Rickshaw - North Vietnam

Created in Japan in 1868, the runner-pulled rickshaws soon became popular in the whole Far East. The first one was brought to Hanoi in 1883 by Jean Thoman Raoul Bonnal. In 1884, the first fifty rickshaws were produced and used in North Vietnam under the name pousse-pousse (or "xe loi" in Vietnamese). They were not introduced to the South until some fifteen years later.

In the beginning, they were the main means of transportation of the social elite. Later, however, they were used also by common people. Associated with exploitive colonialism, the runner-pulled rickshaws were finally banned in Vietnam in 1945, replaced by the newly introduced cyclos.