Camel Xiangzi: Analysis of Major Characters
"Camel Xiangzi," a novel set in early 20th-century Beijing, explores the lives of its major characters against the backdrop of social class struggles and personal tragedies. Central to the narrative is Hsiang-tzu, a determined rickshaw puller from the countryside, whose aspirations for a better life are thwarted by a series of devastating losses, including the deaths of his wife and fiancée. His once indomitable spirit eventually gives way to despair as he sinks into the urban underclass.
The story also features Old Liu, the rickshaw agency owner, whose pride and vanities lead to familial ruin, and his daughter, Hu Niu, who, despite her fiery temperament and ambition, faces her own tragic downfall when she is disinherited and cannot secure medical care during childbirth. Mr. Ts’ao stands out as a rare figure of compassion, treating Hsiang-tzu with dignity, yet his political troubles highlight the dangers of the era. Other characters, like Hsiao Fu Tzu and Yuan Ming, illustrate the complexities of societal pressures, personal choices, and moral failings, culminating in a poignant commentary on the human condition in a time of unrest and hardship.
Camel Xiangzi: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Lao She
First published: Luotuo Xiangzi, 1936–1937 (serial), 1939 (book; English translation, 1945)
Genre: Novel
Locale: Beijing, China
Plot: Realism
Time: 1930's
Hsiang-tzu, a Beijing rickshaw puller born and reared in the countryside. Self-confident, brawny, and hardworking, the twenty-year-old orphan enthusiastically adopts the colorful capital of northern China as his lifelong home. Although he pulls rickshaws with exemplary zeal and skill, his rural naïveté and his low position in the social class structure combine to bring him one misfortune after another. Having lost his wife during a breech childbirth and, subsequently, his fiancée through suicide, and having seen his hard-earned life savings repeatedly slip through his fingers, Hsiang-tzu sinks into the urban underclass of shiftless vagrants when his once iron-hard will to better himself finally breaks. He becomes a mere husk of his former self.
Old Liu, the vain and overbearing owner of the rickshaw agency where Hsiang-tzu rooms and works during much of the novel. A former soldier of fortune who, in his younger days, amassed a large nest egg through mobster racketeering, the seventy-year-old man has since settled down to the more mundane occupation of renting out rickshaws to men who cannot afford to buy their own. His only child, a thirtyish daughter who is increasingly fearful of ending her days as a spinster, seduces Hsiang-tzu and tries to persuade Old Liu to accept the lad from the countryside as his son-in-law. Enraged that she would shame the family name by getting engaged to somebody of such humble origins, in a fit of pique Old Liu self-righteously disowns his daughter, abruptly sells the agency, and finally condemns himself to living out his remaining days in grim loneliness.
Hu Niu, Old Liu's daughter, the real brains behind the day-to-day management of the Liu family rickshaw agency. Wily, aggressive, and fiery in temper as well as passions, she presides as the dominant partner in her marriage with Hsiang-tzu. Although she appreciates the crucial role Hsiang-tzu plays in her sex life, his homespun rural attitudes toward work and the family occasionally infuriate her, so much so that she curses him as a bumpkin. Ironically, Hu Niu joins the ranks of the poverty-stricken multitude whom she had always scorned as being improvident and undeserving of compassion: Disinherited by her father and with her modest savings almost gone, she finally lacks the means to secure proper medical care during childbirth and dies in her humble cottage along with her stillborn child.
Mr. Ts'ao, a kindly professor and armchair socialist who twice hires Hsiang-tzu to be his family's private rickshaw man. The modest and orderly household that this fortyish man heads seems to Hsiang-tzu a veritable oasis: Of the many families that hire Hsiang-tzu for a stint as a private rickshaw man, only the Ts'ao family treats Hsiang-tzu as a dignified human being worthy of respect. Unfortunately, Ts'ao's political affiliations get him in trouble with the right-wing government, and he must flee town hurriedly, thus leaving Hsiang-tzu stranded. By the time Ts'ao returns to Beijing, Hsiang-tzu has encountered so many wrenching reversals in his own life that he no longer has the strength of character to maintain his belief in the value of hard work, even in an enlightened residence like that of the Ts'aos.
Hsiao Fu Tzu, the ill-fated fiancée of Hsiang-tzu during the period following the death of Hu Niu. She is a kindly, submissive, and self-sacrificing young woman of barely twenty who is forced into prostitution by her ne'er-do-well father, Old Ch'iang. Hsiang-tzu is about to buy her way out of the brothel where she has been working under duress; he hopes to marry her and take her back to the Ts'ao residence, where he has been offered the job of private rickshaw puller. Hsiao Fu Tzu's suicide at the wretched brothel functions as the final straw and breaks Hsiang Tzu's will to struggle on as a self-respecting manual laborer.
Yuan Ming, a lazy, opportunistic, and chameleonic student who raises a serious political accusation with the government against his teacher, Mr. Ts'ao. Mr. Ts'ao has friends in high places who protect him from being placed on the most-wanted list of left-wing extremists, but this protection does not extend to Hsiang-tzu, whose life savings are confiscated by an unscrupulous police detective during the evening when the Ts'ao family flees their home to lie low for several months. Ironically, Yuan Ming eventually gets involved in a secret plot with bona fide leftist politicos and is betrayed to the police by none other than the increasingly unconscionable Hsiang-tzu, who receives an under-the-table payoff from the police.