Word: ricksha
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...poor and ignorant man judges his lot by his past. Thus did China's ragged ricksha pullers judge the Government's lofty pronouncement that their work was "archaic, inhuman and wasteful of manpower," and the Government's three-year plan to abolish all rickshas in favor of pedicabs, trolleys and buses...
...their straw-and-mud shantytowns, in the hong (company) sheds where they rent their vehicles, in cheap teahouses from Chungking to Peiping, the ricksha men shook their heads over the prospect. Ai-ya! Ai-ya! Truly, as the Sage had written, "it is difficult to be poor and not grumble." What now would become of them...
...Investigation & Statistics. In time it became one of the world's biggest undercover agencies. It planted operatives from Bali to Burma, from Singapore to Sinkiang. It specialized in espionage and counterespionage; it kept watch on Communists, foreigners. Behind the Japanese lines its eyes were flower girls, coolies and ricksha men. In the most lurid Fu Manchu tradition, it reported to Tai Li with invisible ink messages, "eliminated" those on Tai Li's blacklist, and built up the core of an effective guerrilla army...
...before dawn, 5,000 students gathered for a political parade through Chungking. They were dressed in the motley of China's youth-family hand-me-downs, G.I. castoffs, ragged patches. Many had walked as much as 20 miles to the city. A university dean accompanied them-in a ricksha supplied with sandwiches and oranges for wilted marchers...
...petty thieves prey on them. More ostensibly respectable Chinese gyp them openly. When Navymen began swarming ashore at Shanghai, the swank Park Hotel jacked its liquor prices 50%. Nightclub proprietors-Chinese and foreign-vie with each other in trying to take U.S. servicemen for all they can get. Ricksha drivers double and treble their fares. Waiters sneer at anything less than four times the conventional...