Strand, David.  Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920’s. Berkeley, Los

Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1989.

1. A Twentieth Century Walled City   p.1
   1. Beijing – physical change was part of the old imperial city -changes coexisted in an ambiguous physical relationship between present and past.
   2. Beijing and Beiping:  Taking the Measure of a Capital in Decline

i.      Imperial center ceased to be used after 1911 Revolution, and Beijing became a de-centered political center which eventually only controlled itself.

ii.      Exit of Zhang Zuolin left Beijing to Nationalists, whose capital was in Nanjing, so Beijing (Northern Capital) became Beiping (Northern Peace).  Further de-centering politics, the city remained important.

iii.      Local residents had a difficult time – they thought of Beijing as the capital, and, as Strand says, were used to thinking of national politics as local business.  The Nationalists (Chiang Kai-shek) were adamant about the capital in Nanjing.

iv.      Still, the possibility of an eventual national gov’t made Beijing the site of officials, non-functional ministries, etc., all awaiting the chance to be part of the next government.

v.      The decline of Manchus in Beijing, and their willingness to take low-paying jobs to pay the rent, etc, led to a poor reputation, which happened to parallel the decline of the Nationalist regime, thus giving Beijing an air of a derelict capital unable to recover.

1. 1. Local Politics in a Centerless Polity

i.      Under a façade of romantic antiquity, decay, and modern decline, Beijing was vital and complex – excellent police force, energetic journalistic world, Beidai had the best minds in China despite poor pay, busy market, guilds, labor unions, etc…

ii.      Beijing as empty center is in a way emblematic of the empty center of China itself, with warlordism, false democracies, bribery to earn elected office, etc. . .  the change from central authority to the chaotic idea of “will of the people” caused a cultural crisis.

iii.      The very organizational level of the bureaucracies that did work heightened this cultural crisis.  In a way, “hollow” Beijing began to regulate itself.

iv.      “City residents experienced politics as a path that began within their immediate world of shop, school, or neighborhood, and spiraled up through guilds, unions, associations, federations, and chambers.  Beyond organizations operating at the citywide level lay the uncertainties, dangers, and opportunities of regional, national, and international politics” p. 19 – Habermas’ “Public Sphere”

1. The Rickshaw:  Machine for a Mixed Up Age  p.20
   1. Beijing was awash with rickshaw pullers – the case of the story of ‘Camel’ Xiangzi by Lao She illustrates the pervasiveness of rickshaw pullers, and their image as being present in the making of history in Republican Beijing.
   2. The Rickshaw as a Modern Invention

i.      Invented in Japan in 1860’s, technical improvements quickly made the Rickshaw light & useful, and pervasive in East Asia and India.  In 1940’s pedals and front wheel added to make the pedicab.

ii.      Initially, disliked because they were seen as reducing humans to the level of animals – which were the only other transportation in Beijing after 1886.

iii.      Initially unpopular, before and after the Boxer Rebellion, their numbers grew until in the 1920’s there were 60,000 rickshaw pullers in Beijing.

iv.      Part of the speed up of transportation in the city, like telegraphs, etc.

1. 1. Passengers

i.      For most Beijing residents, walking was the way to move, esp. those who were laborers

ii.      This, combined with the time- and comfort-saving nature of the rickshaw made it a status symbol for its riders.

1. 1. Pullers

i.      Pullers came mostly from the lower parts of the working class.  The job offered a place for immigrants and upwardly mobile workers, and a “liferaft” for those out of work or on their way down. (p.33)\

ii.      Rickshaw pullers caused difficulties for upper class and intellectuals partly because the work was demeaning, and partly because it was a reminder of the transitory nature of status and status distinctions. (p. 33)

iii.      Rickshaw pullers’ image as beasts of burden highlighted the social dysfunction and transition period of Republican Beijing, making moral dilemmas and the challenges of modernization clear. (p. 35)

iv.      Strand’s strategy is to place Rickshaw men at the center of his look at Beijing, and to use this as an entry point for his research.

1. Rickshaw Men:  Careers of the Laboring Poor  p. 38
   1. Earning a living on the street (Lao She’s fictional character and a real puller named Yao Yingrui who tried to commit suicide) p. 43.
   2. Courtyard Slums – the residences of pullers, lower class residences in courtyard tenements – rooms meant to be part of a larger house, where whole families lived on limited income. (p.43) But these did not develop into working class neighborhoods, as they were scattered about the city, and often status between courtyards was intense, preventing larger politico-social groupings.
   3. Owners and Renters

i.      A patron-client relationship developed among rickshaw garages and pullers.  This was a porous division, in which pullers were responsible to the garages, but also their clients.  Garages also did not have high social status.  Market forces in the 1920’s worked so that garages charged different rents, and pullers often shopped around, though some preferred the security of a regular relationship.

1. 1. Street-level Perspectives on Power and Status

i.      Difference in class between puller and passenger

1.      led to cheating on both sides, and rickshaw man had to enforce fare payment with fists if necessary

2.      differences in dress

3.      Fares negotiated in public, along with other street-sellers, and fares might change after the ride was over.

4.      Deceit and bad faith on both sides.  Rickshaw men were seen as capable of cheating, etc., but were often cheated themselves. (p. 53)

5.      police and rickshaw pullers had a paralel development, and a relationship that was alternately adversarial and cooperative. 54.

6.      rickshaw men – in tenements, lower class, etc, oftsn found selves without power.

ii.      Men Without Power (p.56)

1.      Habermas style, rickshaw men formed assistance groups, helped each other, learned law, and protected themselves – very much public sphere.

2.      Collective Action:  Premonitions And Precedents

3.      willingness to fight ad occasional group solidarity meant they could “overcome an [equally] well documented reputation for powerlessness and vulnerability.

4.      Beijing – slow to act and organize.

5.      low rents dampened conflicts between owners and pullers – (p.61)

1. Policemen as Mediators and Street-Level Bureaucrats  p. 65
   1. For Rickshaw men, the government was represented most clearly by the police, with whom they dealt on a regular basis.
   2. The police were organized according to the regular organizational units of Beijing – Banner and non-banner, inner and prefecture, etc…
   3. Policing in Beijing changed after the Boxer Rebellion – Kawashima,  Japanese expert on policing, set up a police academy in the Japanese-controlled section of Beijing, which was taken over by his Chinese patron, Prince Su, after Japan left Beijing, and the Japanese faculty maintained.  The Beijing police became a single unit responsible for the city using modern police methods, and inspired police reform around China.
   4. The police were so well organized that their effectiveness and size grew throughout the early twentieth century until Beijing’s reputation was as “one of the best-policed cities in the world” (p.71) Despite protests from magistrates who felt their authority usurped, etc, and the police survived the 1911 revolution, and other events prior to WWII that shook China.
   5. Recruitment and Deployment (p. 73)

i.      By 1911, 12 policemen for every 1,000 residents.

ii.      Like Meiji Japan, most of Beijing’s early policement were ex-bannermen (Manchus).

iii.      Large numbers on the streets, stationed at well-placed positions.

1. 1. Police rhetoric and practice (p.73)

i.      This closeness to population was a “redrawing of the boundary line between state and society.  Police joining the Public Sphere in formerly private/hidden Beijing.

ii.      Rather than jail miscreants, police were supposed to anticipated problems and nip them in the bud – their goal was to prevent crime by acting as mediators and representatives of order. (p.75-77)

1. 1. Paternalism, Patriarchy, and the Boundaries of Policed Society (p. 83)

i.      “The police patrolled the public realm between official and private affairs” (p. 87)

1. 1. Beijing Police Rhetoric and Ideology in Comparative Perspective (p.89)

i.      Beijing police as both modern, and informed by a Chinese Confucian morality that accepted deviance as an inevitable undercurrent of society,  and believed that consensus was possible even in chaotic times. “Enforce the law except when it conflicts with or is overridden by customary practice” (p.91)

1. 1. Repression and Mediation (p. 92)

i.      Political activists and police control of their activities (p.93)

ii.      Police “field of control” centered in Beijing’s streets and public places (pg.94)

1. 1. Paying the Price of Bureacratic Expansion (p. 95)

i.      Expansion of Yamen runners into formal police at level of Bureaucrats with salaries was a “bold and expensive stroke” that made for a professional force, but also caused problems paying them, which were constantly shifted as the Republic shifted. (p. 95-97)

1. Jeweler, Banker, and Restaurateur:  Power Struggles in the Beijing Chamber of Commerce  p. 98
   1. In the absence of elected city government, private organizations came to represent people and take part in discussions of policy.  The Chamber of commerce and other non-official organizations were an avatar for politics “in the same way that the Beijing police came to be an avatar for government.” (p. 99)
   2. The Origins of the Beijing Chamber (p. 99)

i.      1907 Beijing Chamber organized amid a rash of development of chambers in imitation of Shanghai chamber.  The Qing gov’t hoped to help business elites identify their interests with those of the Imperial government and improve economy.

ii.      Within a year of founding, the construction of an official headquarters was seen as a move toward legitimate PUBLIC support and position. (as opposed to private and official)(p.101)

iii.      All over, chambers of commerce played semi-official roles during and after the 1911 revolution.  Still, most fatuan had an ambiguous relationship with power – they became more independent, but not officially powerful.

1. 1. The Rise and Fall of An Disheng (p. 102)

i.      Before 1920’s, Chamber had passive dependent relationship with authority.(p.102)

ii.      An Disheng strengthened the Chamber by making merchants active in

1.      protesting Republic (Yuan Shikai) policies that caused money market and banking chaos – lobbying for fiscal responsibility, which was in their interests.

2.      Participating in the May 4^th movement and nationalism to promote international trade

iii.      One month after his second term, in 1920, he was arrested for misappropriation of funds – he had angered power people in the Anfu-clique.  Bankers were angry because his protest of fiscal policies had caused them problems (they profited from the fiscal chaos of the Republican government) and the May 4^th movement villainized members of the Anfu-clique.

1. 1. A Banker’s Chamber (p.113)

i.      Public rivalry between An Disheng and Zhuo Zuomin

1. 1. Sun Xueshi and the Realm of Social Intercourse (p. 116)

i.      Sun was a master of social discourse and informal networks – this was the source of his power in the Brothel District, and in the chamber. (p. 117)

1. 1. One Year of Unopposed Leadership (p. 119)
2. Profits and People’s Livelihood:  The Politics of Streetcar Development  p. 121
   1. Local Reaction to Technological Change (p. 121)

i.      The streetcar as new linear technology caused uproar, and was incongruous in a preindustrial city.  This caused debate and discussion. (p. 121)

ii.      The key controversy was not modern vs. tradition, or safety, or such, but the possibility of depriving rickshaw pullers of their jobs. (p. 122)

1. 1. The Founding of the Beijing Streetcar Company (p. 123)

i.      Owned by French BIC, and Chinese investors, then by the French themselves, the Streetcar company was controversial from the ownership/finace perspective (France and already wealthy Chinese owned the shares) and from a business standpoint, and from the standpoint of rickshaw pullers who feared losing their business. (127)

1. 1. The Politics of People’s Livelihood (p. 127)

i.      Antagonism felt in the Chamber of Commerce toward some of the businessmen who owned shares encouraged the Chamber to voice its sympathy for the Rickshaw pullers in 1922. (p. 128-129)

1. 1. Streetcar Beijing (134)

i.      The competition between street car and rickshaw was an economic “public sphere” in which the ideas of economic modernization, class and economics, and market advantages were negotiated. (p. 138-9)

1. Bosses, Guilds, and Work Gangs:  Labor Politics and the Sprouts of Unionism  p. 142
   1. Proletarian Politics in a Preindustrial City (p. 142)

i.      Deng Zhongxia and other Beidai students tried to organize rickshaw pullers and other workers in Beijing with little luck

1.      Beijing society was more vertically divided than horizontally.

2.      Efficient police force and self-government made inroads into that society difficult.

3.      Beidai students were of a different class than the workers. (146-7)

1. 1. Guilds and Worker Interests (p. 147)
   2. Feuds, Fights, and Factions (p.150)

i.      Patron-client relationships in guilds defied the easy class categories.  Subordination in a hierarchy was normal, but workers were also protected by the hierarchy. (150)

ii.      Opinion among workers that city-wide organization along traditional lines was worthwhile (151-2)

iii.      Internal fighting within guilds and external participation in politics (154)

1.      Guild creation represented “state-building in miniature” (p. 154) – contentious, etc.  [puclic sphere]

1. 1. The Sprouts of Unionism (p. 163)
2. Citizens in a New Public Sphere:  Widening Circles of Political Participation  p.  167
   1. Assemblies of Citizens (p. 172)

i.      No tradition of political debate among citizens of towns, but widespread preindustrial participation in associations, guilds, organizations, theaters, etc., predisposed Beijing citizens to public debate, and such associations took their issues into the public in competition with each other. (174-175)

ii.      May 4^th Solidified the above, and made the commitment of students seem heroic. (175)

iii.      The fact that citizens could not easily access high power due to bribery, corruption, and exclusivism, meant that local politics became their domain, and that reinforced association style public discourse.

iv.      Improvised citizens assemblies to discuss Shandong concessions throughout the country.

1. 1. Self-Government (p. 178)

i.      Local self-government was encouraged, and in various meanings, self-government groups. (179)

ii.      Like associations, these groups tended to represent a particular interest or strata (180)

1. 1. The May Thirtieth Movement (p. 182)

i.      May 30, 1925 nationwide protests against police and foreign violence against protesting Chinese.

ii.      The working out of the national Public Sphere conversation – “mass nationalism” (183)

1. 1. Professional Politicians and Political Violence (p. 191)

i.      Nationalist and communist political operatives aimed to become guides, rather than just examples as students were. (191)

ii.      Parties were split, but May Thirtieth Movement gave them impetus (193)

iii.      Professional politicians’ use, then abuse of demonstrations and violence led to escalation and the destruction of the public sphere. (195)

1. City People Under Seige:  The Impact of Warlordism  p.198
   1. City Under Seige (p. 199)

i.      1925-26 warlord infighting – Zhang Zuolin and Feng Yuxian led to more war-consciousness than ever, as escalating violence in the city also led to a siege mentality, rising prices,. (204)

ii.      Most warlord wars fought along rail lines vital to city supplies, furthering sense of siege.

iii.      Formation and support of  Metropolitan Peace Preservation Association (PPA) to alleviate difficulties and high prices, became a new public sphere for self-help in Beijing and negotiations with warlords. PPA became a de-facto government and defense association for Beijing. (203-216)

iv.      PPA establishes control of police (211)

1. 1. Managing Protection Costs (p. 216)
2. Union and Faction:  Organized Labor in the Wake of the Northern Expedition  p. 222
   1. Cadres (p. 224)
   2. Unionism (p. 227)
   3. Rebellion in the Ranks (p. 231)
   4. Factionalism (p. 238)
3. Machine-Breakers:  The Streetcar Riot of October 22, 1929  p. 241
   1. Unions and Crowds (p. 242)
   2. Political Consciousness and Class Consciousness (p. 251)
   3. Prelude to Riot (p.261)
   4. Riot (p. 267)
   5. Conclusion (p. 279)
4. Order and Movement in City Politics  p. 284
   1. Displaced Development (284)
   2. Politics on the Defensive (288)
   3. Conflict and Cohesion as a Continuous Process (290)