I Deliver Parcels in Beijing: On Making a Living

A witty and humane account of one man, multiple jobs and what it means to live

In the twenty years following Hu Anyan’s high school graduation, he has held nineteen different jobs. He’s been a convenience store clerk, a bicycle salesman, a security guard and a delivery driver, among other things. He’s moved from city to city in China, moving away every time the work gets too intense or the bosses too bossy, making a home in rented rooms and carrying almost nothing with him except his copies of Chekhov and Carver.

I Deliver Parcels in Beijing is his account of his life as a low-wage worker in the anonymous mega-cities of modern China. From the psychology of the pecking order on a parcel-sorting factory floor to the perfect alcohol dose to get some daylight shut-eye before a punishing night shift, from the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the hiring departments to the ideal layout of a delivery route, Hu’s sincere curiosity and deadpan humour highlight the human story behind the drudgery. Harnessing his love of literature, Hu begins to discover a new, freeing way of looking at and recording his world.

Quietly radical, brimming with humanity and humour, this book asks: what does work really mean? What should it mean? And do any of us really know how to live?