Hu Anyan is an ex-internal migrant who has traveled all over China looking for wage work since the early 2000s. He has written extensively on his experience as a courier in Beijing. His story sheds light on the precarious conditions for millions of workers’ lives in China’s cities. This has been made even clearer in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Having held 19 different jobs across six cities, Hu’s story encapsulates the struggles and resilience of China’s vast workforce.
Hu Anyan’s previous jobs have included shop assistant, hotel waiter, petrol attendant and security guard. His varied work history paints the picture of internal migrants’ struggles. These people tend to move to cities in search of new opportunities or more favorable economic conditions. More than ever, the pandemic has turned everything we know about work and mobility on its head.
These days, Hu drops off packages purchased online to offices and gated neighborhoods across Beijing. His work as a freight courier is highly labor intensive and economically hazardous. To not lose money, he needs to be making at least 0.5 yuan per minute, or roughly 5 pence per minute. That’s an average of a delivery every four minutes that he has to hit. This relentless pace drives him to avoid drinking too much water on shifts, as each bathroom break costs him 1 yuan.
Hu’s frugality is legendary — and not just when it comes to city dollars. He avoids smoking and drinking alcohol and takes haircuts at roadside stands that only charge five yuan. It’s his principle of saving money that informs his whole survival strategy. In an economy that increasingly doesn’t work for people like him, this is the kind of focus that’s needed.
On especially hectic days, Hu has been known to get in up to 30,000 steps in a day just from delivering. This physically draining schedule adds to the burden of his natural timidity, which often tumbles further into social anxiety and paranoia. For the entire two years he worked at this hellish windowless mall in Nanning, the struggle was real. One striking example of this is when he suffered a paranoid breakdown from being confined to the shadowy bunker, emerging only for his daily commute back and forth to work in oftentimes pitch dark conditions.
Even with all of these challenges, Hu has been able to escape through the art of writing. His blog, “I Deliver Parcels in Beijing,” has found a resonance with audiences across China. Since its release in October 2023, it’s already sold close to 2 million copies! The monetary benefits of authorship are scant. For this 8,000-word deep-dive, Hu received just over 300 yuan, or less than £30.
Hu’s experiences as a courier don’t stop at frustrating deliveries. And every time Hu would come to drop off packages, there was always one person he would immediately notice—someone who was working while midair. This scene encapsulated the daily frustrations that defined Hu’s job. This experience should remind us all about the gamble that is customer service in the gig worker economy.
“There should only be one king. I have to serve hundreds every day.” – Hu Anyan
Hu’s position is tenuous, much like the mood of many angry workers. They see themselves as stuck in a system that prioritizes speed over their lives. A common refrain among them is, “Going after the powerful will only cost us in the end.” This feeling is emblematic of the larger battle workers are fighting through the gauntlet created by a hyper competitive, globalizing metropolis.