Cicadas: Shanghai’s Summer Song

“All the different kinds of cicada are now in full song …. most noticeable is the longdrawn song of the big black cicada, whose strident screech fills the air for periods of half a minute to a minute at a time, ceases for a while, and then starts again.”

Arthur de Carle Sowerby, Nature Notes, 1938

It’s not the unrelenting heat, nor the rolled up t-shirts, nor the unfurling of fans across the city. None of that makes it summer. It’s only officially summer in Shanghai when the lusty chorus of cicadas begins, the screeching symphony erupting from the trees. Curious about this ubiquitous summer visitor, we turned to the author of that ode, Arthur de Carle Sowerby.

The pre-eminent expert on Shanghai’s natural world, China-born Sowerby was an explorer, naturalist, publisher of the “China Journal”, and author of the “Nature Notes” column for the North China Daily News. He explored his own verdant Shanghai backyard (on Lucerne Road/Lixi Lu) with the same enthusiasm that he brought to his expeditions in Manchuria, Mongolia, Sha’anxi and Gansu. And in his backyard, he found the Shanghai cicada. Below are excerpts from Sowerby’s columns on the cicada:

July 6, 1938

“I have been waiting since July 1 for the song of the cicada, the big black fellow known to science as Cryptotympana pustulata, which usually makes its appearance in Shanghai between that date and the “Glorious Fourth”….There seems to be a certain amount of irregularity this year, no doubt due to the very abnormal weather conditions.” [In 2022, we’re suffering abnormal weather conditions, too: the cicadas usually begin to emerge two weeks after plum rain season, but we had hardly any plum rains this year. No wonder the cicadas are just now in full song.]

Illustrations from Nature Notes: A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of Shanghai by Arthur de Carle Sowerby

“In this part of China, we have at least five species of cicada, ranging from three inches down to a little emerald green form less than an inch in length. As I write, I can hear the strident notes of several of these smaller cicadas coming from the trees round my house. (Fun fact: Chinese say that the Mongolian cicada sounds like he’s saying “re si le”, 热死了- it’s soooo hot )

“Observations I have made during a number of years in the Shanghai area indicated that the big black cicada’s song is usually first heard on the first really hot day in July. This more frequently than not occurs on July 4, so that one gains the impression that our Cryptotympana is celebrating Independence Day.

“From time immemorial, the cicada has attracted the attention, not to say admiration, of man. Its emergence from the ground to sing in the trees and the wonderful transformation it undergoes in the process from a wingless creature or hideous form into one of considerable beauty, seemingly endowed with a great joie-de-vivre, have given it a symbolical significance beyond almost any other living thing.

The cicada in Chinese art: a Han dynasty jade (source: J. J. Lally & Co.); a 1919 fan by artist Wang Zhen; (source: National Museum of Asian Art); an ornamental plaque from the Easter Jin Dynasty (source: The Met Museum).

“The Greek poets of old sang its praises and their philosophers saw in it the emblem of immortality. To the ancient Chinese, as far back as the Shang period, 15 or so centuries before the Christian era, it had a special significance. They portrayed it in their art, making it one of their favorite motifs in the decoration of their bone implements and bronze vessels. Later, in the Han period, it was carved in jade and placed in the mouths of the deceased at burial, it is said, as a symbol of resurrection in a future life.”

July 11, 1938

“All the different kinds of cicada are now in full song, and as I sit on my porch looking into my sunlit garden, I can detect the calls of at least four of these. Most noticeable, perhaps, is the longdrawn song of the big black cicada, the strident screech of which fills the air for periods of half a minute to a minute at a time, ceases for a while, and then starts again.

The Shanghai Summer Cicada. Photo: Mick Ryan

“The extraordinary noise for which the cicadas, or scissor grinders, are famous is created by a marvellous apparatus that magnifies the sound, anticipating the microphones of the telephone, the phonograph and the dictaphone by a hundred million years or so, for the cicadas belong to an extremely ancient order of insects, and we have no reason to suppose that they had not developed their vocal powers at a very early period in their history.

July 27, 1938

“For a few hectic weeks, the cicadas appear to enjoy life to the full, the males spending their time singing noisily, it would seem for the delectation of the females, and both males and females feeding copiously on the sap of the trees. Mating takes place and the eggs are laid. Then as summer wanes, the cicadas begin to die off, and by the end of autumn, all have passed away. But they have left behind them a generation of cicadas deep in the soil, who will emerge after a period of years to enjoy life above ground, before they in turn pass into oblivion.”

–Sowerby, Arthur de Carle. Nature Notes: A Guide to the Fauna and Flora of a Shanghai Garden. The China Journal Publishing Company: Shanghai, 1939

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