[vc_row][vc_column][thb_border][vc_column_text]The Takeaway:[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]“Earning money is like eating shit, spending money is like having diarrhea.”[/vc_column_text][/thb_border][thb_gap][vc_column_text]“Earning money is like eating shit, spending money is like having diarrhea. ”
Li Xing was quick to find out that Beijing, China’s capital, was not as beautiful as it looked: in fact, there are too many people, a lot of clogged roads, and certainly horrible pollution. His mind crossed a specific phrase from the Internet that fit Beijing best : “Earning money is like eating shit and spending money is like having diarrhea. ”
16-year-old Li Xing has always been an astute observer and over-thinker. Whilst standing in front of the entrance to a Japanese restaurant on East Third Ring Road, Beijing, he hesitated before going inside straight away. He took time to observe the door’s handle, then leaning his body forward to carefully push it in.
Li Xing is still a kid. He was born 2000, but listed himeslefas a 17-years-old on his identification card. In the past month, he has been working for a well-known courier company in Beijing, bumping around to knock on various doors on a daily basis. Automatic doors, revolving doors, security doors, sliding doors, wooden doors, iron doors, glass doors, you name it – “Do you know when I am the happiest as a courier? It is when you knock on the door and the door actually opens. ” He told me, quoting a colleague who said the exact same things to him few days ago.
I know him from half month ago. That day, he was delivering a package and left before I could hand him the 12 RMB courier fee. So I called him later that night and asked him to come collect the money.
A very thin boy, he prefer to nod or utter very simple words when responding, such as ” yes”, “ah”, or ” right” . After talking to him for a while he told me he was born after the year 2000, a member of the post-00 generation.
On 4 November 2016, we finished a half-day delivery together. On this day, from 8 am to 8 pm, he took packages from the company twice, sent 137 packages, only ate two slices of bread and drank a bottle of water which costs him 9 RMB in total.
That is his daily routine, and also an everyday routine for possibly every courier in Beijing.
On November 9, 5 days after my delivering experience with Li Xing, he departed from Beijing.
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” The Dog Bites Me, But I Do Not Bite Him “
Within the old communities areas in Sanlitun and Chaoyang Park, Li Xing could be seen often wearing the colorful ” tomato scrambled eggs ” courier uniform, sometimes riding a yellow paint-sprayed tricycle.
The buildings in this small area is mostly 6 layers of low-rise buildings, with no elevator equipped. Those buildings are in somewhat disorderly state of architecture, with its internal structure varying widely. Narrow roads are congested with stalls and honking cars, not to mention pedestrians who are normally elderly people.
In the crowd, Li Xing is very conspicuous and looks like a matured child. He wears a brown cap, with dyed yellow hair curving out. Earrings hanging from his right ear, emblazoning his white, rounded face. He stands at 160cm and weight up to 90 pounds, depends on the meal that he just ate.
One day in October, I went to have a conversation with him and he straight away open up about his bad experiences on the previous day.
Winter is coming but he had no thick bedding. Thus, with 500 RMB given by a fellow who is the “boss “, (one of the courier company’s franchise owners) he spent 200 RMB to buy bedding and another 100 RMB for telephone charges. In not even two days, his small tricycle was hit by a private car and he has to pay 200 RMB for the loss.
He returned to his place that night and use the hammer to repair his ride. Another courier near the agricultural exhibition hall called him and the person on the phone was Henan gang and they rented in the same place. The other person said: “Do not knock.” He did not hear and continue knocking. The other party was drunk and they quarreled.
More people joined as the “Shanxi gang” and “Henan gang” cursed against each other. Shanxi gang could not help but swearing: “If I am not so kind, I would have kill you. ” The two sides keeps on fighting war of words. The landlord eventually came forward, forcing reconciliation between the two. The landlord said to him: ” This is not finished yet. You guys have bowed against each other but both should invite another to dinner. ”
Hostility was beginning to show in this fledgling young man’s sense towards the public. One night, while he and his colleagues are in the set box, a parcel smashed his head, the parcels contained books and heavy. The mood instantly escalated as he said something like, “Do look around, besides, there are people over here. ” The other side then raise their tone: ” What are you looking at? Next time you can just stay away from me. ” He did not continue to speak, laughed instead, and continue to deliver package while contemplating, “In my heart, I already scolded him a thousand times and deemed him as stupid.”
Li Xing has his own set of service standards. He will obliged to these criteria: we do not act like the other person, even if there are uncomfortable feelings, it’s better to be kept in heart, “Even though the dog bites me, I would not bite. I would not bite.”
He has a violent temper. In the sixth grade, there was a person who was simply being talkative, interfere with his affairs, and he ended up smashing the friend’s head, with his hand fractured and smeared with blood. After a period of time, Li Xing brought home fruit knife, took a few pictures of the injured hands and posted in his QQ space : Zhang, you fucking wait, this matter hasn’t finished yet, it’s just me and a knife, I dare you to come over, I’ll be waiting for you at Shipo Alley, 11am until 2pm.
However, nothing in reality ever happened. He said it was only one of the way he vented his anger.
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“This Is So-called Making Money? No, This Is Paying Endless Debt.”
On September 22, during his trip to Beijing, Li Xing, with only 600 RMB in his pocket, sat inside a Shanxi Yuncheng high-speed rail to the capital. At night, he took a short video of Beijing’s night as he was sitting on the bus. That video was made for his friends, as he questioned on who will pick him up.
“Did someone pick you up that day? ”
” No, I just want to tell you that I went to Beijing.” He replied.
Heading to Beijing at the moment, he did not know what to do in the city. His plan is to live there with his first cousin, then find a job on the assembly line in an industry. He was wondering to go to the Spring Festival, earn some money, so he can return with hope to open a tattoo shop. Some good names have already made up in his mind, such as the “Swan Striped Thorn.” His ambition is to do the tattoos business, such as a tattoo that the QQ called “A large swan tattoo”. He is also considering to put the ” Swan ” word specifically as one of the tattoos, he thought that this word is full of meaning.
Later, as the perks of being in touch with him for a long time, he revealed there was a variety of reasons to go to Beijing: at home he has been too idle for too long, with all of his day spent to do nothing. The family sees him as a troublemaker, urging him to go out to find something to do.
In the second year of high school, Li Xing felt quite confident with his English grades, at least that’s what he thinks.
As he grows mature from his adolescent years, he refused to be controlled as he was no longer interested in the classroom, embarking on a “rebellious way” of studying. The English teacher publicly embarrassed him in front of the class of 55 students. “Your test score is not more than 30, don’t you have any dignity? ” Li Xing read out every word of this sentence, which would affect his self-esteem. His goal was to have an English score of over 50 points and considering the reality, he’s still a long way from achieving his objective.
After finishing school, he stayed at home. Over time, his family grew uneasy with him. “They see me as a burden.” His family then arranged for him to follow a cousin in the village to do the plumbing installation and maintenance. Six months later, the cousin went to Guiyang but did not take him along.
The cousin later became a nomad.
He continued to stay at home, doing nothing, playing Counter Strikes, blindly wandering, smoking all day long. With his parents urged and controlled him, he has worked at custom car shop and maintenance, tattoo apprentice, and all not more than 3 months in total. “His mind is not here, it just doesn’t make sense doing all these things.” At that moment, his heart is not really into playing games.
Li Xing’s cousin in Beijing worked part-time for a courier company and as Li Xing has little work to do, they suggested him to try a career in this express delivery courier company. Li Xing sees this as a good career option as the job was apparently not too demanding. Without giving second thoughts, he decided to give it a try. Truth be told, he did not have too many choices anyway.
The next day, Li Xing began to deliver packages. His replacement only had two days to teach him the basics of the job, mainly giving him knowledge about the roads, how to identify the floor and how to carry out the delivery processes. What he remembered next was the simplest task of all: how to go out from the warehouse. During his third day of work, he went out alone doing delivery, occasionally getting lost and pulled nearly 100 boxes of goods to the Sanlitun diplomatic apartment. Finally, with memorizing it, taking tall building as direction, going back and forth, he finally reached the destination.
In a separate delivery two days later, he would bring two batteries out in a trip where he got lost and moved around like a tailspin, as he could not recognize the road. As a result, the bike ran out of battery and he had to go back by calling his cousin, who would drive him to his house.
A week afterwards, he noticed a delivery area but decided against going there. He calculated that there are more than a thousand steps need to be climbed every single day, sometimes it makes him so hard to sleep at night because of painful body aches. After a week, slowly getting started, the more packages he send out, the more money he could earn. But all of a sudden, he just did not want to go to work.
Once, he delivered a box of apples to a hospital. The next day, the recipient complained that the apples were nowhere to be found. He paid 75 RMB as compensation. As he had no money, with his boss also unable to pay the wages, the compensation can only be deducted from his salary account.
Then, he lost a dozen of parcels that he did not finish delivering the day before. As heavy rain poured that night, he returned to the warehouse package but did not take the package. The results, the goods were gone the next day. The boss fined him nearly two thousand RMB, which were deducted from his wages.
The way the company manages him could be described in one word : penalty. When a package is late in a morning delivery, or when its pieces are lost, or when a customer complains about poor service… he was always fined. In early November, he received a penalty sheet, a total of fine worth 1440 RMB, because the tardiness delivery of the package or the incompletion of some packages. With his wages beginning to shrink, he realized that he might have been fined so much and so he was frightened.
This time, he wants to call it a day. “I work to make money, but the money is nowhere to get.”
As he learned his lessons, he become more cautious, although there were still some complaints concerning the lost pieces. That time, he went to the hospital monitoring center, watching the CCTV. Obviously someone took the pieces, he thought, and thus he called the complainant to explain the situation. The other person then told him that the goods were found yesterday. He suspected that this might be a trickery, but later thought that it might be just a fate.
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Dreadful “Double 11”
During his working days, Li Xing gets up at 8 o’clock every day, went to the company to eat breakfast and load the pieces, departing from there before 9 o’ clock. He puts all the packages inside his small tricycle ride which can fit around 100 box of packages. At noon the company does not supply any meals, he would just buy some bread and water, sometimes simply do not eat anything. Encountering haze days leads to chest tightness, smoking cigarettes and drink his own saliva to deal with the past. At 4 pm or so, he would return to the warehouse to take some goods to deliver at night, and finished it around 8 pm.
After having a dinner from his home, he continues collecting some packages until 9 pm and only after that will the work considered done. Then, he goes to bed, took out his Hong MI Note 2 which he bought in 2015 “Double eleven” for 888 RMB. The upper left corner of its screen cracked caused by a fall from the second floor. In general, he will see some UFO, flood, fire, earthquake news, maybe watch one or two sets of “Lao Jiu Men” before he goes to sleep.
When he encountered couriers on the road, he would pointed to them with envy, “they are pretty good, very large companies, not only paying base salary but also bonus and phone call reimbursement. ”
His company does not provide phone call reimbursement and he has been lamenting for this call payment since a long time. He makes around 70 calls every day. That day when he was about to deliver a package, he pressed the doorbell, but no one responded, and he was trying to call right away but no signal. He went to the estate entrance door and once again tried to call the man, however the call was picked up by someone speaking English, he immediately hung up.
Also in that day, he thought that he might not want to continue and decided to go home. Many reasons were behind his decision, but mostly they are identical: only a few money earned, the workload is tiring, the job itself is boring. So he told his boss that he want to resign, his boss did not agree because the ” Double 11″ season is about to come.
He is afraid of “Double 11”. After dinner, he heard a lot of fresh cases : “Double 11 ” lost pieces, some colleagues lost more than a thousand; on a daily basis, they need to send more than 400 parcels, earn more than 400 pieces, 3 times more than usual, but also means that many cannot finish and they have to bear the fine.
One evening on November 8, after finished delivering 138 parcels during that day, Li Xing rode his tricycle back to the warehouse. He could not wait any longer. His boss decided to release him after he said that there were urgent things to do at home. The next day, the boss gave him 500 RMB to buy a few decent clothes back home. He spent 300 RMB to buy two sweaters and a pair of trousers.
For his evening wages, he sent a total of 4084 packages and earned 4084 RMB . Considering the fine of not finishing the work which is 1444 RMB, the normal spending of 1,000 RMB, lost pieces of claims and he could not figure out the final boss only gave him 300 RMB, 800 RMBwas temporarily buckle down. When he arrived home, he only had 200.
He planned to leave Beijing the next morning, and the boss said that there is a car available to use that night. He did not dare to say anything, as it was already late at night to pack things, so he took off the yellow and white courier coat and put on his favorite black coat as he headed to the station.
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Tattoo apprenticeship
This is the second time he left Beijing. The last departure was more than five months ago.
After the Spring Festival in 2016, Li Xing was sent to Sanlitun, Beijing to a shop to learn tattoo painting. That year, his cousin was there to work in the tattoo shop.
The wish of his parents was clear: they send him out to make money so they can pay off debts. Over the years, the village has built a new house, with only a dozen old buildings still standing. In 2015, the father decided to follow this trend and renovated his new house, which eventually causing the family to be indebted $130,000.
Li Xing works on the tattoo not because he likes the job, but because he wanted to help the family. As he has dropped out of school, his parents brought him relatives to teach him making tattoo to earn money and younger siblings drop out of school in order to send him to Tianjin alongside his cousin to learn tattoo. At first, Li Xing felt very great at the beginning as he could make money. Before long, as his cousin left and his learning stalled, he was forced to go home.
Li Xing worked in Beijing tattoo shop for 3 months and spent a total 30,000 RMB in expenses that include tuition, accommodation and food. In the meantime, he lived in an apartment at the master’s house. More than 60 people live there with the residents mostly being over 30 years of age. He is the smallest one and with his limbs covered with tattoos, his appearance is similar to mobs in the gangsters movie.
Within 3 months, he thought he had learned a lot. “Beijing has so many people, one day sitting there, just by seeing things you can actually learn.” He learned the most practical and most important point is: speak less, do more. Several times he said the wrong words and he got almost beaten.
As it was all about learning, he was happy. One day he would study from 11 am to 6 pm, with the rest of the time spent by him and his brothers to play pool outside and eat snacks sold by street vendors. He realized that he did not like the predictable, such as apprenticeships or formal jobs, and decided to go home again. “The truth really surprises you. It’s not what you learn is more useful but to learn from experience to be useful.” Customers go to the store, not looking for him, anxious when such a young child brings needle to their own flesh.
In June 2016, a senior in a school in Changchun opened a store and he decided to join, disregarding his parents who advised against it. He helped do a few tattoos but he did not earn a penny. They have to take care of themselves. Business is not good, the brothers often go out to rent house but did not care about him. With no money, Li Xing borrowed from friends but no one lend it to him. Parents also did not lend him any money. Finally, his aunt gave him 500 RMB and he was home.
In a tattoo shop in his hometown, he was still an apprentice. He did not complete a single tattoo until September 22, 2016, when he went to Beijing again, thinking that life would have a different outcome.
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Good night, Beijing
November 8 at 11:38pm, Beijing West Railway Station. Train Engine Started. Whistle blowed.
Before leaving, Li Xing called his mother at the train station and said that he would go back. Mother asked him, why come back? He said he wanted to find a tattoo shop and in Beijing, there was nothing like it, with nothing to do. The call was brief, 5 minutes only.
He couldn’t sleep on the train. So he started playing Minecraft on his phone. Digging, building a house; or changed into the flight mode, a gun in the air indiscriminately shooting monsters; also in a mountain covered with bombs, lighted up, blow it up. Played for 5 hours, until the phone ran out of battery.
He is not obsessed with the game but just cannot think of anything else to do. “Play blind chanting, stay idle, and pass the time.”
At 7am in the morning, the train arrived in Taiyuan, Shanxi. He took a picture of himself and shared it within his circle of friends. Half an hour later, he got on from Taiyuan and embark in Yuncheng train, all the way south, with sceneries of mountains and rivers overlooking just outside the window. Phone powers ran out so, he can only look out the window to admire the scenery, while thinking: “It should be dry a little later, right?”
“I cannot figure out what I can do.” he said in a self-mocking tone, exuding feelings of real pain in it, as it has already been repeated in our conversations.
“Do you feel any pressure?” I asked.
“No.”
“Is there anything troubling you?”
“No.”
At 10:00 on November 10, Li Xing, with 200 yuan, two sweaters and a trousers, returned home from Beijing only to return to his previous habits: get up at 2 in the afternoon, two meals a day and smoke throughout the day.
He came to Beijing dreaming, but in reality, he felt it was more like a night of sleepwalking.[/vc_column_text][thb_gap][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_raw_html]JTNDYSUyMGhyZWYlM0QlMjJodHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRnR3aXR0ZXIuY29tJTJGc2hhcmUlMjIlMjBjbGFzcyUzRCUyMnR3aXR0ZXItc2hhcmUtYnV0dG9uJTIyJTIwZGF0YS1zaG93LWNvdW50JTNEJTIyZmFsc2UlMjIlM0VUd2VldCUzQyUyRmElM0UlM0NzY3JpcHQlMjBhc3luYyUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMiUyRiUyRnBsYXRmb3JtLnR3aXR0ZXIuY29tJTJGd2lkZ2V0cy5qcyUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ==[/vc_raw_html][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_cta h2=”” h4=”Credits:”]Translation:虫洞翻翻
Source:博客天下
Original article (Chinese)：00后快递员：在帝都谋生像一次惊慌失措的探险[/vc_cta][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_cta h2=”” h4=”Related articles:”]
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