Do you remember how utterly offended and completely mortified you were when you discovered the horrid travesty of Cat Juggling? (Ask Steve Martin)

     Well an even more horrific event happens and has been happening since the Tang Dynasty. My brothers and sisters in China are continually forced into competition that is simply put…Barbaric.

     In Beijing, the Association for Cricket Fighting still organizes cricket fighting events.

     The government has allowed these vicious spectacles to occur, though it is illegal to gamble on this, the most brutal of all sports.

     So many of my brothers, sisters and cousins have been forced into this slavery with virtually no chance of escape. Outside of borrowing Andy Dufresne’s little rock hammer and burrowing out of the house in a tunnel through the sewer system, hope for a free existence is futile.

     The interesting dichotomy is that they are given a wonderful diet of ground worms, fish, snake, crab meat and water chestnuts. They are often given veterinary care and ‘medication’ to ensure phenomenal health. They are then starved to agitate them before their big fight. They are then poked and prodded with a stick to get them mad so they fight even more aggressively.

     When was the last time you ate amazing meals of ground worms, fish, snake, crab meat and water chestnuts, then were starved for a few days, thrown into a cage and poked with sticks until you fought whomever else was in there? It’s just not a pleaseant thing to do.

     Will the madness ever end? I’m afraid not! There’s just too much money involved (very under-the-table) though. My brothers, sisters and cousins can make $10s of dollars for the humans who sell them and $100s of dollars to the humans in charge of the fight.

     I have a dream! That my brothers, sisters, cousins and whatever other way they are relatives to each other (they get a little frisky in prison) could simply go to a rice field, sing a little song and enjoy the beautiful weather without fear of forced diets, forced starvation, prodding sticks and uncontrollable rage to their friends and family.

STOP THE MADNESS!!!!!

Wow! The symbol on top looks like the black shirt with the gray Chinese Symbols on it!

order the qu qu shirt here!

My research sources for information taken from:

http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/walkingthewall/index.php/category/beijing/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_fighting

http://www.chinaculturecenter.org/eventcontent.php?eventid=2413

     One of my friends, David Shipps, had a recording session yesterday at The Sound Kitchen in Nashville, TN with The Nashville String Machine. I just couldn’t help myself. I HAD to go check it out. I snuck in by way of one of the players’ music cases. You should have seen David’s face the first time I chirped (they weren’t recording right then, of course).

     3 of my brothers came with me so there were 4 of us in there. Everytime the red light went off, we went to chirpin’. I really had a blast!

     I made my Symphony debut and recording session debut all in the same week. Mom and Dad would really have been proud of me. I just so wish they wouldn’t have walked out onto that road. It was a big truck and it came too fast. They never saw it coming. My entire life (egg, larvae and adult maturation) passed before my eyes as they were here one minute talking to me on the asphalt and gone the next. 

     It was my first time in a recording studio and I have a feeling I’ll show up to MANY MORE sessions in the future.

     The pressure of chirping on cue when the red light to record comes on is pretty intense, but I chirped like a pro! (technically, I chirped when the red light went off)