A group of men were huddled over something on the pavement all looking down at the ground.
I walked over to the group and pushed myself through the crowd to see what was going on. There on the ground was a small straight-sided grey bowl inside which two crickets were chasing each other across hot sand.
I had stumbled upon a cricket fighting match. I had never heard of this sport but apparently it’s hundreds of years old and was even organised by the government back in the 1600’s. The competitors are kept in small metal tins, the tops held on with an elastic band. When it’s time, the tin is opened and the creature is gently tipped out. The crickets run around on the sand for a while fighting each other and then when there is a winner the owners put a little net over the cricket, it jumps onto the netting and is put carefully back into its tin.
As I wandered further down the road I was tempted into a small market area where I found various sizes of cages full of song birds, buckets of small turtles and hundreds of tins of crickets for sale. I decided to purchase a cricket and after looking at several, found a small but handsome one which I negotiated down to 50p. I bought a little cricket handling net and rushed back to the pavement location with my brave fighter.
I watched excitedly as the two of them prepared for battle.
My opponent pushed his cricket with a bit of grass to make him go and suddenly he was on top of mine biting and duffing him up. The man laughed at my fighter and said it was very small. I said he might be small but he was a good fighter. This turned out to be over-optimistic as all mine did was run away from the other one as he chased him round and round the arena.
Eventually the man ended the bout, put both the crickets back into their tins and handed me my brave but ultimately useless fighter.
I tried to give it away but nobody would take it. So I found a spot of grass and got a shoe-lace seller to tip it out. Away it limped, bruised and battered. I can’t think of a better way of spending a Sunday afternoon than getting a fighting cricket and joining the locals in this ancient Chinese tradition.