I DELIVER PARCELS IN BEIJING

Between long nights and hard days, a new writer hustles to find his voice.

Hu’s forthright and introspective account of odd jobs and the Chinese gig economy’s daily grind feels strikingly familiar. “Same stuff, different place,” the work-weary may utter, and with good reason. This book testifies that the exhausting modern workplace experience of the West, an often pressurized and seemingly high-stakes cocktail laced with byzantine performance metrics and pay scales, knows no borders. “I was like the walking dead—a thousand-yard stare and a foggy mind,” the author writes of nightshift work, “and no idea what I had been doing only a second earlier.” It’s all made bearable by payday—and by commiserating with colleagues in the trenches. “Not that we were especially unhappy or anything, it was just reliable common ground. It won us each other’s trust and warmed us to each other.” This book also describes Hu’s path to writing. Its star is his voice. Deeper questions about freedom and purpose amid the mundanity of work land more memorably than idle water cooler chat, thanks to this sensitive translation of the author’s distinctive deadpan soul. “But, supposing work is something we are compelled to do, a concession of our personal will,” he observes, “then the other parts of life—those that remain true to our desires, that we choose to pursue, in whatever form they take—might be called freedom.” Life “would be all the more colorful,” he says, if more people pursued that freedom. Hu is frank about his shortcomings, including anger intense enough to inspire a customer “revenge list” (he never acted on it). He’s also funny. In all, Hu worked 19 jobs in about as many years across the service industry and small businesses. About his time delivering packages, which gives the book its title, he writes: “I was once the best courier that some customers had ever seen.”

Delivering goods and developing insight in China’s gig economy.