A Chinese food delivery rider rushes from one delivery order to another. Time is measured by how many orders are completed, not by the change of seasons. He worked hard in cities across China, sending money home, but he was away from home for so long that his son called him "that man" instead of "dad."
These scenes are from a poem by delivery rider Wang Jibing. There are many such poets and writers in China, translating their experiences of repetitive factory labor and the precarious gig economy into art.
The genre has surged in popularity in recent years as many Chinese have become increasingly pessimistic about their economic prospects. For broad swaths of society, wages have stagnated, youth unemployment remains high, and the promise of a better life through hard work has been shattered. Some writers use their writing to call attention to the harsh realities of life for migrant workers and gig workers, while others celebrate the indomitable humanity in such circumstances. Their style tends to be earthy and straightforward.
Many writers have touched on these themes, such as courier Huan Yan, who wrote a best-selling memoir about her various jobs in the gig economy, and Fan Yusu, who left her children to work as a live-in nanny in Beijing. Their online articles were widely circulated and led to book publishing contracts. Some best-selling books have been translated and published overseas.
Last month, Wang Jibing's new poetry collection "Flying Low" won the Lu Xun Literature Award, which is the highest honor given by the system to this literary category so far.
For the Chinese public, curiosity about these workers is mixed with anxiety about their own prospects. This concern may be particularly pronounced among members of the middle class. Zhu Ping, a professor of Chinese studies in the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, said that they are "more concerned about such narratives because they may represent their own future lives."
Gig and factory workers are everywhere, but the hardships and humiliations they endure are rarely portrayed in Chinese state media, which prefer a positive tone. As the influence of such literature has grown, Chinese officials — wary of the power of worker demands that could reveal policy flaws or spark unrest — have increasingly sought to shape it, experts say.
The rise of migrant worker literature
The category known as "migrant worker literature" reflects the development trajectory of the labor force that now exceeds 400 million.
Migrant workers have powered China's factories and cities since the 1980s, but are often denied the health insurance, unemployment and retirement benefits enjoyed by urban residents. The early authors of this literary movement wrote prose and poetry about their experiences in factories, but as manufacturing jobs began to disappear, a new group of authors came to the fore working more odd jobs.
One of the stars is Juan Yan, a courier who wrote a best-selling memoir. His book "I Deliver Express in Beijing" was published in China in 2023 and was named the best book of the year by Douban. This is a diary-style account that records the 19 jobs he held in various parts of China over the past 20 years, including being a sorter in a logistics company, a security guard, a convenience store clerk, and a courier.
Juan Yan's work first came to public attention through an article he published online. The article describes in detail the year he spent working the night shift sorting packages at a logistics company. The work was hard and he struggled to adapt to a daytime sleep schedule:
On the way to work, I passed by a row of bungalows, smelled the aroma of food coming from the house, and saw others who had finished their work for the day and were sitting comfortably on the sofa. I deeply felt that this kind of leisure time is the real happiness, and I was already more tired than them before I even started working. At this time, I would viciously curse myself, my body cursed my will, and my will also cursed my body. I vowed to sleep immediately after get off work tomorrow morning. But tomorrow morning, the situation is the same as the day before, and the cycle repeats itself. ——Huan Yan "I Deliver Express in Beijing"
Ding Nan, a 35-year-old teacher in Wuhan, said that Huan Yan's book was the first migrant worker literature she had read, and she has read more such works since then.
She said she was drawn to the stories of gig workers because of their ubiquitous presence in her own life. "They were strangers that we interacted with on a regular basis, but I never knew what their lives were like," she said.
Some works present these experiences in a more hopeful light. In his poetry collection "Flying Low," delivery rider Wang Jibing extols the dignity and resilience of delivery workers:
It is an official document but also like a magic talisman - Wang Jibing's "Flying from Low Places"
Ding Nan said that the stories of migrant workers also changed her stereotypes about these workers. "Society has a lot of stereotypes about them - we think their lives are miserable, they're oppressed," she said, "but when I read the books, I realized they were also very optimistic."
"Flying Low" won Wang Jibing the Lu Xun Literature Prize, an award administered by a government agency that is awarded every three years. Chinese state media hailed Wang Jibing's win as heralding the arrival of a new, utopian literary landscape in which anyone can succeed.
But Zhu Ping of the University of California, San Diego, said there is a tension between stories in which the Chinese government downplays poverty or social injustice and migrant worker literature that exposes these realities. She sees Wang Jibing's win as the government's attempt to shape the literary genre by promoting a more acceptable voice - one that leans toward hope and optimism rather than criticism of the inherent injustices of the system.
The Chinese government says it wants to cultivate workers' voices as part of what it calls "new popular literature and art." These stories emerged in the Internet age, unfettered by the traditional mechanisms of the publishing industry.
Maghiel van Crevel, a Chinese literature professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands who studies migrant worker literature, said that this means that writers have gained more resources and opportunities, but mainly those who tell stories that conform to the mainstream. Depicting suffering was acceptable, he said, but linking that suffering to government policy "would cross a red line and make it impossible to publish".
