In summer, the villagers make a killing in China’s fighting cricket capital

Residents of a Chinese town famous for breeding fighting crickets made up to 15,000 yuan (HK$18,000) a month during summer when business boomed – as it does every year – around the venerable sport, local media report. 

Each year, from mid-July to late August, the insects sing and enthusiasts from around the nation converge on Sidian, in Shandong province, the undisputed capital of crickets, according to the popular news portal Qq.com.

Everyone in the town catches crickets in the fields to make money. Trade is so good that those who work most of the year out of town return home for the cricket harvest, and children on their summer vacation are happy to pitch in as well.

“It’s become a festival for family reunion,” a local resident said. “Even more people return now than at the Lunar New Year [the traditional family festival in China].”

A villager at a local workshop making pots for keeping the insects shows one of the devices, half-filled with local soil, that sells for 70 cents. Each workshop sells several thousand pots a day during cricket season.

Those who specialise in catching crickets earn more – about 15,000 yuan a month for a veteran, the villager said.