Fung Chi Ming. Reluctant Heroes: Rickshaw Pullers in Hong Kong and Canton, 1874-1954. (Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Studies Series.) Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. 2005. Pp. xx, 216. $49.50

In 1927, the Chinese Communist Party, reeling from violent attacks inflicted on it by Chiang Kai-shek and his supporters in the Nationalist Party, staged a series of insurrections throughout central and south China. During a two-day uprising in Canton (Guangzhou) in December armed Communists and their supporters seized government offices and declared a “soviet.” In short order the uprising was brutally put down. Troops sent in to clear the city of insurgents knew that some of the city's rickshaw pullers had supported the insurrection. They stopped at rickshaw stands and examined the necks of pullers for stains left by red scarves worn as makeshift revolutionary insignia. Like Parisians fingered as communards in 1871 because they had hands blackened by what was assumed to be gunpowder, rickshaw pullers with reddened necks were summarily executed.

Fung Chi Ming's study of the...