Hu Anyan's memoir about working in the Chinese gig economy began life as a blog before being turned into a wildly successful book that has sold nearly 2 million copies in China. It chronicles the daily grind of working a series of unskilled jobs for insultingly low wages, with no career progression in sight.
A Life of Precarious Work
Hu is one of 300 million so-called internal migrants in China, people who move around the country chasing work. Over 20 years, he does 19 jobs in six cities, many in terrible conditions. He works as a security guard, hotel waiter, delivery driver, bicycle salesman, bike courier, gas station attendant, and at a logistics warehouse where he is given only four days off a month. There is a reason, he notes, why so many new recruits fail to make it through the three-day trial, which is unpaid.
The Dehumanizing Reality
Translated into English by Jack Hargreaves, Hu's book conveys the dehumanizing reality of pulling long shifts on just a few hours' sleep and often going without food for eight hours at a time. Little wonder he starts feeling out of sorts as he grapples with loneliness and exhaustion and becomes inordinately furious at customers who, by wasting his time, lose him precious meager earnings.
Audiobook Narration
The book is narrated by Winson Ting, whose delivery is on the austere side, perhaps deliberately so. Certainly, it suits Hu's writing, which is coolly clinical as it lays out the precariousness and repetitiveness of his circumstances. I Deliver Parcels in Beijing is a grim indictment of a shocking system and the terrible cost of our culture of convenience. Available via Penguin Audio, 10 hours 19 minutes.
Further Listening
- Maybe I'm Amazed by John Harris, John Murray, 6 hours 56 minutes. The music writer turned political journalist's moving account of his bond with his autistic son and their shared love of music, from Funkadelic and the Smiths to Paul McCartney and Mott the Hoople. Narrated by the author.
- Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner, Vintage Digital, 11 hours 9 minutes. The Flamethrowers author reads her Booker-shortlisted novel about an American spy who infiltrates a group of ecowarriors in the south of France led by the hypnotic leader, Bruno Lacombe, who chooses to live in a cave.
