Photo:  Matthew Jukes/GT

There's a bitter chill in the air and the residents of Beijing are wrapped up to the teeth against the first onset of the cold. But year round at the Tianqiao Market, under a motorway bridge on the southern Third Ring Road, the sounds of summer can be heard. It's in the chirrup of crickets and, much louder, several hundred grasshoppers adding their voice to the chorus.

Beijing has a certain nostalgic value in insects. While skyscrapers pop up everywhere and empty shopping malls colonize street corners, the leggy little critters hark back to an imperial age, where they were kept post-harvest as a good luck charm, so that their song, silenced in nature over the winter, could live on in the houses of the people.

Despite modernization, that tradition hasn't died, hence the flocks of Beijingers at Tianqiao. At one stall, which caters for both grasshoppers and the notorious fighting crickets, old men gather to watch an expert size up his purchases by dangling a selection of terrified Orthoptera from his fingertips.

"I've been doing this for 10 years," says Yu Xiangling, now retired and a professional Lao Beijingren. "There are a few of us who get together every now and then to show off our pets, who has the loudest sound, the brightest colors, that sort of thing."

According to Yu, the more lines a grasshopper has marking its body and wings, the louder the sound will be. And when it comes to keeping grasshoppers, it is all about the sound. Too old and they sound a little croaky, too young and they haven't learned their piece well enough to perform for a crowd.

To amplify their song, the insects need to be kept in the correct box. The cheap plastic jars that the markets sell them in just don't cut it; rather they need a carved gourd, a bamboo container or the glass bottles with a metal coil at the top, selling for around 200 yuan ($31), which act like a speaker for the song. By far the best suggests Yu are the vinegar bottles from his local baozi merchant, which amplify the chirrups better than any store-bought cage.

"All the Beijingers know that you have to keep them in your pocket when you go around in winter," he adds. "The temperature is very important, as is the food. A badly kept grasshopper will last from now until Spring Festival, but a well looked after pet can last well into April or May."

Pets not pests 

Unlike the fighting crickets, whose strict care regimes and eccentric training seem to deter the younger generation, more into working than sparring with their pets, the tradition of keeping grasshoppers seems to have lasted down the generations. One stallholder suggests that it's a 50-50 split between elderly retirees and young people, a claim swiftly backed up.

"I learned this from my grandpa," says young Tianjin-born financier Guo Yunnuo, a little shy to give his age. "It was common in my hometown. I don't have children yet, but I suppose when I do, I'll teach them all about this as well."

Many complain that after they buy a beloved antenna'd pet, they die within days. Since people are willing to pass on the tradition, it's not a lack of knowledge killing the creatures, but rather an unfortunate diet of too much Chinese food. Relying on vegetables for sustenance, the grasshoppers are in a bit of a pickle.

"You cannot, under any circumstances, feed these pets vegetables bought in any store in China," says Guo Fuxing, a grasshopper breeder and stallholder at Tianqiao. "There are so many pesticides in the food that vegetables from shops are certain death for them. The only thing you can do is to try feeding them carrots. Hopefully the pesticides don't reach that far down into the soil."

 Guo shows off his selection of pedigrees, which range from 10-150 yuan, or so he says in public. Ushering us secretively aside, he pulls out a polystyrene box, and cautiously lifts out his pride and joy, a mean looking black beast in a glass jar worth 1500 yuan, the cream of the crop. Complete with rows and rows of markings, the monster hopper apparently has the best song of any of its competitors.

Popular beyond borders

At the time of writing, Guo had not managed to sell his behemoth to any aficionado, but that's not for lack of trying. At the weekends he does a roaring trade, and while he's showing off some of his wares, famous comedian Hou Yaohua creates a stir by browsing the stalls. Apparently he visits every couple of months and is an avid grasshopper keeper, and only stopped the tradition when it was banned during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).

At the same time, a French couple stands out from the locals like a sore thumb, until they purchase a cricket cage. Apparently the French traditionally keep insects as pets too, and have a few tips on catching them.

 "We do this at home as well," says Dominique Guenard, cricket hunter. "When you hear that little peep peep peep in the grass, you have to look carefully. If you jab them with a blade of grass they'll latch on, thinking it's a fight, and then you just pull them up and pop them in a cage."

While no longer widespread, the practice of keeping insects is by no means dead. Guenard thinks he understands why. "It's fun and traditional. We all live like Americans these days," he says. "It's like cooking; if you choose, you can go to McDonalds, but if you cook at home yourself it's much more interesting."

Zhong Xibei contributed to this story