Police in Shanghai have smashed an illegal gambling ring betting on fights between pet crickets and confiscated 1,8-million yuan ($220 000), state media said on Tuesday.
Thirty-six people were in police custody after local residents alerted authorities in the western Shanghai neighbourhood of Qingpu, the China Daily reported.
The gang began organising cricket gambling in October last year but kept moving locations to avoid being caught, the newspaper said.
Cricket fighting, a hobby of the ancient Chinese, dates back to as early as the Tang dynasty of 618 to 907 AD.
Wu Zetian, the only empress in China’s history, was supposedly the first person to raise the insects before the craze to fight the little pets reached its apex during the Qing dynasty (1644 to 1911).
The communists banned the practice in 1949 because of its close association with gambling, which is illegal in China.
However, keeping crickets has seen a resurgence in recent years and today down many small lanes in the eastern city of 17-million, retired men can often been seen selling the insects.
Like cock and dog fights, cricket bouts are usually to the death. Before a match the crickets are starved to make them more aggressive.
In the recent bust, the organisers preferred to take no chances and fixed the outcomes by using drugs.
“They controlled the gambling by feeding drugs to crickets before the fight,” the paper quoted police officer Zhuang Wei as saying.
He added that the smallest bets were 5 000 yuan, or about a month’s wages for a Shanghai resident.
Since August, police have been cracking down on gambling operations, the report said. — AFP