Cricket fighting

Cricket fighting is an ancient Chinese sport which was suppressed as a symptom of decadence during the Cultural Revolution but is now back in fashion. Wild crickets are captured by hunters and transported in bamboo tubes. More than 100,000 crickets are sold a day in Shanghai's markets. The crickets are trained and fed by their owners to bring out their fighting temperament. Two crickets are put into a steep-sided fighting pot, tickled to trigger the fighting response, and fight until one is disabled by the loss of a leg or antenna. The injured cricket as the loser and is then removed by the human adjudicators and killed. Although betting is illegal, cricket gambling is rampant.