I have been thinking about a number. 1000多万. More than 10 million delivery riders in China. That is the official count from Xinhua, published May 19, 2026. Ten million people riding electric bikes through cities I have never fully mapped,…
I noticed something last week. I was waiting for a friend outside a café in Shanghai, and she walked up apologizing: “My boss sent a 60-second voice memo on the way here, I had to listen to it.” She was…
On May 1, 2026, over 325 million domestic trips were recorded across China. That number comes from the five-day May Day holiday, and it sounds like a boom. But scroll through Xiaohongshu during those five days, and you will see…
Before resigning from Chinese tech giant Baidu this spring, algorithm engineer Wei Ying spent a week on a new kind of handover: building an AI version of himself. Coworkers fed his code, documents, research, and chat histories into an internal…
Travel anywhere during one of China’s week-long national holidays, known as “Golden Week,” and you’ll find yourself swept along by what the idiom renshan renhai describes: people mountain, people sea. Over 325 million domestic trips were recorded during this year’s…
A few weeks ago, an app called “死了么” went viral in China. The name is a dark pun on Ele.me, the food delivery giant, but instead of ordering dinner, you checked in daily to prove you were still alive. Miss…
I keep thinking about a scene I read about in a Chinese news report last week. In Nanning, Guangxi, a vintage clothing store owner named Li Wangchuan watched young people rifle through racks of second-hand shirts. They were not just…
Last Friday, China’s State Council announced something that sounds bureaucratic but is quietly radical. Workers can now enroll in social insurance programs in the cities where they are actually employed, regardless of where their household registration, or hukou, says they…
In November 2025, CCTV and Meituan released a three-minute short film about a graphic designer who quits her desk job to deliver food in Dali, Yunnan. The film showed clean mountain air, scenic routes, and a life of freedom. Viewers…
I keep thinking about the phrase “new employment groups.” That is what Beijing calls them now. Delivery riders, livestreamers, ride-hail drivers. People who work through apps but not exactly for anyone. The Central Committee and the State Council issued a…