Hu Anyan’s I Deliver Parcels in Beijing describes life working in China’s logistics and service trades. Anyan’s account reveals differences in context between Chinese and US workers that indicate the difficulty of international working-class solidarity.

For example, if a minute was worth 0.5 yuan, then the cost of urination was 1 yuan — that is, if the toilet was free to use and I only took two minutes. Eating lunch needed twenty minutes — ten minutes of which were spent waiting for the food — and had a time cost of 10 yuan. If a simple dish of rice and meat cost 15 yuan on top of this, then the whole endeavor was too extravagant! Basically, I skipped a lot of lunches.

Like all good writers, Hu Anyan lets the particular illuminate the universal. In his new collection, I Deliver Parcels i

See Full Page