Word: ricksha
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Died. Tu Yueh-sen, 64, onetime fruit vendor who became the underworld boss of Shanghai, controlled the city's waterfront trade unions, ricksha boys and the Red Gate and Blue Societies (protection racket); after long illness; in Hong Kong. In 1927, when Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek split with the Communists, Tu broke up the powerful Communist-bossed General Labor Union, managed to keep Shanghai from falling to the Reds. In return, Chiang appointed him head of the Anti-Opium League, a position which gave him legal control of the country's thriving drug trade, in which he already...
...pedals to push with, but they still left him boorishly up front. Visionary Tanaka decided to give his country a more cultured conveyance. He took his savings and ordered a tricycle pedicab built, with the driver's seat in the rear. Then he hired himself out as a ricksha...
Marauding Rats. The first week after Chinese New Year Canton steamed under a tropical sun. Then a biting, near freezing rain hit the city. Ricksha boys and sampan coolies sought refuge in dry alleyways where they spent hours culling their tattered palm-frond raincoats for lice. At night they slept on the sidewalks wrapped in dirty burlap bags awaking only to chase away marauding rats which feast in the swill-strewn streets after the city's human population has retired...
...hope that the Reds would soften their high-flying terms by traditional Chinese bargaining methods was expressed by a postman: "It's just like arguing with a ricksha coolie. First he asks for the highest price and then settles for a lower figure." But it was unlikely that the victory-flushed Communists would observe tradition. What was there to dike the flood of Communism if Chiang and the Reds failed to agree on a price...
...What Ricksha Boys Know. So Ch'ih Huang, the carpenter, became Ch'ih Pai-shih, the artist, to paint for the rest of his days-lotus blossoms, palm leaves, banana trees, but mostly crickets, chicks, shrimps and crabs. "Only the rich have known landscapes," says he. "But every ricksha boy knows a shrimp or a crab...