” says Chu. During our first meeting, Chu spent over 3hrs telling me all of the unbelievable secrets and tricks in training, breeding and selecting his little gladiators. When it comes to the crickets, he is the man who knows it all. Chu is not really in it for the money but for the fun, and he never sold any his beloved crickets, to him, these crickets are his children, companion and a connection to the nature world. Chu is the official champion of Shanghai cricket fighting society, has been interviewed by national TVs and local news papers.

Traditionally only during the Chinese crickets fighting, males will be permitted to gain access to females. Mating actually make the males crickets become more aggressive and willing to improve their chances against other males. You can even find “crickets wedding beds” which is specially made for this procedure.

The color of the crickets isn’t that important. What really matters is that it need to have a big jaws to maintain a strong grip on its opponent, a strong but flexible neck to apply force and long legs to stand for its ground.

The crickets are weighed to ensure a fair fight then placed in a transparent box divided into two halves. The squat, brown mini gladiator are riled up with a thin fibre, which is brushed over their antennae, before the divider is lifted and they clash. Rounds are usually over in seconds; the insects grapple, separate and turn away. The one still baring its ‘teeth’ and ready to fight is the winner; if both are still ready to rumble, a new round begins.

Deaths, or even severe injury, are incredibly rare during the fight. According to Chinese folklore, when two male crickets engage in combat, the loser will refuse to fight again unless he’s shaken and tossed in the air by his trainer. But to know how to toss the crickets correctly, you need to practice for at least one month. Now Chu is working as a consultant and teacher in cricket field, fly around China every month following the top games and helping crickets players.

The Chinese appreciation of crickets actually extends beyond the appeal of their beautiful tunes and braveness. The fact that crickets are able to lay hundreds of eggs was in line with Chinese beliefs that the most important ingredient to success in life was to have as many children as possible.

For more than 2,500 years, Qingming Festival, celebrated on the 15th day after the Spring Equinox, has been a day for remembering the dead. This is the most important day for Chinese people around the world to remember our deceased loved ones. In ancient China, Qingming was by no means the only time when sacrifices were made to ancestors. Such ceremonies were held very frequently, every two weeks, in addition to other important holidays and festivals. The formalities of these ceremonies were very elaborate and expensive in terms of time and money. In an effort to reduce this expense, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty declared in 732 A.D. that respects would be formally paid at the tombs of ancestors only on the day of Qingming.

During the weekend of Qingming, hundreds of thousands of vehicles will turn Shanghai’s highways into a large parking lot as people return home after visiting cemeteries and enjoying a spring outing. Cemeteries are always located in the city’s suburban areas. In Shanghai, the largest cemeteries are the Fushouyuan Cemetery in Qingpu district and Binhaiguyuan Cemetery in Fengxian district. In 2013, the number of people visiting the cemeteries reached 2.42 million people in Shanghai over the weekend.

In my family, my parents and relatives always prepare offerings and arrange a trip together one to two weeks in advance to avoid the big crowds. On the day of tomb sweeping, we clear the wild grass around our ancestor’s tomb, repaint the gravestones and add fresh soil. Then we present the dead person’s favorite food and wine as offerings, along with paper resembling money and chrysanthemum flowers. The food usually includes a steamed whole chicken, hard boiled eggs, sliced barbecued pork and dim sum pastries. In addition, three sets of chopsticks and three Chinese wine cups are arranged above the food and closest to the headstone. The eldest person of our family usually begins by bowing three times with the wine cup in hand, then pours the wine on the ground just in front of the headstone three times. After the ceremony, we then eat the food together at the grave site, like having a family picnic with our ancestors.

Qingtuan (green cake) is a traditional Chinese food eaten during Qingming Festival. These green ball dumplings are made of sticky rice, red bean paste and a special plant (barnyard grass shoots) called maiqing (麦青) or aicao(艾 草), which are only edible in the spring.

According to Chinese traditional belief, “When someone dies, his spirit goes to the afterlife, where it lives on, doing much the same things it did in life.” Luckily for everyone, the spirit world does not use normal money, which the dead apparently need piles of. Qing Ming rites involve the burning of fake money, usually a plain white piece of paper with a little gold foil in the middle, but there are also a number of bills that look something like U.S. dollars or Chinese yuan. They range from $1 all the way to $1,000,000,000,000 (this does make me wonder about inflation in the afterlife). The Chinese Consumers’ Association reports that more than 1,000 tons of paper products are burnt as offerings for the afterlife during each Qingming, costing more than 10 billion yuan. This is all burned in the hope that the deceased are not lacking food and money.

While young people rush to get the latest iPhones and iPads, the deceased can also enjoy these trendy high-tech devices, although theirs will be made of paper. Shops in Shanghai selling sacrificial offerings have already put paper-made versions of Apple products on their shelves. This year, a package of one iPad and one iPhone, paper- made and in different colors, starts from eight yuan on Taobao. A paper MacBook laptop costs around 10 yuan. The logos of the products printed on the package closely resemble the printed names of iPhones and iPads, but the brand is mingwang, or the king of the dead. Other popular items are paper versions of Panasonic LCD TV sets, and every electrical home appliance one can think of, clothes, wine, air tickets, designer bags, seafood, cars, villas and cosmetics including perfume, lipstick, facial cleansing cream, lotion and shampoo. For only RMB50, your ancestors can even get “Celebrity Marriage Certificates” to marry any superstar in the afterlife.

Today’s modern generation and mobility means that many people live far from ancestral villages. Some young Chinese have already started paying their respects online, through virtual tomb sweeping websites, one of the leading ones being Wangshangsaomu.com. The sites allow users to conduct a variety of rituals including presenting bouquets of flowers, offering incense, lighting white candles and planting trees, all without leaving their chairs, or fighting the long lines at local bus and train stations.

Foot binding. In our mind, these two words usually bring up a horror image of ugly deformed smelly feet, amazing pain and torture.

Now a days, it seems that everyone has heard about foot binding. The words of it are self-explanatory enough. However, so few of us really know about it, even most of my Chinese friends don’t have any clue. What was actually done during the binding? Why was it done and how could such kind of things have been tolerated? When and where did this take place and is this custom still practiced anywhere today in China? Are there still any women alive who had to endure this tradition and what does modern Chinese think about that tradition now? These were some of the questions that I had and in the following pages, I will try my best to answer these questions and hopefully give us a better understanding of this bizarre custom in Chinese history and culture.

Before the 20th century, some Chinese people believe it is ‘better to have a dog than a daughter.’ Woman’s life is rigidly defined and programmed by her gender: foot binding, arranged marriage, virtual imprisonment by both her family of origin and her husband’s family. Chinese men preferred women with small feet, and in a male-dominated society what the best a woman could do was marry well, the reality was that what men wanted, men got.

Foot binding (also known as “Lotus feet”) is the custom of applying painfully tight binding to the feet of young girls to prevent further growth. The foot binding process begins with a young girl (3-7 years old) soaking her feet in warm water or animal blood with herbs. After soaking the feet, her toe nails were to be clipped short and given a foot massage. Then the

 foot was wrapped tightly with binding cloth. Within a period of time, all of the toes would be broken except for the big toe. Every day, or every couple of days, the foot would be unwrapped and wrapped again. The girls were put into smaller shoes until their foot was about 3-4 inches long. The process would take many years and would lead to a lifetime of labored movement, as well as a regular need to rebind the feet. The most common problem with bound feet was infection and sometimes it causes death. However, woman always agreed to go on with the process because it is what everyone did.

Since the process was so painful, Chinese mothers would comfort their daughters over and over by saying, “Only through pain will you have beauty. Only through suffering will you have peace.” From foot-binding onward, girls and women lived secluded in a second-story chamber of their household, because ” … the difference between nei – the inner realm of the home – and wei – the outer realm of men – lay at the very heart of Confucian society.” It was a strong tradition passed from mother to daughters, entangled with shoemaking, how to endure pain and how to attract men.

Many people believe that the practice originated from the time of Emperor Li Yu (Southern Tang Dynasty). Emperor Li Yu asked his concubine Yao Niang (窅娘) to bind her feet in white silk into the shape of the crescent moon, and performed a lotus dance ballet-like on the points of her feet. Yao Niang was described as so graceful that she ‘skimmed on top of golden lotus’. This was then replicated by other upper-class women and the practice spread. The practice of footbinding became popular during the Song Dynasty. By the end of the Song Dynasty, it was customary to drink from a special shoe whose heel contained a small cup. During the Yuan Dynasty, some would also drink directly from the shoe itself. The practice was called “toast to the golden lotus” and lasted until the late Qing Dynasty.When a woman was to be married, the first thing the bridegroom’s family would check was her feet. The sight of a woman hobbling along on her three inch golden lilies was supposed to have an erotic effect on men, who would be touched by her helplessness. And a woman with perfect lotus feet was likely to make a more prestigious marriage. Qing Dynasty sex manuals listed 48 different ways of playing with women’s bound feet. Some men preferred never to see a woman’s bound feet, so they were always concealed within tiny “lotus shoes” and wrappings. In ancient books, it says, “If you remove the shoes and bindings, the aesthetic feeling will be destroyed forever”. Additionally a common male fantasy was that the unusual lotus gait tended to strengthen the vaginal muscles. An attribute of a woman with bound feet was the limitation of her mobility, and therefore, her inability to take part in politics, social life and the world.

In 1895, the first anti-foot binding society was formed in Shanghai. Soon after branches of the anti-foot binding society began to form in other major cities and across the country. The practice totally fell out of favor at the turn of the 20th century, viewed as an antiquated and shameful part of imperialist Chinese culture, and was officially banned soon after.

But in rural areas, the practice didn’t stop until the communist takeover in 1949, almost all of the village girls had to bind their feet. If they didn’t do this, no man would marry them. Woman also viewed their bound feet as desirable and something to be proud of. In fact they are able to walk and work in the fields. In the 1980s, dancers with bound feet were very popular, about 300 of the remaining foot binding women in Yunnan started performing dances and circus together, which eventually became an unusual tourist attraction in Liuyi village until their decreasing numbers and mobility eventually brought the practice to an end. In an interview, one of those women said, “I lived a good life and we all thought our bound feet looked beautiful. I am proud to be part of the tradition, but I wouldn’t want my daughter or granddaughters to have had to go through it.” Now there are only about 30 women left in the village.

In modern days, none of the Chinese women have to go through the foot binding process any more. We believe, in order to be beautiful someone has to find you beautiful, and so the power actually is in the beholder. But when we see someone in a fabulous pair of high-heeled shoes, we just comment, “Wow, those are spectacular.” The parallel between foot binding and modern-day high heels often strikes me, we don’t ask ourselves, why do we actually wear them? And where do they come from?”

“If you put on a pair of high heels, it changes your whole body,” one of my friends said and fully believes in it. But the beautifying benefits of heels come at a price. If someone is wearing high heels for an excessive period of years, the Achilles tendon tends to get shortened and tighter. There are beauty salons offer cosmetic services, such as a 45-minute “foot facial.” Or “Pillows for Your Feet,” which involves injections of polylactic acid to combat the loss of cushioning on the balls of the feet.

Foot binding or high heels, it is the same mixed feeling with women, “We hate it but we like it – it’s like a drug.”