One mid-term day, I went back to my village to see my parents. After chatting with them for a while, I walked into the woods with my 7-year-old niece and 2-year-old nephew to catch grasshoppers.

    We searched under the trees with poplar branches in our hands. While walking, we shook the sticks to disturb the grasshoppers, forcing them to jump out so that we could see and catch them.

    “Look, a grasshopper,” shouted my niece. I approached her. Disappointedly, we found it was just a cricket.

    All of a sudden, I heard a gentle sound. My heart leapt. It sounded like an insect falling on a dry leaf. It must be a grasshopper, I thought. We searched but to no avail.

    About 10 minutes later, our first grasshopper was finally captured.

    Knowing that so few grasshoppers were in and around my village made me think of the grasshoppers that used to be everywhere in my childhood.

    Do the grasshoppers migrate to cities too like their human counterparts? Hopefully they do. But the fact is they disappear like other creatures.

    There is a Chinese saying that when autumn’s gone, there’ll be no grasshoppers, but when spring comes, we can hear them again. I fear that grasshoppers will never come to life again after the cold winter. They are facing extinction.