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https://theconversation.com/chinas-new-literary-star-had-19-jobs-before-writer-including-bike-courier-and-bakery-apprentice-272447>
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Review: I Deliver Parcels in Beijing – Hu Anyan (Allen Lane)
Delivering parcels is just one of the 19 different jobs Hu Anyan cycles through
over 20 years, as tracked in his Chinese bestseller
I Deliver Parcels in
Beijing. He also tries his luck working as a convenience-store clerk, a
cleaner and in a bike shop, a warehouse, a vegetable market and even an anime
design company – always at the very bottom of the ladder.
Some jobs last weeks, some days, some barely survive the training shift. Bosses
disappear, wages evaporate, contracts turn out to be imaginary and rules are
invented on the spot. With a blend of hope and resignation, Hu repeatedly comes
to realise the true qualifications for survival in the city are a strong back,
a flexible sense of dignity and a high tolerance for absurdity.
Hu, now aged 47, grew up in Guangzhou, a major city in south China. He has
worked in cities big and small, including a brief stint across the border in
Vietnam.
They are “places with apparent unlimited potential for development, yet I
seemed to have gotten nowhere,” he writes. They promise opportunity, then
charge rent on his naivety and optimism. He seems to move through the world
with a certain innocence about how it truly works, yet possesses an uncommon
capacity for deep, searching reflection.
He writes with dry humour and an eye for the absurd – security guards guarding
nothing, managers creating chaos and delivery algorithms ruling lives with
godlike indifference. But he also writes like a field researcher issued a hard
hat instead of a research grant. His prose has a forensic, documentary
precision – wages counted to the cents, shifts timed, fines itemised, and
injustices recorded without melodrama."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
