Speaking of raising, it should be one of the most distinctive parts of the old Beibei Beijing culture, as long as it is in the courtyard, you must raise some living things, in the current popular saying is to raise pets. In this breeding, it can also be divided into 4 categories, birds, fish, animals, and insects.

Thrush, lark, yellow finch, jade bird, parrot, starling, acacia bird, literary bird, pigeon, etc., are the birds that the old Beijingers like to raise, every morning people have not woken up, the birds hanging under the eaves will wake up first, a crisp call, immediately can make the courtyard full of vitality. Then the owner will get up early in the morning and carry the bird cage to the park river for a walk, not only to walk the birds, but also to walk the people by the way, which can be regarded as moving muscles and bones.

In summer, "ceiling, fish tank, pomegranate tree" is the most harmonious scenery in the courtyard. From the princes and nobles, the officials of the court and the central government to the common people, they like to put fish pots in their own courtyards, put fish tanks in their living rooms, and raise a few goldfish, dozens or even hundreds. In the words of the people of Bei*jing: Fish farming is a slow practice, and what you want is the process of grinding your temperament, so as to nourish your heart. Moreover, "fish" and "yu" are homophonic, and have the meaning of "more than every year", so it is regarded as an auspicious thing.

Lao Bei * Beijing cats pay attention to breeds, and most of them are expensive to the elderly. It is generally believed that the white and yellow ones are the top grades, followed by the black ones and the variegated ones. In addition, the cat's eyes must be two-colored, the name is "male and female eyes", as the saying goes, "one father, one mother", this is the "Persian species". But the people of Laobei * Beijing do not like to raise white-tailed cats, thinking that it is ominous. The people of Beijing believe that raising cats is a noble pleasure, and its source is mostly given to each other by relatives and friends as gifts.

The people of Laobei * Beijing also have dogs, but the number of dogs is far less than the number of cats, and the rich people generally buy ornamental dogs at the dog market of the Huguo temple fair: sleeve dogs, horn dogs. The sleeve dog is only the size of a palm, but it is aggressive by nature, and it is also called "fighting dog", which can be hidden in the sleeve, hence the name. These men put the dogs on the table and watched them fight and bite in order to have a good time.

At that time, the people of Laobei*Beijing did not sell cats or dogs, and regarded the sale of cats and dogs as a symbol of family bankruptcy and would be looked down upon. Of course, with the progress of the times, these particularities are gone, let's just be considered progress.

Finally, there are insect keepers, such as gnats, crickets, admiralty, smacking lips, and oil hyacinths, among which the most people play with gnats and crickets. Every year after the wheat harvest, there will be a large number of grub cages in the hutong to sell gnats, the old Bei * Beijing people will generally buy a few, hang under the pomegranate tree to catch the grape trellis, listen to them sing there, not only do not feel noisy, but also feel very happy.

There is a particular need to buy a grasshopper, you can't buy one back, you have to buy it in pairs, one is to ask for good luck, and the other is that the grasshopper will compete and scream when it screams, and if one calls, the other will also call. It's like listening to an instrument, listening to a symphony orchestra, and of course no one will stop you if you have to listen to a solo.

As for the exquisiteness of playing with crickets, it is no less than playing with crickets, but the old man didn't talk about it, only about crickets.

To raise crickets, you must first have a utensil, that is, a cricket jar, which is like a half-cut pen holder with a lid on it, and the lid has an air eye to ventilate. The size of the jar is divided into five sizes, and the same as the battery we use, starting from the first one and getting smaller and smaller, until the fifth number, these five cans can be packed together one by one, and there is no strict rule on the specific size, which is relatively speaking.

There are many types of materials for cricket jars, the most common are porcelain and pottery, and there are also ivory, jade and the like, which is a matter of personal preference. In addition to the material, the people who play with insects also divide the cricket jar from the place of origin, that is, the south jar and the north can. The old man has never left Bei*jing in his life, so he and Hong Tao are talking about the North Can, as for the difference between the South Can and the North Can, it is also probably mentioned that due to the different climates, the walls of the South Tank are thinner, and the walls of the North Tank are thicker.

In fact, the making of this cricket pot is similar to that of a teapot, and it is also made of clay such as clear mud and purple sand after filtering. The cans fired out of an open flame are relatively bright and shiny, but the cans and the lid are difficult to be the same color, because they are not fired in one furnace. The color of the can fired by the pot is the same as the lid of the can, but the gloss of the can is not enough, and the feel is not so delicate.

According to the old rules of playing crickets, 24 cricket cans are a table, and each table is equipped with a prince jar and a bite jar. The Wang Ye jar is the largest, and there are the most powerful crickets in this table, and the bite jar is the battlefield where the crickets fight, also called the bucket, which is the jar that the old man and Hong Tao talked about in the entrusted store. Even if this table is a unit of playing crickets, when connoisseurs ask you, they will ask: How many tables have you played? So if you don't play one or two crickets, they are all laymen, and you want to play at least one table!

It's not enough to have a cricket jar, which is equivalent to just giving the crickets a yard and not having a house to live in. The house of the cricket is called the cage, also called the bell room, it has all kinds of shapes, all kinds of materials, in general, it is a small box with holes on both sides and a lid on it. The cage is generally placed in the cricket jar, which is the cricket's bedroom.

Why is it called a cage? It's a very figurative word. Because whether you are fighting crickets, or you usually clean the yard for crickets, you need to take the crickets out of the jar. The average child will go directly to catch it, of course, the person who plays with the insect can not be so simple and rude, a cricket in addition to the sound of good, brave and ruthless, there is also a very important standard is the appearance.

We often say that the whole beard and the whole tail (pronounced as the sound of "introduction"), which refers to the appearance of the cricket, and the whisker is naturally the two tentacles of the cricket, and the tail refers to the two tails of the cricket. The tentacles and tail of a good cricket must be intact, and if you grasp it with your hands, the tentacles and tail can be easily broken, so the cage appears. When you want to move the crickets to other jars, you drive the crickets into the cage, and then directly pick up the cage, and the crickets will naturally move with them, so that the crickets will not hurt the crickets.

Is it a good cricket player to have a cricket jar and a cage? No matter what you play, you have a set of things, you have to have a camera to play photography, you have to have a few heads, you have to have a shelf, you have to have a photography bag, a photography vest, you have to have a few lights or something, right?

The same is true for playing with crickets, in addition to the jar and the cage, there must also be a bucket (etc.) for weighing the crickets, a sink for feeding the crickets to drink, a meal board for eating, a bamboo clip for holding various utensils in the jar, a drip dispenser for dripping water into the sink, a yard for erecting the lid of the jar for ventilation, a straw for filling the grass, a cover to prevent the crickets from jumping out of the basin, and so on.

At first, Hong Tao thought that he had gathered all these things, even if he entered the door, anyway, as long as there are sales on the market, let's buy them, and the cricket jars have been bought, do you still care about these gadgets?

Don't look at the literal meaning, not to smash the bottom of the jar, but to smash a layer of triple soil at the bottom of the original porcelain or pottery jar, because the cricket is an insect that lives on the land, which can be regarded as a comfortable home for it.

The first step is to boil the pot. All the cricket jars that are fired have salt and alkali, which is harmful to crickets, so people who play with insects come up with a way to remove the salt and alkali in the jar, which needs to be soaked in rainwater, less than half a year, and more than several years. But people in later generations didn't have so much time, so everyone came up with a way, that is, to boil the jar with tea water, and pass the high temperature and certain substances in the tea to precipitate and neutralize the salt and alkali in the jar, which is called fire. Hong Tao's jars don't need to be cooked, according to the old man's statement, these jars are all old jars, they have been played with, and the fire is long gone.

After going to the jar of fire, you can start to smash the bottom, and use a kind of triple soil to smash the bottom, that is, mix the old brick powder, fine sand, and loess in a ratio of 3:4:2, plus a portion of earthworm feces, and make it into fine powder, the finer the better. Then add a little water and mix, do not mix with puree. Put the reconciled Sanhe soil into the cricket jar, slowly beat it with a hard object with a relatively flat bottom, and gradually compact, with a minimum thickness of one centimeter. After pressing, you turn the jar over, and not a single slag will fall, and it is flat and strong.

This is only the first step of smashing the bottom, now we have to carry out the second step, find a piece of coarse sandpaper, cut it into a disc slightly smaller than the bottom of the jar, and then the coarse side of the sand is down, put it in the bottom of the jar, and continue to smash it for a while, taking out the sand. At this time, there will be a lot of pockmarks on the bottom of the triple soil, which is right, this is to make the cricket's feet can grasp the ground, and the triple soil is too slippery and will make the cricket stand up and slip.

After that, there is the third step, which is the last step of smashing the bottom, raising the bottom. These Sanhe soil also have fire, so you have to use a brush dipped in tea, brush a layer on it if you have nothing to do, and brush it again when it is dry, about ten days and half a month, you can put the crickets in.

In fact, this smashing is the same as our human decoration house, buying a new house, or a rough house, you have to lay a floor or something, after the paving, there is a smell in the house, and you have to dry for a few days to live in, the same reason, crickets in a certain Cheng dù said, no one has strong resistance, so you must be carefully served, this is not to find trouble for yourself, this is to have fun.

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