History Mystery 12: A brief history of the Chinese cricket cage

Readers, you amaze me. I thought last week’s history mystery, shown above, would be one of the hardest since #6 in 2023. I even included an obscure hint to muddy the waters: “These were considered objects of leisure, although some used them for competitive purposes.” Surely, you would be stumped. Nope! Nearly everyone guessed correctly: it is a Chinese cricket cage.

How did so many people get it right? Here’s one answer from reader Penny M.:

“A cricket cage popped into my mind as soon as I saw your post, and your description of the artifact was the clincher! I've seen them in old (foreign) movies as well as read about them in historical fiction and non-fiction books, although I've never seen one in person.”

Penny added that she was a big fan of EasyGenie (thank you!). Her comment about seeing them in old foreign movies made me think that others might have seen the same films. It turns out that Bernardo Bertolucci’s grand 1987 film The Last Emperor, which won nine Oscars that year, included two critical scenes featuring cricket cages (watch the first scene here).

Cricket cages come in many shapes and sizes. The two our daughter and I saw at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) are part of a wonderful exhibit about pastimes of Chinese literati during the dynastic period, which ended in the early 1900s.

Considered an “elegant hobby,” the cages would be hung in salons or attached to a belt or sash. The MIA exhibit also includes cricket-catching nets and traps, as well as feeding dishes and even a cricket bed, shown below.

Cricket cages weren’t only for the elite. People from all walks of life kept crickets, either as pets or for cricket fights. This is still a tradition in China, as a 2021 NPR report describes:

“Two crickets — always males — are weighed to the closest hundredth of a gram and then paired off by weight class like prizefighters. They are placed in a clear plastic ring nearly the size of a dinner plate, with a dividing wall separating the two insects. A referee signals go time, then slides out the ring divider to let the bugs face off.”

Thanks to everyone who participated. Next time, it won’t be so easy, I promise!