Top Chinese Literary Prize Goes to Food Delivery Worker

Image caption, Wang Jibing, a food delivery driver, spent years publishing his poems and articles on social media before gaining fame.

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Author, Ke Yu Role, BBC

Published 4 minutes ago

Reading time: 3 minutes

Wang Jibing, who works delivering food orders, has earned the prestigious Lu Xun Literary Prize for his poetry collection titled "Low Altitude Flight."

Wang, 56, says he wrote some of the poems in this collection on scraps of paper between delivery orders.

The theme of this collection is drawn from Wang's daily experiences as a delivery driver since 2019.

Wang's published poems and articles have resonated widely, earning him fame on social media.

Wang can be counted among the blue-collar workers whose literary writings highlight the pressures faced by modern Chinese under the so-called "gig economy."

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For Wang, winning this prestigious literary prize crowns decades of hardship in his career.

Wang recounts the day his award was announced: "I held my breath and tension nearly tore me apart... As soon as it was revealed, my rage subsided."

But soon psychological stress returned due to the media attention the prize brought, according to Wang.

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The monetary value of the Lu Xun Literary Prize is not usually announced, but in 2014 it was nearly 100,000 Chinese yuan (about $14,800).

Image caption, Wang says: 'This job for me is not just a means of making a living.'

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Poverty forced Wang Jibing to leave school in his youth to look for work to earn a living in Jiangsu province, where he grew up. Wang then moved through a number of jobs – from construction work to selling in street stalls to scavenging through trash piles.

But his passion for reading never ceased, and Wang continued to publish his poems and articles on social media throughout the past decade.

Until one of his poems titled 'A Man in a Hurry' went viral online in 2022.

Wang drew material for his poem from an incident he experienced in 2019, when he spent hours frustrated because of a wrong address given by a customer on an urgent food order.

In 2023, Wang published his first poetry collection titled 'A Man in a Hurry: Poems Written by a Food Delivery Driver.'

Despite winning the prestigious literary prize, Wang does not plan to leave his job as a food delivery driver. Instead, he intends to stay in this work until he turns sixty, as he told the Chinese press.

In that regard, Wang says: 'This job for me is not just a means of making a living. I love its inspiring atmosphere, and it keeps me physically fit... I love living a simple life, and this prize will not change me at all.'

In 2024, Wang released his new collection titled 'Low Altitude Flight,' which draws material from conversations he had with about 200 of his fellow food delivery workers.

In one of the collection's poems, Wang says: 'Who says spreading wings is limited to high-altitude flight? Low-altitude flight is also flight.'

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The past ten years have seen an increase in the number of blue-collar Chinese workers whose writings have resonated in the literary world.

Among them, the book 'Delivering Packages in Beijing' published in 2023, belonging to memoir literature by Hu Anyan, topped the bestseller list in China.

Outside China, Hu Anyan's book received media attention, was translated into English, and published last year.

Also, the book 'I Am Fan Yusu,' which tells the suffering of a migrant worker in an autobiographical framework, found wide resonance on Chinese social media in 2017 and earned its author, Fan Yusu, unparalleled fame.

It is worth noting that Lu Xun, after whom the prize is named, is one of China's greatest 20th-century writers, known for his satirical novels criticizing prevailing customs and traditions in Chinese society.

Lu Xun's writings find interest among contemporary Chinese youth, to the point that they have named one of his characters, 'Kong Yiji,' after anyone who has difficulty securing a job these days.

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