Rickshaw Beijing: city people and politics in the 1920s 9780520063112, 9780520913875, 9780520082861

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RICKSHAW BEIJING

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. Temple OUTER giggon CITY of Heaven

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C "Eight Lanes” District J Central Park D Chamber of Commerce K Beijing University E tron Mountain Temple tL iron Lion Lane

Map 1. Beijing.

RICKSHAW BEIJING City People and Politics in the 1920s DAVID STRAND

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY Los ANGELES LONDON

This book 1s a print-on-demand volume. It is manufactured using toner in place of ink. Type and Images may be less sharp than the same material seen in traditionally printed University of California editions. University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California : University of California Press, Ltd. London, England

© 1989 by The Regents of the University of California

First Paperback Printing 1993 , LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Strand, David Rickshaw Beijing: city people and politics in the 1920s / David Strand.

p. cm. Bibliography: p.

Includes index. ISBN 0-520-08286-9 1. Peking (China)—Politics and government. 2. Peking (China)—Social life and customs. I. Title. DS795.3.S82 1989

951'.156041—dc19 88-15571 CIP Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48 ( R 1997 ) ( Permanence of paper )

For Ceceile

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Contents

Preface xi Acknowledgments XVii

List of Illustrations ix A Note on Romanization and Currency XIX

1. A Twentieth-Century Walled City I

2. The Rickshaw: Machine for a Mixed-up Age 20 3. Rickshaw Men: Careers of the Laboring Poor 38 4. Policemen as Mediators and Street-Level Bureaucrats 65 5. Jeweler, Banker, and Restaurateur: |

Power Struggles in the Beijing Chamber of Commerce 98 6. Profits and People’s Livelihood:

The Politics of Streetcar Development 121

7. Bosses, Guilds, and Work Gangs:

Labor Politics and the Sprouts of Unionism 142 8. Citizens in a New Public Sphere:

Widening Circles of Political Participation 167 9. City People Under Siege:

The Impact of Warlordism 198 10. Union and Faction: Organized Labor in the Wake of the Northern Expedition 222 11. Machine-Breakers:

Notes 2.94 Bibliography 343 Index 357

The Streetcar Riot of October 22, 1929 241 12. Order and Movement in City Politics 284

vil

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Illustrations

1. City wall 2 2. A modern, paved avenue 3 3. An alleyway (butong) 4

4. An old-style sled ride 6 5. Rickshaw pullers and passengers 35

6. A fully loaded rickshaw 39 7. Astreet kitchen 44

8. A rickshaw stand 59 g. Group portrait of policemen 74

10. A policeman directing traffic 75 11. The Outer City from Qian Gate 76 12. An Disheng and Zhou Zuomin 103

13. Grocery store 106 14. Peanut and candy vendor 107

15. Streetcar 140 16. Laborer 144 17. Striking textile workers I§1

18. Water carrier 153 19. Central Park 169 20. Tianan Gate and the Legation Quarter 174

21. A student protester 176 22. May Thirtieth protest march 184

23. Workers demonstrate 190 24. Warlords arrive by train 201

25. City residents study war news 202

1X |

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Preface

When | arrived in Beijing in September 1982 for a year of research,

the city was hosting the Twelfth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). On a first visit to the Palace Museum, I stood

on the terrace of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, at the center of the old Forbidden City, looking south, as I imagined emperors had done on great ceremonial occasions. Against the red and gold line of walls and roofs I could glimpse the red-flagged outline of massive public buildings rising like a farther range of hills: to the right the Great Hall of the People, where the CCP was in session, and to

the left the Museums of the Chinese Revolution and of Chinese History. Invisible from my vantage point, in the space framed by the remains of empire and the heavy architectural signature of state socialism, lay Tiananmen Square, a paved expanse broken by the obelisk dedicated to the People’s Heroes and by the Mausoleum of

Mao Zedong. (Tianan men, or Tianan Gate, is the outer, southernmost entrance to the Imperial City and the Forbidden City within; the square runs south from the gate.) Imperial Beijing (ending in 1911 with the abolition of the Qing dynasty) and socialist Beijing (beginning in 1949 with the founding of the People’s Republic) are clearly visible in the sprawl of Ming- and Qing-vintage palaces north of Tianan Gate and the Sta-

linist behemoths parked to the south. In this gathering of monuments Republican Beijing, the transitional city that is the subject

of this book, is harder to detect. On one side of the Monument to | the People’s Heroes, a white marble frieze depicts the eruption of student protests outside Tianan Gate in the May Fourth Movement xi

xii Preface in 1919. The students’ nationalistic indignation, represented by heroic poses frozen in stone, was directed at their government’s apparent willingness to accept treaty provisions, ratified at Versailles, that gave German concessions in nearby Shandong prov- | ince to the Japanese. Inside the Museum of the Revolution photographs of the 1919 demonstrations are on display, along with the gallows on which CCP founder Li Dazhao was executed in Beijing

in 1927. Republican Beijing is inscribed on contemporary monuments as

a footnote to a revolutionary past and is passed over briefly in museum exhibits. Away from the city center it is possible to find the physical remains of the Republic in period buildings, like the former cabinet offices on Iron Lion Lane. Iron Lion Lane itself was

the site of the March 18 Incident in 1926 in which unarmed protesters were machine-gunned and bayoneted by the bodyguards of

warlord politician Duan Qirui. There is no plaque of remembrance. But in the northwestern suburbs of the city, not far from the new campus of Beijing University and on the grounds of the Old Summer Palace, stands a monument to those killed at Iron Lion Lane. The small obelisk, erected in 1929 and one of the few Republican-era monuments to be found in Beijing, suffers from neglect except on the anniversary of the incident, when school

children and their teachers bring wreaths to commemorate the

dead. |

Understanding Republican Beijing requires attention to the monumental projects of empire and socialism which bracket the

period. But an eye for life-size detail is required if one is to reconstruct the days when Chinese subjects became citizens, modern ideologies such as nationalism and communism first seized the imaginations of citizens, and politicians and officials first wrestled with vexing problems of popular sovereignty and modern government. The reader will find the larger-than-life figures ordinarily associated with the Republican period, like Sun Yat-sen, Chiang

Kai-shek, and Mao, either missing from these pages or viewed

from the perspective of the crowds who revered, reviled, or ignored them. I have concentrated instead on the collective and individual biographies of ordinary and obscure individuals who lived in the shadow of great architecture and great men. I hope that this approach will allow the inner, natural light of city life and

Preface xiii lives to dispel some of the shadows that obscure the true dimensions of the Republic as a popular and local as well as an elite and national creation. Convenient to this style of interpretation, Beijing in the 1920s projected a double image of the monumental and the miniature: great avenues and narrow alleyways, grand palaces and modest courtyard residences, the central spectacles of national politics and

the eccentric ceremonies of guild and neighborhood. I have selected as an organizing conceit the miniature rather than the monumental—hence “Rickshaw Beijing”—both because the small, single-passenger vehicle was a commonplace of Beijing life in the 1920s and because its mixing of old and new, manual and mecha-

nical, and Chinese and foreign elements is suggestive of China’s and Beijing’s predicament in the Republican period. In both a temporal and a spatial sense, Republican-era Chinese were caught between worlds: between China’s imperial past and its national

future and between Chinese culture and that of the rest of the planet. Republican Beijing provides a backdrop to several fine studies of elite and national-level politics.1 However, the meaning of the urban scenes glimpsed in these accounts is less well defined. Sharply

etched portraits of presidents, ministers, warlords, and intellectuals hang against a background recognizable in silhouette as the old walled capital. The city itself appears as so much masonry to be marched through and around, an ancient prop employed to deepen through contrast the colors of modern politics or to blend in with the atavism of those intent on reestablishing the monarchy. Illumination of the city’s physical and human dimensions forces

a shift in perspective. In the 1920s itinerant political contenders with armies and parties in tow arrived and departed in a blur of activity. National politics, not local society, lacked clarity and coherence. City residents reacted to this disorderly procession with interest and with understandable concern for their livelihoods and safety. By 1923 the Republican regime headquartered in Beijing

had been debased through corruption.2 The provinces were beyond the capital’s administrative reach or in open rebellion. In the political wreckage of the Republic, warlords and imperialists clutched bits and pieces of authority: a functioning ministry or government-owned railroad here, a foreign customs service there.

xiv Preface Meanwhile, local residents expressed in mass rallies their continued commitment to the idea of a sovereign republic, and local elites struggled to preserve social order. These elements formed parts of the unfinished puzzle of a modern Chinese political order.

While the expectation that someone would soon be able to seize the political center and arrange the pieces in an orderly manner was strong in many Chinese, the parts could not wait for the reconstitution of the whole. As is described in the chapter-length portraits of “city people” (shimin) included in this study, policemen, merchants, capitalists, workers, civic leaders, and political cadres fitted themselves and their organizations into the corner of the puzzle occupied by local politics. In the process, piecemeal political and social development continued, despite the fact that the identity of the final victor and the nature of the completed polity remained a mystery.

The following chapters weave portraits of city people into a chronological treatment of the rise of political consciousness and participation in the ten years following the May Fourth Movement. Chapter 1 outlines the central theme of the study, which is the city’s eclectic response to social and political change. New organizations, such as the police, political parties, chambers of commerce, and labor unions, appeared and evolved, while old institutions, such as guilds, volunteer fire-fighting and militia corps,

charities, labor gangs, and elite mediation, survived and prospered. In this rich mélange of old and new practices, the repertoire

of political strategies and tactics available to city people rapidly expanded. Chapters 2 and 3 offer the rickshaw as an emblem for a disordered age and as a concrete example of how Beijing functioned as a society divided by class and uneven rates of development and drawn together in a common urban culture. Despite the peculiarities of their trade, rickshaw pullers can be seen as repre-

sentative of the urban laboring poor, the city’s not-so-silent majority. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the police and the chamber of commerce, arguably the two most important order-keeping bodies in the city. Both the police and the chamber experienced considerable

inner turmoil as they sought to reconcile competing and conflicting values and interests related to the issue of what kind of “order” could and should be maintained. Chapter 6 examines the

Preface XV effects of technological change on city life. A new streetcar system, promising progress and profits, sparked political opposition organized around the idea of “‘people’s livelihood” (minsheng).

Despite the existence of spectacular anomalies, like the streetcar, most of Beijing’s economy was preindustrial in nature and

therefore most workers had little direct contact with modern

machines or relations of production. The strikes, fights, and feuds discussed in chapter 7 suggest the ways in which conflict and coop-

eration in the tradition-bound workplace by turn inhibited and encouraged the emergence of modern unionism. Poverty, a new impulse to police city life, enhanced group and class consciousness, and the transformative promise and threat of

capitalism gave city residents reasons to engage in politics. The emergence of a new public sphere associated with the accelerating power of mass nationalism provided the means. Chapter 8 traces the development of the May Fourth style of mass politics

from student beginnings to a far broader, distinctively urban phenomenon. If mass nationalism periodically opened the city up to politics, warlordism just as frequently threatened to shut down and cut off the normal functions of city life. In chapter 9 the manifold effects _of warfare on urban society and politics are outlined. These states of siege are examined for the evidence they provide of citywide leadership in response to military crises. Toward the end of the decade another round of warfare brought

the possibility of a reorganized city politics. The Nationalist party, deeply divided between right and left wings, began an intense program of mass mobilization in 1928 led by left-wing party cadres in uneasy alliance with a right-turning political center

in Nanjing and rebellious warlords in north China. Chapter 10 focuses on how these external pressures, combined with internal,

factional disputes, propelled and then derailed the city’s labor union movement. Finally, a decade that began with the idealistic, elite-bound fervor of the May Fourth Movement is brought to a close with a wild riot in which rickshaw men nearly destroy the streetcar system. In the streetcar riot of 1929 all the elements highlighted in earlier chapters—rickshaws, the city poor, policemen,

merchant politicians, streetcars, public opinion, soldiers, proletarians, and political cadres—come together in the company of

xvi Preface additional actors, including Buddhist monks, to suggest the complexity and vitality of modern urban politics in Republican China. The Luddite tone of the climactic scene provides an opportunity to reflect on both the power and the vulnerability of China’s distinctive contribution to urban modernity.?

Acknowledgments

Michel Oksenberg suggested Republican-era Beijing as a topic, and I remain grateful for that idea and his subsequent advice and support. My greatest debt is to Andrew Nathan, who provided

invaluable aid, criticism, and counsel from the dissertation’s beginning to the manuscript’s end. Chen Yung-fa, Joshua Fogel, Susan Mann, William Rowe, and Richard Weiner provided muchneeded help and insight at critical moments and over a period of years.

Comment and reaction to drafts and chapters from Guy Alitto,

Richard Bush, Ming K. Chan, Helen Hettinger, Philip Kuhn, Laurel Kendall, William Muir, Evelyn Rawski, Tang Tsou, Frederic Wakeman, Harry Weiss, Roxane Witke, Bin Wong, and

several anonymous readers were of critical importance in the researching, writing, and editing of this study. Joseph Esherick’s comments and advice on revision of the manuscript were especially valuable. Professor Chen Qinghua of Beijing University offered generous assistance during my sojourn in Beijing. Sheila Levine of the University of California Press skillfully guided me through the editorial process. Gladys Castor expertly copyedited the manuscript. I also wish to thank Betsey Scheiner for her editorial help in the final stages of the book’s production. I am grateful to Modern China for permission to quote from my ‘““Feuds, Fights, and Factions: Group Politics in 1920s Beijing” (vol. 11, no. 4 [October 1985], pp. 411-435). A Fulbright-Hayes Dissertation Research Fellowship and sup-

port from the East Asian Institute of Columbia University made xvit

xviii Acknowledgments the early stages of research possible. I am also grateful for the financial assistance and other support provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Modern China Project at the University of Chicago, the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People’s Republic of China, and Dickinson College.

this project. Ceceile Strand, to whom this book is dedicated, gave sound editorial advice on numerous occasions and contributed immeasurably to the pleasure of the work and travel that went into

A Note on Romanization and Currency

With the exception of two names (Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yatsen), I have used pinyin romanization. Accordingly, and reflecting current usage with regard to Chinese place names, I have titled this book “Rickshaw Beijing” instead of “Rickshaw Peking.” In June 1928 the city’s name was changed to “‘Beiping”’ by the National-

ists. For events after that date (and up until 1949 when the city was given its old name back by the Communists), I have used ““Beiping.”’

Unless stated otherwise, all monetary units in the book are Chinese. In 1926 the Chinese silver dollar (yuan) was worth 345 coppers (China had a bimetal currency system determined by market prices), .72 taels (the old Chinese silver unit), and .49 American gold dollars. (Source: John S. Burgess, The Guilds of Peking [New York: Columbia University Press, 1928], pp. 63—64.)

xix

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One

A Twentieth-Century Walled City

Wobbling Pivot and Armature of State Power Broad avenues, parks, and public squares open up the contemporary urban world to the mass assemblies essential to modern commerce, culture, and politics. By contrast, early-twentieth-century Beijing, as a physical entity, remained a city stubbornly defined by walls, walled enclosures, and gates.’ The fifteenth-century Ming plan of the capital decreed boxes within boxes and cities within cities. The habits of vernacular architecture extended this principle into neighborhoods and residences.2 Towering walls of tamped earth with brick facing formed the square Inner City (neicheng) and, adjacent to the south, the rectangular Outer City (waicheng; fig. 1). (The Inner City was conventionally divided into East, West, and North “Cities” or districts. See map.) The Inner City enclosed the walls of the Imperial City, which, in turn, framed the yellow-

roofed, red-walled Forbidden City and the emperor’s throne room. In his memoir of Republican Beijing, newspaper man Li Chengyi, quoting a line spoken by an emperor in a Beijing opera, remembered a cityscape composed of circles within circles: “In the midst of a great circle lies a small circle. Within the small circle stands a yellow one.”? Within the compass of these great walls and a grid-work of imperial thoroughfares lay a mosaic of walled enclosures containing the mansions of the powerful, the smaller court-

yard residences of the monied, propertied, and degree-holding classes, and the courtyard slums of the laboring poor. I

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