Throwback Thursday is when we trawl through the That's archives for a work of dazzling genius written at some point in our past. We then republish it. On a Thursday.
There are more than 300,000 known species of insect in China, yet due to climate and concrete, Shanghai isn’t exactly the entomologist’s ideal place for fieldwork. In fact, there’s never ever been a comprehensive insect species inventory done for the city, says Professor Haisheng Yin of the Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences. Still, there’s plenty of curious creatures creeping, crawling and taking flight if you keep em’ peeled…
Butterflies
Keep an eye out in coming months for these Shanghai-dwelling eye-catchers
Common bluebottle
Common tiger
Small tortoiseshell
Painted Lady
Peacock pansy
Invaders
Red palm weevil
Originally from south Asia, this palm-eating fiend is a surefire tree killer. It’ll spend its four-month lifespan inside a trunk, tunneling and destroying the tree from the inside. Trees can collapse within half a year of infestation, without ever showing signs of exterior damage. A female lays 200 eggs during its life and there can be two or three generations per year. First discovered in China in 1997, the red palm weevil has spread to at least 12 provinces. In 2005, more than a thousand canary date palms had to be burned down in Songjiang District to prevent further spread. The effort was successful.
American white moth
This Yankee intruder was first discovered in a munitions factory in Shanxi Province in 1985, presumed to have laid eggs hidden in the grains of wooden boxes carrying imported machinery. It denuded tens of thousands of trees, damaged crops and was seemingly unstoppable, able to survive in temperatures from 40 to -16 degrees Celsius. A menace in Shanghai 10 years ago, they were rooted out but still plague other parts of the country. Last fall 600 million bees were released in Baoding, a city in Hebei Province, to combat the moth menace.
Why are tree trunks painted white?
The paint is actually insecticide and it keeps cicada and caterpillar larvae from climbing up the tree, preventing potentially tree-destroying infestations.
Rhinoceros beetle
A Shanghainese kid’s favorite bug
It is big, prehistoric-looking and likes to eat jelly. What more could you want from a companion creepy-crawly? Local kids catch their own or purchase one at a pet stores, while in Japan these popular pets are even sold in vending machines.
High-stakes hoppers
Cricket fighting with a million-kuai pot
Once the playthings of emperors, crickets still entertain an elite and powerful set in Shanghai. Behind the glass counters stacked with screeching cicadas and languid bunnies, crickets are selling for serious money at the Xizang Nan Lu pet market. “It’s our heritage. It’s a nobleman’s game,” says one cricket dealer, who declined to be named because of his involvement in illegal gambling.
Where casual street-side matches may see five or ten kuai at stake, a serious cricket fighting match usually goes down in a swanky hotel, and the pot can reach in excess of RMB2 million, he says. He wouldn’t say how much serious fighters sell for, only that “If there’s a million-kuai pot, you can imagine how much people will invest to try and win.”
This article first appeared in the April 2012 issue of That's Shanghai. To see more Throwback Thursday posts, click here.
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