VietNamNet Bridge – Catching insects used to be an “elegant” hobby of urban kids but, for a variety of reasons that diversion has largely disappeared.
Beautiful insects used to be toys to Hanoi kids in the 1990s and
earlier. Children at that time considered dragonflies and grasshoppers
as toy planes.
Today, because of the process of
urbanization and the environmental pollution, many insect species have
become rare in the city. Urban children also have many new distractions
so that these “natural toys” have been forgotten.
Crickets used to be a passion of so many children of the old days.
Catching crickets was endless fun each summer. But more interesting was
cricket fighting.
Cicadas appear in early summer when
kids begin their long vacation. There are countless games to be played,
such as picking the skins of cicadas, seeking cicada larvae, watching
cicadas changing their skins or catching the bugs at night.
Mantises usually live on trees. They look exactly like boxers.
May-bugs are beautiful beetles to play with.
Dragonflies
fly very fast but the kids have numerous ways to catch them. Kids used
to believe that if you let a dragon fly bite your navel, you’ll be able
to swim.
Little dragonflies are put in glass boxes.
In the old days, kids could catch grasshoppers everywhere in Hanoi.
Locusts used to be “natural toys” of Hanoi’s children in the past.
Long-horned grasshopper.
Capricorn beetles.
Mole crickets.
Belostomatid.
Colorful butterflies were hunted by many students for their.
Fireflies.
Boys often used caterpillars to “intimidate” skittish girls.
And there are many, many other special toys.
Kien Thuc