A firsthand account of life inside China's gig economy, following Hu Anyan through two decades of low-wage jobs—convenience store clerk, security guard, bicycle salesman—before he lands as a Beijing courier in 2018. Grueling shifts, surveillance, and a battered copy of Chekhov carried from job to job.
Relentless physical strain doesn't just tire the body; it can quietly switch off ordinary moral feeling toward the people the work is meant to serve. A worker drenched in sweat from shift start to the next morning can leave an old man waiting for hours and feel no guilt at all, and only later be shocked by that numbness.
When a huge pool of people lack better alternatives, labor stays cheap and bosses can answer any complaint with "if you won't do it, plenty of others will." Punishing physical demands become the industry norm, not the extreme, and lifting standards across the board becomes a tangled social problem rather than something one worker can fix.
Grueling, insecure work is widely tolerated when people's overall lives have clearly improved over recent decades. Even when the gains were unevenly shared, the feeling that life is getting better makes harsh conditions seem acceptable rather than outrageous.
Employers can only push workers as hard as their pay justifies; firms paying more can demand more, and those paying less must ask less. Workers keep moving between jobs, weighing workload against pay, benefits, commuting and rent, which keeps that balance in check.
In theory good and bad conditions are sharply distinct, but in a real life they blend depending on where you stand, what you expected and your situation. That is why a person can be optimistic and pessimistic at once without contradiction, and why coping often means managing your own emotions rather than settling the question.