Food delivery rider wins China’s top literary prize

A collection of poems, some scribbled on slips of paper between food deliveries, has won Wang Jibing one of China’s top literary honours.

Low Flight, inspired by the everyday challenges delivery riders face, has bagged the Lu Xun Literary Prize – named after a writer who has been referred to as the father of modern Chinese literature.

Wang, 56, who became a delivery rider around 2019, gained traction on social media for his poems and essays.

He is part of a growing group of blue-collar workers who are being celebrated for their literary works, which offer a glimpse into the pressures that they face in China’s massive gig economy.

For Wang, the prestigious literary prize comes after a few difficult decades as an odd job worker.

“I held my breath and felt extremely nervous… Once it was revealed, everything was settled,” Wang told state media outlet Global Times on 15 July, when news broke that he had won the award – adding that the media attention around him had created a lot of mental pressure on him.

The monetary awards for recipients of the Lu Xun Literary Prize are not publicly announced – though as of 2014 it stood at 100,000 Chinese yuan ($14,800; £11,000).

Born in Jiangsu province, Wang left school as a teenager due to financial hardship at home. He took on various jobs, from construction to scavenging for waste and selling things at a street stall, before becoming a food deliveryman.

But his love for reading persisted, and over the last decade he has been posting his own poems and essays on social media.

In 2022, one of his poems, titled Man in a Hurry, went viral online. It was inspired by a incident in 2019, in which he spent hours on a frustrating delivery after a customer entered the wrong address.

In 2023 he published his first poetry collection, Man in a Hurry: Poems of a Food Delivery Rider.

Despite winning the award, Wang told the outlet he had no intention of quitting his job, adding that he planned to work until he turns 60.

“Financially I don’t need this job to make a living, but I love the vibe of the work and it keeps me fit,” said the Global Times report. “I want a down-to-earth life and the award will never change who I am.”

Low Flight, published in 2024, is a collection of poems inspired by interviews and surveys that Wang conducted with around 200 delivery riders.

“Who says spreading your wings means flying high? Flying low is also flying,” goes one of the lines in his poems.

His win comes as a growing number of blue worker collars in China have in recent years been making their mark in the literary world.

I Deliver Parcels in Beijing, a 2023 memoir by former courier Hu Anyan, became a runaway bestseller in China and also captured media attention abroad. An English translation of the memoir was published last year.

Another title – I am Fan Yusu – an autobiographical essay about a migrant worker’s personal struggle, swept the Chinese internet in 2017. The response was so overwhelming that Fan had to temporarily leave her home amid endless media requests.

Lu Xun, whom the literary prize is named after, is widely considered one of China’s greatest 20th century writers, known for using satirical novels to critique traditional Chinese society.

Long remembered as one of China’s most important literary figures, Lu’s works have found renewed resonance among the younger generation today: A few years ago, Kong Yiji, a character from his novel became a meme symbolising disillusionment among the Chinese youth struggling to find jobs.