Rickshaw Boy

Xiangzi, a strong young man come to the city from the countryside, pulls a rickshaw through 1920s Beijing with one dream, to own his own rickshaw and be his own master, and the city and its cruelties grind that dream down step by step. Lao She maps the real Beijing of the rickshaw men: the hutong rental yards where they lodge, the city gates where soldiers seize Xiangzi, the Western Hills he flees to with the army's camels, and the scholarly households of Haidian where he briefly finds decency.

Hu Niu

The rickshaw compound

Chapter 1

In the courtyard yard where the pullers rent their rickshaws and sleep, the coarse, calculating Hu Niu, the owner's unmarried daughter, sets her sights on the strong young Xiangzi. Her trapping of him into marriage is one of the coils that will slowly strangle his dream of independence.

Chapter 1

inferred Xiangzi lodges at a rickshaw rental yard in the Beijing hutongs, run by the shrewd Liu and his daughter Hu Niu; the compound is invented and sited in the real maze of central Beijing lanes.

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