Your Best Friend in your Breast Pocket

We are driving through Beijing when I hear a sound very much like the chirping sound of of a cricket. I try to ignore it, but eventually ask Rick, our guide, if anything is wrong.
Rick looks at me with the dewy eyed look of a proud parent and takes out of his breast pocket a small perspex cylinder.
In it is his pet cricket...I kid you not. This grown Chinese man tells us that many Chinese men have a pet cricket which they keep with them, as a friend and precious companion. He says he feeds it from his hand. He gives it carrot and water.
The reason we heard him was because his cricket was unhappy and wanted to be in the sunshine.
We all think it is hilarious. Rick is deadly earnest.
The cricket has an unpronounceable Chinese name and obviously has an important place in his life.

I said once before, we just don't understand the Chinese.