'The Rickshaw Boys' - Full programme on pre-communist China
Description
A unique glimpse of life in China before the Communist revolution. Former rickshaw boys, now old men living in a much-changed Peking, recount vivid tales of the appalling hardships of their youth, with families sleeping on bricks and children sold into prostitution. In 1949, rickshaw pulling was banned by Mao Tse Tung as being too demeaning, but in the year leading to that decision, award-winning Hollywood cameraman James Wong Howe had shot research footage in his native China with the intent to make a film based on the book Camel Xiangzi by Lao She. When he died in 1976 without completing the project, director Peter Yung combined that footage with his own to make this fascinating documentary.