Life Inside China’s Gig Machine
Hu Anyan’s I Deliver Parcels in Beijing describes life working in China’s logistics and service trades. Anyan’s account reveals differences in context between Chinese and US workers that indicate the difficulty of international working-class solidarity.
A courier driver organizes small parcels in the Central Business District on April 9, 2025, in Beijing, China. (Kevin Frayer / Getty Images)
- Interview by
- Benjamin Y. Fong
For example, if a minute was worth 0.5 yuan, then the cost of urination was 1 yuan — that is, if the toilet was free to use and I only took two minutes. Eating lunch needed twenty minutes — ten minutes of which were spent waiting for the food — and had a time cost of 10 yuan. If a simple dish of rice and meat cost 15 yuan on top of this, then the whole endeavor was too extravagant! Basically, I skipped a lot of lunches.
Like all good writers, Hu Anyan lets the particular illuminate the universal. In his new collection, I Deliver Parcels in Beijing, he sidesteps sweeping pronouncements about his work in logistics, transportation, and other odd jobs in China’s urban centers. Instead he relates the small moments that defined his days — flashes of frustration with customers, rivalries with coworkers, and the ways his work rhythms spilled into his personal life. The result is an insightful, relatable, and often humorous account of working life in twenty-first-century China.
For all the similarities between Hu’s work frustrations and those of Americans, however, there are stark contrasts between the two national contexts that the following interview with the author highlights. Chinese working conditions are, by American standards, often excessively grueling and precarious. But they are widely tolerated against the backdrop of rising living standards brought about by rapid industrialization. And when the conversation turns to unions, the concept seems so alien that the exchange takes on a comic air. As relatable as Hu’s writing is, it also points to marked differences in context that indicate the difficulty of international working-class solidarity.
One thing about your book that is bound to shock an American audience is the working conditions you describe right off the bat about working in a logistics warehouse. Twelve-hour night shifts, only four days off per month, three-day unpaid trial periods, losing fifty pounds in the first three months.
Is this the norm, or an extreme? If the latter, why are people working in logistics warehouses? In the United States, the conditions at Amazon aren’t this extreme, but they’re often more intense than at other employers. Amazon’s savvy about surveying labor market conditions and offering a wage just above average in any particular area.
This is the norm in the logistics industry, not an extreme. The construction industry across China makes workers endure even greater physical demands, though naturally with correspondingly higher earnings. People undertake these types of jobs because they lack better alternatives. In the United States, Amazon’s high demands on employees are matched by slightly higher wages, which seems reasonable. In the same way, companies that pay less can only impose lower demands.
It’s similar in China. Labor is constantly in flux, with workers selecting the most advantageous positions based on factors such as workload intensity, remuneration, benefits, commuting costs, and accommodation expenses.
You focus a great deal on your mood at your various jobs and how the working conditions affected it. But you also have this line that stuck with me: “What use is a good temper? It’s like putting a lid on a pot without a bottom.” That makes it seem like emotional self-regulation is ultimately a losing game, maybe even just a way of coping that ultimately benefits employers. Is there an alternative? Are there better and worse ways of coping?
From around 1990 to the present day, China has undergone a period of extremely rapid ascent, achieving tremendous success in economic development. While it cannot be said that this success has been entirely fairly distributed, most people’s overall living conditions have undeniably improved. As a consequence, most Chinese people today, including most of my former colleagues, genuinely feel life has become better rather than worse.
However, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, labor remains exceptionally cheap. During my time at the courier company, my supervisor would frequently remind us: “If you won’t do this job, there are plenty of others who will!” Under these conditions, raising general labor standards and improving working conditions across the board presents a complex social issue with far-reaching implications.
Emotional self-regulation is my personal way of coping. Many choose to vent their frustrations. In purely theoretical terms, good and bad often stand in sharp and clearly delineated contrast. Yet in reality — depending on your vantage point, your expectations, your situation — good and bad blur together and are difficult to disentangle.
Sympathy on the Line
Some of the scenes you describe involve workers treating other workers with callousness or even cruelty: calling people fat, lazy, excluding them, waiting for them to fail and leave so the rest don’t have to deal with them. You strike me as a humanist, but one could gain a pretty dim view of human nature from these interactions.
In my own professional experience, I’ve never encountered colleagues being ostracized solely for being overweight, probably because that would not really impact other people’s work. However, the book does mention an incident from 2018 when I was registering at S Company. A heavier colleague was rejected. This was due to his medical examination apparently failing to meet standards — likely elevated blood pressure or lipid levels. I imagine that intense physical labor might trigger health issues more easily when some of those values are out of range, and that companies might see it as a risk both for the individual and the company. At the time, the HR staff cracked a joke, and colleagues waiting nearby even suggested he find a friend to take the medical test for him. The atmosphere throughout was friendly; I don’t think we can talk about harm or exclusion here.
In reality, colleagues tended to be disliked or excluded primarily for being lazy or slow, as those traits hinder others and impact individual as well as team performance. While better corporate management might mitigate such occurrences to some extent, eliminating them entirely remains challenging.
People tend to be more understanding of others when they themselves have leeway. But when they are under strain too, they mostly lack the capacity for tolerance and compassion.
One noticeable difference between the parcel industry in the United States and in China, at least as you’ve described it, is that there seems to be much more personal interaction with customers in China. You describe calling customers to arrange drop-off times, handling returns directly, and so on. It seems much more like a mobile retail job, where customer service is very important. In the US, by contrast, the norm is increasingly little to no interaction between customers and parcel couriers.
What explains that? Geography? Differing service expectations? Again, referencing Amazon as an example, the aim of delivery is speed, and speed alone.
In China, interactions between couriers and customers are also declining sharply. One of the most noticeable changes is the rapid development of “collection points.” In densely populated cities, most couriers no longer deliver parcels to doorsteps, but drop them at collection points instead. Customers retrieve them whenever they like by using an SMS-generated collection code.
My direct dealings with customers stem from the unique nature of the two companies I’ve worked for. S Company, for example, positioned itself as a premium service provider. We weren’t allowed to refuse requests for doorstep delivery. They also handled a significant volume of cash-on-delivery parcels — a service not offered by most competitors — meaning we frequently collected payments in person.
My second employer, Pinjun Express, was the in-house courier for an e-commerce platform. There customers also paid on delivery. Some people would try on clothes immediately and reject what they didn’t like or request returns days later — so we had to visit again to pick up the items. All of this made regular direct contact with customers unavoidable.
But bear in mind: China has over a dozen major courier companies, and the combined market share of S Company and Pinjun Express barely reaches 10 percent. In most other companies, couriers and customers actually have relatively little contact.
E-Commerce vs. Urban Planning
The e-commerce share of retail in China — an estimated 50 percent — is much, much higher than in the United States, where it’s around 16 percent. Why do you think that is?
It seems obvious to me that China’s exponential e-commerce growth is closely linked to its efficient, cheap, and well-developed logistics network. Indeed, I see complaints online from Chinese students abroad saying that courier services in Europe, America, or Australia are far slower and less efficient than in China and yet significantly more expensive.
One of the neighborhoods you delivered to, Jade Orchid Bay, is described as a “real beautiful place for the people living there,” but “for couriers, it was a nightmare.” Is there some essential tension between habitability and the demands of e-commerce?
I do not believe there is an inherent contradiction between the two. However, generally speaking, upmarket housing aims to provide residents with a safe and comfortable living environment, which inevitably entails strict regulations of delivery personnel. Take Jade Orchid Bay, for instance: it’s a residential area with expansive communal areas between buildings. While this is very pleasant for residents, it is a challenge for couriers.
In some cases, high-end residences prohibit us from entering with our delivery scooters because of safety concerns for children playing on the grounds. Consequently, we must deliver parcels on foot, significantly reducing our efficiency. Some places have lifts that can only be handled by residents themselves. This means that between one delivery and another we have to go back all the way down to the entrance to ring each customer individually. This all takes considerable time.
If property developers would ever also include efficiency of delivery routes into their planning and design, residents’ needs could be largely accommodated without compromising the work efficiency of all those who service those compounds. Yet few developers seem to be enticed to do that, as it entails costs but no obvious benefit — after all, “delivery-friendly” housing rarely becomes a selling point for property development. So, it is the couriers and other personnel who inevitably absorb the consequences.
Time Cost
When you were working as a courier, you said you began breaking down your daily activities in terms of their “time cost.” Do you think this is a kind of obsessive tendency that anyone working today is prone to, or is it particular to the parcel industry?
In 2018, couriers in the Liyuan area of Beijing’s Tongzhou district earned an average posttax income of 7,000 yuan per month. If you divide this amount by the total working hours, you get your hourly — or even minute-by-minute — earnings. If you fall short of that average, it means you’re operating at a loss — suggesting the job may not be suitable for you.
In my case, this mindset did not emerge out of the blue. At the time, the company provided us with a device and a software system that monitored our daily workload, progress, and earnings, while also tracking historical records. We were constantly tapping away at these devices while waiting at red lights, queuing for lifts, or even walking — all while organizing delivery to our next customer.
It was precisely because of this sophisticated system, and our constant checking of it, that over time those stark impressions of time and money triggered a response in our brains. The concept of “time cost” emerged. I believe this mindset needs certain conditions like an advanced, data-driven work management system. It’s not unique to the courier industry, but it’s also not commonplace across all sectors.
I haven’t applied the concept of “time cost” to all aspects of my daily life. It mainly surfaced when I was working as a courier as a way of understanding the relationship between the time I invested in things, my work efficiency, and my income. Once I stopped that job, that state of mind also stopped.
Delivering Parcels in Beijing
At the end of the book, you reflect on your dad’s office job and how it offered him a certain freedom. Your commentary is hilarious: “Still, I know him well enough that I can confidently say the concept of freedom has never really existed in his mind. If I were to try to discuss it with him, he would probably respond with some tiresome nonsense.”
But you then go on to say that “freedom is actually a matter of consciousness, and not of what you possess.” In the gig economy, when it’s increasingly difficult for many people to possess much at all, is this just a comforting illusion? I sympathize with your position but also sometimes feel the weight of the judgment of my own beliefs and commitments as “tiresome nonsense.”
I Deliver Parcels in Beijing is a book chronicling the work experiences of ordinary people. In it, the word “freedom” primarily indicates personal autonomy in both professional and personal choices. Very often, our jobs impose varying degrees of discipline on us, requiring compliance with managers’ decisions, corporate positioning, customer needs, and prevailing market trends. Work invariably seeks to mold us into tools rather than individuals possessing autonomous consciousness, emotions, and judgment. And for many today, work consumes an overwhelming part of life.
Take my own experience over the past decades: I’ve had jobs that demanded over seventy or eighty hours a week. After deducting essential time for sleep, meals, personal hygiene, and commuting, the leisure time left to oneself was pitifully scarce. Under those circumstances, work had a huge impact on me. If my job allows me no degree of autonomy — or freedom — then it feels as though I’ve surrendered that autonomy for this entire chapter of my life. There might be no solution in this equation unless one stops relying on work to cover basic needs.
Even if one cannot find a satisfying solution, acknowledging the problem at least gives a glimmer of hope. Life unfolds in phases. Work may dominate a certain period, but it shall not consume my entire existence. While it provides the material foundation for survival, my aspiration is to pursue genuine personal values beyond it — a kind of spiritual substance that distinguishes me from others, lifting me from being merely a tool to an end in myself.
This is the essence of the “freedom” I express in my writing. I am merely a memoirist, not a public intellectual. When I write about “freedom,” I am articulating my own aspiration, not debating universal values. Should others find my ideas perplexing or absurd, I won’t feel disappointed.
Organized Labor in China
American readers might not be familiar with the situation of organized labor in China, where the All-China Federation of Trade Unions is the only permitted union, and it is under the Communist Party of China. Do workers there even think about organizing independent unions, or is that option really off the table in most contexts? If not, are there other kinds of workplace actions that workers will engage in to fight collectively for better working conditions?
The first question will be unfamiliar to a majority of Chinese people — I’m not too well versed in the subject myself. I was just looking at the artificial intelligence platform of Tencent, called Yuan Bao, for info on unions, and this is the reply I got: “In China, establishing trade unions that are entirely ‘independent’ from the existing All-China Federation of Trade Union currently lacks both legal basis and practical operational scope.”
To the second question, it said:
In extremely rare circumstances, should existing trade unions prove ineffective and existing communication channels be obstructed, workers might turn to informal collective action such as petition, boycott, etc. to provoke a response from management and leaders. Typically such actions are to push for a solution on a specific problem or situation, not to challenge the system itself.
That’s what AI says, but do workers actually do any of these things, and to what effect?
In China, when labor disputes arise, workers will usually seek for arbitration through a government-affiliated institution that is specifically designed to handle such disputes. For example, the city I live in, Chengdu, has a population of 21.47 million people. There are a total of twenty-three arbitration institutions — roughly one per district. The “All China Federation of Trade Unions” which you mentioned is an organization unfamiliar to most Chinese people. I had never heard of it before reading your question. I have never heard of anyone resolving a labor dispute through that channel. Workers who go that route are probably a minority.
About workers taking collective action against their employer and defending their rights, this usually happens when employers violate labor law and infringe on workers’ rights. Such instances are relatively rare. I have never experienced one myself. I only read about such things in the news. The last time I can remember was in June 2025, when Neta, a car company based in Shanghai, could not pay employees because of cash flow issues. Several months of wages were missing. This led to many of the employees surrounding the company’s CEO, Fang Yunzhou. I’m not sure how or if the situation was ultimately resolved. [Neta’s parent company filed for bankruptcy in June.]