Sitting high in a Chun King rickshaw

I went searching for the rickshaw as soon as I got to the auction house. I had seen a photo on the website and my auction buddy Janet had also mentioned it to me.

I suppose that it struck us both as strange that a rickshaw would be up for auction. They are not a common mode of transportation in this country. In my mind’s eye, I could see Chinese men in tented hats and black full garb pulling them in their own country, likely an image from some old movie.

But there it was up high atop a metal rail – an austere network of orange, yellow and black thin metal rods, narrow wheels and a bright yellow square cloth overhang with fringes to shade its occupants. It seemed to be in good condition, and looked amazingly lightweight.

As I approached it, I saw the name imprinted in orange and black lettering on two slats at the back: Rickshaw Chun King.

I knew the name Chun King for its prepackaged Chinese-themed food – which I never had the pleasure or displeasure of eating. If you’re going to each Chinese, do it in a real restaurant.

I wondered about its origin, so I went Googling and found only one other rickshaw that looked exactly like it. That one was selling for $595 on a retail site, which guessed that it was made in the 1940s or 1950s.

I found out plenty, though, about Chun King, including something that was new to me. The founder of the company was not a Chinese businessman but an Italian American named Jeno Paulucci.

Paulucci founded Chun King in the late 1940s, selling egg rolls, chop suey and chow men, according to his obituary in the Washington Post when he died last year at age 93. He got the idea for packaging the products through his own keen observation and sustained it through his acute marketing skills.

He saw that grocery stores were not selling prepackaged the food that Chinese restaurants were dishing out. So, he developed his own chop suey recipe, got a $2,500 loan from a friend and started his Chun King company.

He hired a radio personality named Stan Freberg to be the host of the “Chun King Chow Mein Hour” in the 1960s, and sales took off. Freberg, a comedian, became the funny face of the company. Paulucci deluged TV with his Chun King ads – which were apparently a hit – and even pulled Freberg down a major Los Angeles street in a rickshaw over a bet about whether a commercial would work.

A 1963 Life magazine ad showed his egg rolls and chop suey on a page with coupons, urging shoppers to “hop into your rickshaw” and head to the grocery store. The ad even featured a Chinese man promoting the products. It was great marketing.

“What could be more American than a business built on a good Italian recipe for chop suey?” the Washington Post quoted President Gerald Ford speaking at a dinner in 1976 for an Italian American association cofounded by Paulucci.

Paulucci sold the company to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in 1966 and went on to make Jeno’s pizza rolls, replacing the chop suey inside his egg rolls with pizza toppings, along with other products.

The company set up a Chun King Rickshaw Inn with a rickshaw for display out front at the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962, and replicated it at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair. The inns were part of a drive-in chain that Paulucci started in 1962. At a charity event in 1987 in Orlando, Paulucci arrived in a bicycle rickshaw.

The rickshaw appeared to have been a part of the persona for Paulucci’s company. These human-powered vehicles themselves were said to have originated in Japan in the mid-1800s and later made their way to China and India, where they became popular.

Interestingly, the rickshaw wasn’t the logo for Chun King. It resembled a Chinese symbol.