4. Cricket Club in Shanghai, shown in lithograph from early Chinese magazine. Man behind writing table is probably the 

 club's organizer From DIanshlzhal Huabao, Mou Section, ca. 1885. Shanghai. 



to ivory and jade. All writers agree that while crickets 

 seem to perform just as well if their accoutrements are 

 cheap, their owners, like certain dog and cat lovers in 

 our own society, are inclined toward ostentation. 



The best known and most sought-after item of 

 cricket equipment among Western collectors is the 

 cricket gourd, which many moviegoers learned about 

 in the recent film The Last Emperor. Such gourds, small 

 and hourglass-shaped, were formerly carried on the 

 persons of wealthy cricket fanciers. In the Manchu per- 

 iod these gourds were shaped by insertion into molds 

 during growth to produce embossed designs on their 

 surfaces; more recent gourds are decorated by carving 

 or by burning with a hot iron. Several examples from 

 Field Museum's collection are shown in figure 3. The 

 designs on the gourds themselves and their richly deco- 

 rated tops, often made of ivory or jade, help to account 

 for the high prices paid for fine antique examples. 



Cricket gourds may have been less popular among 

 cricket fanciers than art collectors, however. Their use 

 was more or less confined to the Beijing area and is 

 rather recent, the earliest surviving example dating 

 only to the time of the Kangxi Emperor (A.D. 1671- 

 1722). Moreover, such gourds were considered suitable 

 10 only tor singing species; fighting crickets were kept in 



other types of containers. 



We will focus here on a more widely used group of 

 cricket containers: beds, jars, and fighting arenas made 

 ofunglazed, low-fired ceramic. Although of central im- 

 portance to the practicing cricket keeper and of sub- 

 stantial interest to Chinese collectors, this type of con- 

 tainer is virtually unknown to Westerners. As far as we 

 know, the following text is the first extended treatment 

 of that subject in any language other than Chinese. 



Cricket Jars 



Cricket fighting was (and apparently still is) organized 

 by more or less informal clubs whose members gathered 

 regularly at a special place during the fighting season. 

 Figure 4, reproducing a lithograph from a magazine 

 published in 1885, depicts a meeting of one such club 

 in the Shanghai area. A number of well-dressed men 

 are in an apparent clubhouse. Some have just arrived 

 with their carefully bundled-up crickets in ceramic jars. 

 Others are already deeply into the game, gathered 

 around a square fighting court in the middle of the 

 table. On the shelves are more cricket jars. Various 

 other items of cricket equipment are also to be seen 

 around the room. 



