Riksha [Rickshaw].

One of 20 000 copies published.
First and only edition of these illustrations.

Working as a journalist, Galina Serebryakova (1905-1980), revolutionary, journalist and writer, was sent on assignments in China, Geneva and Paris in 1927-1928. She was married to a politician Leonid Serebryakov, then to a minister of finance and ambassador of USSR to the the United Kingdom Grigori Sokolnikov. He was executed during the Great Purge. Galina was arrested in 1937 and spent over twenty years in the Gulag prisons. All her books were banned in Russia and held on library special storage section till 1956.

Unusual black&white illustrations by A. Korotkin who made several other editions about China for young readers. The drawings've put on the pages without margins. This story devoted to poor Chinese guy Li Fuang who became rickshaw in Beijing. His friend told him about Lenin and the Communists before his death. Li Fuang was forcibly recruited into the Army but was able to escape. During the Shanghai massacre he joined the rebel group and was shot. This real incident took place on 12 April 1927 in Shanghai and was the violent suppression of Communist Party of China organizations by the military forces of Chiang Kai-shek and conservative factions in the Kuomintang. The KMT arrested and executed hundreds of members of the CPC. Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang was supported by the USSR and was in a united front with the Chinese Communist Party up until the point of the massacre. Many historians consider this the starting point of the Chinese Civil War.

OCLC locates one copy of this edition only: in the McGill University Library (Canada).