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6. Communal Kiln at Lumu for firing cricket jars^ Tfie pipe at righit is for 

 blowing air into kiln. Photo: Ho CM. 



Lumu is locally famous for its dark gray bricks and 

 tiles, but the village is by no means a great ceramic 

 center. Its fame for clay cricket jars, however, was well 

 established at least two centuries ago, probably because 

 Lumu was so close to the cultured and influential city of 

 Suzhou. Zhu Yan, a well-known 18th-century ceramic 

 critic, recorded that cricket jars from Suzhou — most 

 likely of Lumu origin — were highly esteemed. During a 

 recent visit to the Suzhou area, we found that Lumu 

 still produces traditional bricks and tiles as well as 

 cricket jars. The former are made in a large state factory 

 and the latter in the homes of the villagers who man- 

 ufacture the jars in their spare time. Almost every fami- 

 ly of Lumu is involved in this cottage industry, firing 

 their products in small communal kilns (fig. 6). The 

 shapes and even the seals of the early 20th century are 

 still in use (fig. 7). The potters seem to do this without 

 fraudulent intent, for they use early seals on all the jars 

 they make and sell these to wholesalers for only 2 RMB 

 (about 15i) each. On the other hand, the ultimate 

 retail price is quite high, ranging from 20 to 40 RMB per 



jar. It is not unlikely that purchasers sometimes believe 

 they are buying valuable antiques. 



While Lumu is popular for larger jars, Beijing is 

 the preferred source of small cage-like jars. A well- 

 known antique collector wrote in the 1930s that the 

 jars made by Zhao Ziyu, an 18th-century Beijing arti- 

 san, were "worth more than 100 pieces of gold." How- 

 ever, the collector also points out that copies of Zhao's 

 work were so common that the markets carried "no jars 

 without the mark of Zhao." The nine jars in Field 

 Museum's collection that bear Zhao Ziyu's seal are all 

 quite ordinary in appearance and seemingly not older 

 than the late 19th century. Three other jar-makers' 

 names appear on other Beijing jars in the collection: 

 Chen Guqing, Chen Shi, and Mingwei (fig. 8), none 

 of which seem to be recorded in the cricket literature. 



The lids of the Beijing jars, unlike most of those 

 from Suzhou, have pierced circular plaques in their 

 centers. The plaques are made separately, then inset 

 into the clay of the lid. Most are molded of dark-fired 

 clay and have the appearance of carved wood. Others 

 are made of such materials as ivory, jade, or tortoise 

 shell. The molded clay decorations, despite the modest 

 cost of the raw material used, may be as finely made as 

 those of more valuable substances. 



Arenas and Beds 



The lithograph in figure 4 contains two other kinds of 

 cricket equipment which are usually of clay: fighting 

 arenas and the small, curved boxes that serve as cricket 

 beds. Field Museum has in its collection an excep- 

 tionally well-made arena, made of fine gray and black 

 clays (fig. 10). The arena is unusual in having a cen- 

 tral partition for separating the two combatants before 

 fighting as well as a sliding door in the side through 

 which the crickets can be driven in and out. This vessel 

 was purchased by Laufer in 1923, in Suzhou City, and 

 was made in Lumu. The Museum has another more 

 coarsely made arena, also from Lumu, that resembles a 

 somewhat enlarged cricket-keeping jar (fig. 10). 



Fighting vessels of this size are for private matches 

 watched by a few friends. For more public cricket 

 matches, a larger arena is needed. The one in the litho- 

 graph may be of wood, but in general such contests are 

 held in basin-like bowls that may or may not be special- 

 ly made for the purpose. In Guangzhou (Canton) and 

 Hong Kong, cricket specialists prefer wooden bowls 

 as arenas or a type of ceramic bowl made in Shi- 

 wan ("Shekwan" in Cantonese), about 25 cm in dia- 

 meter with sides 25 to 30 cm high, unglazed on the 

 inside, and with green glaze on the outside. It is said 



