The cricket fighting game can be traced back to the Tang dynasty (AD.618-907) and had long been confined to aristocrats, senior officials and ordinary people. Before putting the two crickets in a box, they should be weighed just like boxers. People then use yard grass stalks to stimulate the insects to fight. Generally, the fighting will be finished after a few minutes. But in the case of some resolute and powerful crickets, the contest might last half an hour.

The crickets for fighting have pedigrees and would be carefully bred. People keep their crickets in fighting shape with a controlled diet. There are some classical books detail good fighting crickets’ ecological localities and specific characteristics of the body, head, pronotum, wings, legs, and color pattern, although some of these seem unreasonable. These books also teach how to diagnose various cricket diseases, cures, ways to use females, food, medicine, tickling brushes and address many other subjects in great detail.