Director: Ling Zifeng
Script.: Ling Zifeng adapted from a novel by Lao She
Cinema.: Wu Shengshan, Liang Ziyong
Set: Yu Yirou
Music: Qu Xixian
Cast: Zahng Fengyi, Yin Xin, Yan Bide, Siqin Gaowa, Li Xiang
Production : Beijing Film Studio
Year: 1982
35 mm, Color, 123 min, Mandarin Chinese with French Subtitles
Unreleased
With support of Chinese Embassy of Paris
Xiangzi is a country athletic young man who left his place hoping to get a better life. He is highly motivated by his work of rickshaw puller and hopes he will one day own his rickshaw by working hard. He meets Tigress who forces him to marry her. But she dies while giving birth soon after their wedding. He falls in love with Little Fou-Tse. Her father sells her to a brothel where she dies. Little Fou-Tse’s death kills Xiangzi’s soul... The young man faces one disillusion after another, and every time fate turns against him he sinks even deeper. He is mercilessly crushed by a society deprived of pity and humanity.
Adapted from Lao She’s novel Rickshaw Boy depicts Chinese society in the twenties and thirties, a society cankered by people trying to become rich at all costs.
The film was awarded the prize of best film by the Ministry of Culture in 1982 and was also awarded at third Golden Rooster film festival where it got the prizes of best film, best actress and best props.
