Reschedule & Cancellation:

Your ticket can be refunded (minus a 4% processing fee charged by the booking platform) or rescheduled for free if cancelled more than 72 hours before the event. Any cancellation within 72 hours of the event cannot be changed or refunded, but you can transfer the ticket to others.

The event will take place with rain, shine or pollution. But if bad weather really makes the walk impossible we will call you on the day of the tour to let you know it’s been cancelled and reschedule.

Laoshe's Rickshaw Boy is a classic of classics. At this Movie Night, we will show the movie adaption of Rickshaw Boy from 1982 by the director Ling Zifeng. The movie will as always start with a drink and 30 minutes introduction.

This story of utter hopelessness at the bottom of Beijing society is embedded into the very idea of China before the Communist Liberation in 1949. Rickshaw Boy is often viewed as a depiction of old Beijing, but the story is better understood as a portrait of the time when China was in limbo between dynasty and republic. We follow the rickshaw puller Xiangzi and his struggles at the very bottom of society. 

Through Xiangzi, Laoshe masterfully gives a voice to the common man. Rickshaws only existed in the streets of Beijing for a fairly limited time between 1900 and 1949, but they were vehicles of change as they would speed up the pace of life and provide jobs for tenth of thousands of people that were struggling to provide for themselves - not unlike the Kuaidi couriers of today. 

Rickshaw Boy was first published in 1937 and after it was translated to English the book earned Laoshe an international breakthrough that would make him the most famous Chinese writer outside China in the 1940s.