A worker who writes—not a writer playing worker
Hu Anyan was born in Guangzhou in 1979 and began writing in 2009. Over roughly two decades, he moved among cities and jobs: courier, overnight logistics worker, convenience-store clerk, security guard, bicycle salesman, clothing-store salesperson, gas-station attendant, and others.
His nonfiction collection I Deliver Parcels in Beijing became a major success in China after its 2023 publication. An English translation by Jack Hargreaves now gives international readers direct access to the work. The English-language publisher describes its plain, candid account of logistics and service work; the original Chinese edition was published by Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House.
Hu’s appearance in Episode 2 of Roundtable Pai Season 8 is powerful for the same reason as the book: he does not turn labor into spectacle. The awkward customer, unreasonable metric, humiliating misunderstanding, private anger, and desire to leave are allowed to remain ordinary.
The embarrassing relief of the comfortable reader
A reader with a secure professional job may encounter Hu’s working life with two simultaneous reactions. The first is recognition: difficult customers, irrational managers, performance targets, exhaustion, and the desire for autonomy are widely shared. The second is private relief: At least I do not have to deliver parcels, work the overnight warehouse, or sell clothes under these conditions.
That relief is not necessarily cruelty. It may be an honest recognition that some jobs impose harsher physical, financial, and social constraints than others. Pretending all work is equally difficult would erase the very inequality the book reveals.
The problem begins when relief becomes a hierarchy of human worth. The reader quietly moves from “I am fortunate not to face these conditions” to “my life is more developed, my choices more serious, and my inner world richer.” Hu’s writing makes that move difficult because the person performing socially devalued work is observant, funny, angry, self-critical, widely read, and intensely concerned with freedom.
The uncomfortable correction: A job can be economically constrained without the worker being intellectually, morally, or spiritually beneath the person receiving the service.
Do we have the right to pity him?
Pity often looks downward. It places the observer in safety and the observed person in deficiency. The object of pity becomes a symbol—“the struggling courier”—rather than an adult with preferences, flaws, humor, judgment, and agency.
But rejecting pity should not mean rejecting empathy. Material hardship is real. Exhausting schedules, insecure housing, customer abuse, injury risk, weak bargaining power, and algorithmic management do not become less unjust because a worker has a rich interior life.
A better response combines three things:
- Respect: Do not reduce a person to occupation or hardship.
- Empathy: Take reported pain and frustration seriously without claiming to fully inhabit someone else’s experience.
- Solidarity: Ask what rules, habits, prices, deadlines, and expectations could materially improve the conditions of work.
“I see you” is a beginning. It is not a substitute for fair pay, predictable schedules, safe work, functional complaint processes, or social dignity.
The courier may be constrained—but are comfortable readers free?
Hu’s recurring desire for freedom complicates the class relationship between reader and subject. A salaried professional may possess more money, security, and status while remaining unable to disappoint parents, leave a prestigious career, choose an unconventional partner, tolerate an unimpressive life, or define success privately.
That does not make professional anxiety equivalent to precarious labor. Economic security matters enormously. It does reveal that freedom has more than one dimension:
| Material freedom | Psychological and social freedom |
|---|---|
| Time, income, housing, healthcare, safety, and the ability to refuse bad work | The ability to form one’s own values, resist status pressure, and pursue a life that may not impress others |
A humane society should not force a choice between them. Celebrating Hu’s interior freedom while ignoring punishing work would romanticize precarity. Celebrating a professional’s comfort while ignoring spiritual conformity would mistake security for a complete life.
What should this kind of attention change?
Learning about couriers, ride-hail drivers, warehouse workers, cleaners, servers, and security guards matters. Their labor is central to daily life and often invisible precisely because it works. But representation has limits. A moving episode or bestselling book can make a worker visible while leaving the conditions of work untouched.
The response begins close to home:
- Do not punish a worker for delays created by a platform, store, traffic, or impossible workload.
- Use ratings and complaints carefully; they may affect income or job access far beyond the inconvenience experienced.
- Tip fairly where tipping is part of compensation, without pretending tips replace labor standards.
- Support policies and businesses that provide safer conditions, predictable scheduling, due process, and worker voice.
- Question family and social expectations that define only a narrow band of occupations and lifestyles as respectable.
The last point is easy to overlook. Diversity is not only a corporate demographic goal. It also means allowing children, partners, friends, and ourselves to build lives that do not share one prestige ladder.
Why plainness can be more powerful than beauty
An episode about flower arranging offers visible beauty: form, color, skill, and cultivated attention. Hu’s conversation offers a different aesthetic experience. Its plainness refuses distance. The viewer cannot admire it safely as a beautiful object because the labor system described may be arriving at the viewer’s door that same afternoon.
That is why “truth” can feel more unsettling than beauty. Beauty permits appreciation. Honest testimony demands that the observer notice their own position inside the scene.
No Cinderella ending is required
Hu’s success as an author creates an obvious temptation to rewrite the story: an overlooked courier suffers, perseveres, becomes famous, and proves his hidden worth. That ending would betray the book. His earlier life mattered before publication, and millions of workers who never become bestselling authors do not need exceptional talent to justify dignity.
The achievement of I Deliver Parcels in Beijing is not that one worker escaped invisibility. It is that his attention makes invisibility harder to accept.
For the broader season, read Why Roundtable Pai Season 8 Feels So Honest. For another portrait of self-directed freedom, see What Lei Diansheng’s 10-Year Walk Can—and Cannot—Teach Us.
This independent essay discusses themes from Hu Anyan’s published nonfiction and a television conversation without reproducing either work. Employment histories and publication details were checked against the book’s Chinese and English publishers on July 16, 2026. Working conditions vary by employer, city, platform, and time.