It is the kind of American success story we like to celebrate.

An enterprising immigrant -- a professional musician in another life and world -- arrives from China and starts a small business, using vans to drive his fellow immigrants to their jobs in New York City. Business booms. Pretty soon Pei Lin Liang is running cut-rate, no-frills bus service between Boston and New York. The appeal could not be simpler: $10 one way.

The customers love it -- and not just Asians, but anyone looking to save a buck, particularly the young. What Southwest Airlines did to the economics of air fares, Liang's little bus line, Fung Wah Bus, is now doing to the established order of the I-95 bus business. And in an era of overpaid chief executives, Liang, who speaks little English and lives in New York, still drives a bus regularly.

The People's Bus is one great story, but this, of course, is Boston. Here the powers that be have harassed Liang and his company at every turn. The City of Boston has issued $11,000 in tickets to Fung Wah since March. State regulators, prodded by the deep-pocketed competitors, are turning up the heat. Those competitors, Peter Pan and Greyhound, have sued Fung Wah. And its insurer, Hanover Insurance, has moved to cancel its insurance. Welcome to Boston, Pei Lin Liang.

There is no secret what is going on. "The big dog out there, Peter Pan, is dead set against them," says Timothy Shevlin, executive director of the state Department of Telecommunications and Energy, which regulates bus companies. "They don't want that kind of competition."

Says Peter Pan's Robert Schwarz: "We don't mind competition. But we think people should play on a level playing field."

It takes years of practice to say stuff like that and not even smirk. For Peter Pan and Greyhound to whine about not having a level playing field against Fung Wah is like the New York Yankees complaining that picking last in the amateur draft puts them at an unfair disadvantage to the other teams. The Yankees can take care of themselves. And so can Peter Pan.

Fung Wah, just six years old, has 35 employees and 18 buses. Peter Pan, founded in 1933, calls itself the largest privately owned bus company in America, with 400 buses, 1,500 employees, and about $100 million in annual sales. In addition to buses, the Picknelly family's empire includes one of the largest office complexes in Springfield, several hotels, and a firearms distributor. Total assets, according to the Picknellys: $200 million. Level playing field, indeed.

Peter Pan and Greyhound complain that Fung Wah cuts costs by operating illegally on the streets of Chinatown. What they don't talk much about is that they operate the New York-to-Boston route together rather than compete, and that they and the bus companies they are affiliated with control nearly all the 29 gates at the South Station bus terminal. A single gate is now available, and Fung Wah and other companies are now negotiating to share that gate. Level playing field, indeed.

What if some start-up airline began operating on an abandoned airfield, Peter Pan asks? What would the government say? My question to Peter Pan: What if American and United were the only two carriers flying Boston-to-New York, and they decided to pool their resources rather than compete? What would the government say about that? (And, by the way, when is the last time Peter Pan president Peter A. Picknelly drove a bus, anyway?)