The year 1273 A.D. was a dreadful one for the Song dynasty, the ruling family of China who had held power since the 10th century. The Mongols, led by Kublai Khan (the grandson of Genghis Khan), captured the geographically important city of Xiangyang after a six-year siege.
By 1279, the Song dynasty was finished. In a final act of capitulation, the seven-year-old Song emperor, Zhao Bing, drowned himself to evade capture by the Mongol navy.
What was the reason for the downfall of the Song dynasty? Many things, but it likely had something to do with crickets—more specifically, one man’s obsession with them. His name was Jia Sidao (1213-1275) and here is his story.
Jia Sidao is a controversial figure in Chinese history. He rose to power as chancellor under Emperor Lizong, the 14th emperor of the Song dynasty. Sidao accumulated immense wealth and influence, manipulating imperial policies to benefit himself and his family. His concentration of power made him the de facto ruler of the empire, sidelining the emperor’s authority and fostering widespread corruption within the court.
Sidao’s tactics included purging rivals and replacing capable officials with loyalists, often at the expense of the empire’s stability. His actions alienated many, particularly military leaders who could have better resisted the Mongol invasion. By focusing more on consolidating his own power rather than defending the empire, Sidao effectively left the Southern Song vulnerable to external threats, especially from the Mongols, who were expanding rapidly under Kublai Khan.
Despite Sidao’s removal from power in 1275 (he was assassinated), the Mongols continued their successful military campaigns, culminating in the collapse of the Southern Song dynasty in 1279.
Sidao was also an aficionado and early pioneer of the Chinese pastime of “cricket fighting.” According to scholar Martina Siebert, the story goes that he “could not stop gambling and look up from the tiny arena where two crickets fought for their lives, even when reports arrived about the Mongol invasion of China, which in the end brought about the fall of the Song dynasty in 1279.”
Sinologist Roel Sterckx describes Sidao’s wayward aspirations as such: “The southern Song chancellor, Jia Sidao, whose obsession with concubines and fighting crickets famously led him to make light of an offensive by invading Mongol armies.”
Sidao’s infatuation with the sport was so deep that he is thought to have penned the first manual on the subject. Unfortunately, his writings are not still in existence today. However, through later texts, researchers surmise that Sidao’s manual covered topics such as how to assess the potential of a fighting cricket, how to care for and train a fighting cricket, what to feed them, and how to guide them through a tournament. Since Sidao’s seminal text, dozens of manuals have been produced on the subject and the ancient blood sport of cricket fighting still exists in China to this day.
One such text describes the cricket as follows: “As it leaps and chirps, displaying a tranquil demeanor, it embodies the essence of literary virtues. When fearlessly confronting the enemy and consistently emerging victorious with valor on the battlefield, it embodies the essence of martial virtues.”
Unfortunately, Sidao missed this lesson.
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