CE06 聽秋 Ting Qiu - Listening to Autumn                       

From the liner notes [2]

Why this Interest in Crickets and Chinese?

Like many children I felt most at peace in nature, and from an early age I was especially facinated by insects. During my own private excursions in brush and meadow I came across many creeping, jumping and flying little fellows. I could spend whole summers trying to figure out who they were and what special habitats they preferred. I reared eggs and larvae I found and hatched and watched the development and metamorphosis of many a species from egg to imago.

Later in life, when I roamed through Europe and North Africa in the sixties, trying to find the preferred habitat of my own organism, I often met with other travellers consulting the Chinese divination classic, the Yi Ching 易經 (Book of Changes) for a more secure passage. I was fascinated by the cryptic, archaic language, and intrigued by the problems of translating such an old text into a modern European language. As the Chinese script and Chinese culture had also long fascinated me, I now got to the point where I seriously started studying the Chinese language in Tangiers in 1969.

Later, in my early years as a librarian working with the Chinese collection of the Swedish Royal Library, cataloguing old books, I came across a little blue book wrapper containing four small threadbound volumes called Sishengpu 四生譜, “Register of Four Lives”. It was a collection of four individual works, three of which described how to rear and keep live birds like the quail, thrush and siskin (yellow finch) – but the fourth work I could not make head or tail of, most likely because I was mistakenly looking for yet another bird.

The name used in the title was the poetic form of cricket, cuzhi 促織. This I learned only after consulting several dictionaries, and I was also given a reference from the Shijing 詩經, The Book of Odes, the oldest collection of poetry with texts dating from the Zhou Dynasty 周 (1027 –771 bc) to the Spring & Autumn Period 春秋 (770–476 bc). There it is said that in the beginning of fall, when the women hear the chirping of crickets as they are are drawn closer to the warmth of the village – getting closer and closer until finally they come all the way in under the beds – it signals the coming of autumn and reminds them to start weaving warm clothes for winter.

There is also an entry mentioning crickets in the oldest Chinese thesaurus Erya 爾雅, dating from before the second century BC, in the Shi Chong 釋蟲 section (explaining scaly animals).

From that day on I frequently found new references to crickets, and I started collecting quotes and other material about them whenever I came across it. It now fills several bookshelves in my home.

Introduction to the Cricket Ensemble

The crickets in these recordings are mostly from Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. Only a few, but very significant ones, are from the Beijing region.

The most prominent are the Bamboo Bells 竹鈴 (Oecanthus sinensis) and the Purple Bamboo Bells 紫竹鈴 (Oecanthus longicauda), heard here in many different constellations and in various numbers. They synchronize their singing, and it is very impressive to hear a large group of Bamboo Bells come in and out of perfectly joined stridulation.

The Ink Bells 墨鈴 (Homeoxipha lycoides) are more discreet, but also the most versatile. They have a larger repertoire than most other crickets and they also play differently depending on the environment and time of day.

The Large Yellow Bells 大黃鈴 (Anaxipha sp. n) are probably the most indefatiguable of all cricket musicians, singing no matter if it is dusk or dawn, night or broad daylight. Its only requirements seem to be peaceful surroundings and some moist fruit to nibble at.

The Small Yellow Bells 小黃鈴 (Anaxipha pallidula) has a softer sound and does not sing for such long continuous periods as the Large Yellow Bell, but shows some more variety in its stridulations.

The Gold Bell 金鈴 (Svistella bifasciata) has a very high pitch, and is a distinct and clear addition to the overall soundshape of the group. It adds a certain crispness and struck crystal-glass tone quality.

Probably the most powerful singer of all, the Heavenly Bell 天鈴 (Trujalia hibinonis – known as the Green Lute 綠琵琶 in Northern China) is unsurpassed in volume. There are two main kinds on these recordings, the “single mouth” and the “paired mouth”, with distinct differences in singing.

Finally, at least among those recorded here, we have the wonderful brilliance of the Horse Bell 馬鈴 (Homeogryllus japonica – in Northern China known as the Golden Bell 金鐘), a most amicable and peaceful cricket that prefers to sing with the female present.

Created at Bolingo Productions in Sweden, copyright Lars Fredriksson | Latest revision Saturday 7 October, 2006.