In recent months, Lao Jiang has published a lot of small videos and articles on the headlines, and received praise from some netizens, and hereby thank you very much for your recognition. In order to help insect friends better understand and raise song insects, Lao Jiang intends to launch a small science series of song insects to introduce some basic knowledge of playing with song insects, including their morphology, ecological characteristics, habits and so on. Throw bricks and jade, old Jiang looks forward to your reading and message.
Songworm's Play History (Part 2)
The Ming Dynasty scholars Liu Tong and Yu Yizheng also recorded in detail the grand situation of Beijing folk playing song insects and various insects in a book dedicated to the famous places and objects of Beijing.
According to the book, in addition to catching crickets to listen to the song and watch the fight, the people of Beijing at that time also raised grasshoppers, squeaks (long-winged grasshoppers), golden bells, oil gourds, large coffin head crickets, three-tone crickets, grasshoppers, summer solstice crickets, cold cicadas and other song insects. In addition, in this article titled "Hujia Village", the author also wrote about mantises, grasshoppers, dragonflies, scarab beetles, celestial bulls, kowtows, ladybugs and other non-chirping insects, and made a very vivid description of their shape and characteristics.
From this article in the "Imperial Scenery and Material Strategy", we also know that since the Ming Dynasty, Beijing folk have been able to use greenhouses to artificially breed and hatch crickets in winter, but not for fighting, but in their arms to listen to the song. This is because the artificially bred crickets have a weak physique and a weak personality, which cannot be used for fighting games, and its song is relatively low, not as high-pitched and loud as the natural growth of crickets in autumn.
In the Qing Dynasty, the custom of raising song insects became more prevalent, and the varieties of songbirds were more diverse. At that time, the Kangxi Emperor and the Qianlong Emperor were very fond of song bugs. According to Gao Shiqi's "Notes on the Retreat of Jin'ao", during the Spring Festival at that time, when the imperial palace gave a banquet, the palace was filled with flowers such as peonies and peonies cultivated in the greenhouse. During the Lantern Festival, when the music stopped, the sound of crickets, which are artificially bred crickets, is heard in winter. Grasshoppers also chirp in winter and in the lush flowers of the greenhouse, and Qianlong also specially gave poems to sing.
According to legend, this is also a custom left by the ancestors of the Qing Dynasty, breeding winter grasshoppers in winter, placing them in embroidery cages during banquets, and the sound of grasshoppers chirping endlessly, which later became an old rule. Many princes and ministers, ordinary people have followed suit, and the custom of playing with songbirds has become more and more popular. Prince Zai Zhen of Qing was very fond of song bugs, and every autumn someone sent crickets, golden bells, grasshoppers, oil gourds, etc. to the palace for him to choose, and he did not hesitate to buy them, and also purchased many exquisite gourd insect tools. In winter, it is very interesting to put the gourd in a special copper box and keep it warm with hot water around it, and various song insects make various pleasant sounds. To this day, the breeding and breeding of winter insects in the Beijing-Tianjin area is still very popular. In the south of our country, raising songbirds is also a highly loved and elegant entertainment.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, every summer and autumn day, a large number of grasshopper sellers would emerge in the street markets of Nanjing, Suzhou and other places: "The insects come from the north, the wind blows, and the thousand baskets and hundreds of baskets are gathered in Wucheng" (Gu Lu's "Qing Jialu"), which shows the number of grasshoppers from the north. According to Mr. Zhou Zuoren's recollection, since the end of the Qing Dynasty, people in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, often catch and play with song insects such as grasshoppers, textile maidens, crickets, oil gourds, golden bells, ink bells, bamboo bells and so on. Nowadays, with the improvement of people's living standards and the tension of urban life, people want to return to nature and get close to nature; more and more people like song bugs, and more and more breeds of song bugs will be raised and enjoyed.
History of Songworms, Novellas Link: Interesting Songworm Fun (1): Songworm Play History (Part 1), Interesting Songbird Science Popularization (1): Songworm Play History (Novella)
(Note: Source Jiang Qinghai, January 2000, "Songworm Appreciation and Feeding 300 Answers" • Nanjing: Jiangsu Science and Technology Publishing House)
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