Xi'an Rickshaw Driver And His Social Control Research (1936-1947)

As a typical representative of the modern urban underlying group, rickshaw pullers has attracted people's attention, because of their humble status, hardscrabble life and hard work. This paper aims at the analysis of rickshaw pullers and its social control of the Xi'an city of the Northwest gateway during the period of Anti-Japanese, and reveals the modern transformation and historical limitions of the management of the modern urban.With the development of the rickshaw industry, the rickshaw puller appeared. As a new profession, the appearing of the rickshaw pullers was the results of historically inevitable and society requirement. Different from other cities, whose golden days of the development of the rickshaw industry was in the 1920s and 1930s, xi'an was the period of Anti-Japanese, which was the results of the esternal force.The rickshaw pullers during the period of Anti-Japanese in Xi'an city were mostly from rufugees of the enemy occupied area and victims of disaster fleeing, and a part of rural bankruptcy farmers, which has in common in the lack of knowledge and skills, and poverty. At the same time, they also gave rise to a lot of social problems.In order to manage them, Xi'an city had formed a network system unified the system control of the government, organizational control of the sickshaw workers' union, relationship control of the sickshaw bosses and welfare benefits. The control method in combination of system and relief, hard and soft,used in modern urban management to the underlying group, which reflects the modern transformation of the mode of control. Although this kind of control mode regulated the social behavior of the rickshaw industry and practitioners of the rickshaw pullers, maintained the order in the city and protected the interests of the rickshaw pullers in a certain extent. The problems of institutional deficiency, law forcement voilence, conference breakdowns and relief narrow hysteresis because of historical limitations, leaded to the social effect discounted greatly, especially the relief effect is unpleasant, which made the rickshaw pullers group keep the original images still.