People in Henan, Shandong and some other neighbouring provinces have the tradition and actually fondness of eating fried and stewed cicadas for centuries. It is said that every summer, in Henan Province sees around 100 million cicadas are eaten.
In Weifang City of Shandong Province, for instance, when dusk falls, some people would go out with a torch, some plastic bottles or bags, bend their waists and hover down over in the fields to hunt for cicadas. Some people even specialise in cicada farming, but because of excessive rain this year, cicadas, which usually hover deep in the mud sucking roots of trees, crops and vegetables for around three years before crawling out in search of trees to find mates, are not as productive as usual, are not as populous as usual, but demand has obviously increased, now with the online channel creating a growing demand, as some cicada farmers or cooks publicise their business on Ticktock and other social media platforms and have generated interest and curiosity from the rest of the country.
Twenty years ago, a golden cicada sells for RMB 0.070-0.08 each. Ten years ago, the price rose to RMB 0.4-0.5 each, but in July and August this year, it sells for around RMB 1 each. Its rice literally tripped within ten years. So one kilo of cicadas can fetch prices of RMB 200-400 depending on their sizes and other quality attributes. In comparison, at present a kilo of pork sells for normally around RMB 30.
One account named 小羊农特产 says on its short video, jokingly, that attending top universities like Qinghua University and Beijing University, is less as rewarding financially as going back to their rural homes to catch cicadas. One man claims to have quit his security guard job in Hangzhou to go back to his hometown just to catch cicadas. He says he catches several hundred cicadas a day so he earns several hundred yuan a day, which is not even to be dreamed of earlier.
Online one can also see people selling seedlings of cicadas, which are even smaller than grains of rice, and sold by gramms, so that anybody can buy the seedlings and become a cicada farmer.
Online are also people selling tools and simple machinery related with cicada farming.
Because of the swelling popularity of cicadas in the culinary market, cicadas which are traditionally part of a popular Traditional Chinese Medicine for its cast-away shells for anti-inflamation qualities, are also getting pricier in the medical channel. Cicada shells' prices have been driven up year by year, and now sell in the range of RMB 580--800 per kilo.
At present, the cicada growing and marketing trade no doubt is far below the poultry or beef market in size, but there are all the signs of it expanding aggressively.
From the perspective of the Central Government, so far only silkworms are recognised as an eatable worm, but in different regions in China, many other insects and worms are eaten.For instance, in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, the sandcrab (爬沙虫), which is a black worm with hundreds of legs typically found in sandy beaches there, is a popular food. Scorpios, mole crickets (蝼蛄) and crickets are also favoured delicacy in some places and for some people.
Cicadas are divided into golden cicadas, which are cicadas with still their golden shells on, white cicadas, those cicadas already having their golden shells shed, and then black cicadas, which are further grown out of white cicadas.
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