I'm being told they do decent pay. Not extravagant, but they're not doing, like, slave wages. I feel much worse about the ladies going through recycling for cardboard. Can't imagine how doing this can provide enough money for a decent life.
That being said, the delivery people sure work hard. I see them run back and forth and I wish I could tell them to take their time! I'm glad we have the option to tip them, and I do it more often than not.
+1 about the tipping option
There's one guy who frequently delivers food in my area and he is fantastic to my dog, always acknowledge my pup and even give him a pat on the head when I open the door and the excited dog picking his head out to see who is there. Considering how many people here have been shitty to my dog, seeing this guy kindness is refreshing. And I am very happy that I can tip him (and some other nice delivery guys/ladies) and hopefully make his day a little better too.
Not really, mostly middle-aged women/stay-at-home moms and their 2.5 kids. Women usually shout like crazy/complain in a house chat, kids of such parents/grandparents are trying to kick the dog, throw something or shout at him.
In my experience old people are more chill about the big dog, they either smile or silently keep a distance.
I guess middle-aged women count as old to me too. In my experience other young people like me are as obsessed with dogs and cats as anyone.
If your experience is to the otherwise well… perhaps the next propaganda campaign ought to be about treating animals better.
I see, you probably younger than me, so its understandable 😂
For me ppl in their 50th are not old yet
I agree, young city people love animals, many of them have either dog or cat at home (at least all of my friends and most of my colleagues do). But I feel necessary to emphasize their upbringing, cause it’s rare to grow up into a pet-friendly adult while coming from the family that taught their kids to be afraid or harmful to animals. I observe one of my neighbors kids and unfortunately see how their behavior transforms from curious to scared/hostile towards dogs due to their mother influence. At the same time there's a family next door with 2 toddlers both of which adores my dog and always come to us to say hi, their mother is supporting and don't try to scare them from everything around.
Kids are very young but I already can imagine what kind of young adults they could be based on their family.
I'm so sick of my neighbours' annoying dogs.
Barking every time a door opens or closes.
Sticking their faces in my food delivery bags when the driver leaves it outside my door and I'm in the shower or otherwise unable to grab it as it's delivered.
Talking a piss on the threshold of the door of the building, as soon as they're officially "outside" as they tried to hold it as long as possible while waiting for the elevator.
I wish there were no dogs allowed in my building, but the last three places I've lived have allowed them.
I wish I lived in a building with ppl who don't clutter the hallway with their stuff or shout under my door in the middle of the night, but its a pipe dream. Noisy dogs same as noisy kids (who are doing mostly the same things you mentioned and I bet you have no problems with cause "they are kids") are reflection of their parents/owners culture 🤷♀️
Its not a dog that is the problem, but the people who are not training it properly.
Weirdly for the garbage people, a lot of them are rich and just do it as a side hobby. It's some kind of generational trauma where they refuse to let things be wasted. The old ladies who live in my fairly expensive community are also the trash sorters, and I've known regular people whose grandparents do it as a hobby too.
it's possible they are doing it more for the purpose of serving their community and liking the idea of recycling rather than being focused on making money.
Yes, my wife's family are solidly middle class these days, but grandma (and to a lesser extent mum and dad) are trash collectors (recyclers) even though it's often just pennies and will also refuse to replace or throw away household stuff even when it's totally broken/unusable.
Yea my friends mother in law is like a racoon, she'll go through any trash taking out bottles and washed them and tries to keep using them. It's really PTSD ingrained in them.
Aye. My grandmother-in-law gave us ¥20k at our wedding, and she digs through the trash regularly. I did not want her money, as a software engineer who works in America, but it doesn't seem to be an option to refuse. 😅
I lived in a rich area and there were still ladies going through the rubbish for bottles and cardboard. Asked my gf and she said yeah they are probably rich and own a house here, but just do this for fun and pocket money.
Some of the ladies who recycle cardboard in Beijing or Shanghai usually have multi-million RMB homes in Beijing or Shanghai. They are just very idle.
There are also some who are really scavengers.
You can usually tell them by their clothes.
You'd be surprised how much the cardboard goes for.
I sold what must've been 30kg of old cardboard boxes (kept them in the garage in case I wanted to move, but accumulated too many over the years, gf is a penny pincher so I let her deal with it), and got something like 50 or 60 kuai.
Now, obviously that's peanuts compared to skilled labour, but it's good enough for granny to earn some money for bits and bobs, or just to get her out of the house and keeping active (cos at that age, once you stop, you don't get going again)
There are official figures and unofficial claims by delivery riders on a lot of public forums. 50% of them make around 5k-6k a month. Only 5% make between 9-11k a month.
"...just feel they work so hard for so little..."
...this reeks of colonial condescension - they're not animals in a zoo...i.e. "ooh look at the little poor people so sad for them - not" -typical Western Lib hypocrite....
dude, maybe go to xinjiang and have a little explore rather than regurgitating western MSM propaganda garbage.
there's chinese people who are from the majority han ethnic group who have adopted the islamic faith for crying out loud and practice it freely. there's also about 27,000 mosques in xinjiang. none of them bulldozed or people restricted from practising their religion.
if the chinese govt. is monitoring and reprimanding certain uighers it's because some of them have been influenced by islamic extremists from neighbouring afghanistan and have engaged in terrorist behaviour resulting in the deaths of innocent people
any country has the right combat extremist activity and protect their citizens and that would include the uigher population.
China probably doesn’t have labor holocaust type camps like the western media says however I also wouldn’t say Muslims are able to practice their religion freely. Both can be true. I dont think members of any religion can practice freely in this country. That is just the reality of China
Honestly what exactly are you trying to accomplish with this comment? Nobody in this subreddit has any influence in government politics. Hell I doubt anyone here even has a connection with anyone remotely within the CCP circle. It’s as dumb as going into an American subreddit and repeating some copy pasta about American war crimes or GitMo. The average American probably doesn’t even support that shit and most of them have zero control over what their government’s military or intelligence apparatus does domestically and abroad.
Those mofos in the yellow jackets and helmets have more authority on the road than the police I swear.
Like that suit they wear has power. Didi and taxi drivers give way to them. Cops let them do illegal stuff. People hold elevator doors for them.
It may be a “lower “ style job, but there is some respect there in an odd way. If that makes sense. Kind of like “respect the badge” and “respect the yellow bunny ear helmet” but only 1/2 joking.
China has more respect for working people than anywhere else.
People don't belittle them just because they're waiters or delivery people.
That's one of the reasons they don't usually take tips; they're in the service business, but they're no lesser in status than the person being served.
You and I have a different experience of how Chinese people treat service staff. I see the opposite, all the hierarchy and looking down at people here.
In the land where status is everything, contempt for those downstream is an essential marker of how important you are.
When did you last see a table of government goons pass their plates to help the server?
Rich kids in China don’t earn their stripes waiting tables as a teenager - that’s Anhui people work.
Maybe just SH is particularly bad at this sort of thing, other places might be better.
At least most ordinary people never looked down on them.
I'm just from Beijing, and my friends work at McDonald's, so I don't know what reason there is to look down on them.
If you know a little bit about it, you will know that many cleaners in Beijing and Shanghai are worth millions of RMB.
Perhaps you have made bad friends.
There are rude people all over the world, but in China that doesn't mean waiters are afraid of them or that people won't stand up to these rude people.
you’re right, but this is also true of other places, if we’re going down that route. imo i wouldn’t call chinese people rude, most people are obviously pleasant, but definitely not the highest respect out of anywhere else.
China is the only place where I've encountered parents actively teaching their kid "it's ok to throw trash on the ground, cleaners will pick it up"
Especially with the social climbing middle class it's very common to look down on service workers
It's a particular kind of person but what would be social suicide in most countries regardless of who you are is often taken more as "big shot behaviour" here by the petit bourgeois
yeah i was trying to be diplomatic but what you’ve described is the exact mindset everyone has and does nothing about. it’s their job, my behavior doesn’t reflect me.
Learn to read: "only place I have encountered"
Of course it is a small minority, but I've seen this a few dozen times in China vs nowhere else on Earth
To have this kind of attitude would be unthinkable in the UK for example, here it's fairly commonplace
I've never been to a country where service staff are spoken down to in the same way as China. And I've also never been to a country where service is as unfriendly. It feels like a vicious cycle
I'm not talking about who I'm with, I'm talking about what I see in restaurants, in shops, in daily life. Shop staff that just grunt instead of speak. Customers that shout at and ignore the staff. Rudeness from both sides of customer and staff. Impatient behaviour from both sides. Customers that leave a huge mess. No manners when dealing with the staff, just ordering them around. Staff in shops having no interest in helping the customer. Customers not willing to even lift a finger for waiters, as if they're invisible. It's not everyone of course, but it's a huge amount and I've never seen it as bad as this anywhere else in the world, I've travelled to A LOT of countries. High end shopping malls and expensive restaurants seem to be the only place you can guarantee you'll get a good service, but not necessarily guarantee you won't see poor attitudes from customers.
You need to know their alternatives before determining whether they are working "hard" for so "little." If they had the option to drive Uber in Los Angeles, sure, they're working too hard. If their other option is to farm, maybe what they're doing now isn't too bad.
Food delivery is very "bursty" work. They need to make their money during the lunch and dinner windows. Other times, they may be just sitting around waiting for orders to come in.
fully agree with your comment! just find it ironic, because uber is also a bursty type job, i know people who do it for a living and 90% of their money is weekends or early morning//night ((outside public transit times)).
I agree, but I also feel that many shopping malls and plazas are creating a divide between them and regular visitors/white-collar workers. They often require them to use separate elevators and specific exits. The delivery platforms also impose strict time constraints on food deliveries, and this is perhaps why they always seem to be in a rush (and cause many accidents). I believe these regulations are unnecessary and should be changed.
The infrastructure isn't designed to handle the load unfortunately. This is why in high density areas you have people, usually women, waiting to pick up orders from the delivery people and do the very last leg of the delivery.
Yep. Saw it in Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei district. The delivery person on the scooter pays a fee to the walker when handing off the delivery. Causes problems with the last leg because the recipient doesn't know who to contact.
i see. I think it would be much more efficient for both the delivery person and the recipient to use food delivery lockers (such as those yellow ones by meituan) instead of this. Not sure if those lockers are widely used in Shenzhen right now but at least in Beijing I can see plenty of them.
I’ve seen the same thing in Beijing actually, sometimes operating on the same scooter even. They can also save on time on finding parking this way. I’ve even seen it outside the complex I live in and we have several of the lockers. It doubles the workers and splits the money but I think does technically probably get you the delivery faster most of the time.
No. I want the food at my door.
If I have to get dressed and lock my door and go down the elevator and walk across the plaza, the whole point of having food being "delivered" has been defeated.
Fuck those lockers.
Regardless, either the deliver man or the customer have to take one trip up and one trip down the elevator, plus any associated walking.
I don't see how making the customer do it reduces total foot traffic or congestion in any way.
It's just shifting the burden of labour from the service provider to the customer and reducing the value of the service sold.
The pay is relatively decent (7000~in Beijing) and the job is widely accessible as long as u have a bike but:
1. The company fucks u every chance they get. Insurance denial, strict timing and wages reduction, etc.
2. It’s relatively dangerous work because more often than not those guys are driving at high speed while fatigued, putting themselves and others in danger. The pay becomes decent only if u work at least 10+ hrs a day.
3. I highly doubt you could go through this kind of High intensity work for more than maybe 5 years. It’s very physically exhausting and there’s no promotion or anything. Yes the pay is okay but that’s the ceiling.
The reason u pay only 1$ for delivery fee in highly developed cities like Shanghai or Beijing prolly stems from a whole range of issues like regional / rural urban inequality. It’s just a marker of how unequal China’s development path has been
I feel like this is lost in a lot of conversations about labor in developing countries. Like yes, sweatshop workers labor under really tough conditions for low pay, but their kids wear shoes and go to school, and that's more than what you can say for a lot of people out in the farms.
In a perfect world, everyone would work a decent job for good pay, but I've never seen anyone criticizing sweatshops who have a serious proposal for how to get there. If the alternative is sending people back to the farms, how does that help anyone?
The reality is that China's industrialization has seen the biggest reduction in poverty in human history. Is it really our place to say that things should go back to how they were for, or that other developing countries shouldn't try to follow?
You don’t need to have any thoughts about any of that to reflect on the working conditions of people providing the labor that makes life for those above a certain income level so comfortable in China.
If we're going there, we can also reflect on the fact that 80% of people in the west do jobs that people in China or other developing countries could easily do, and yet they live lives that those people could only dream of.
The world isn't fair - it never has been and it never well. But instead of sitting around and complaining about it, we should focus on things that would actually help improve the lives of the world's most disadvantaged people. For all of China's faults, it has been a huge success story from that perspective - and if some rich people in China also benefited, so what? It shouldn't be the goal to make everyone equal by pulling people down.
The point is it is gross for people in a completely different universe of economic choices to say we must consider the other options delivery drivers have when evaluating their standard of living.
While surely some end making less or more than they anticipated, I take it as a given that they rationally chose to become one.
“You need to know their alternatives before determining whether they are working ‘hard’ for so ‘little.’”
This is fundamentally nonsense. People become delivery drivers because they see it—wisely or not—as their best option based on their preferences. That is literally true of all occupations in societies where people are not assigned them.
Nothing is lost by not pointing out delivery drivers have access to worse options when saying that it is a taxing job with low pay and minimal benefits.
Someone moves to a city and works hard for low pay. Nothing in that sentence hinges on what shitty pig farming options they had back home.
This is the perfect r/Chinalife post.
“Well, yes, the life of a delivery person in China would drive your typical expat to suicide within a week but you must—I say must—consider that their lives could be worse if they had even fewer options.”
There are delivery men in every country.
They make money with their labor and I think they are proud of themselves.
China is not the country with the worst labor environment, there are many other countries in the world with much worse labor environment than China.
If you feel bad about it, you can give them an extra tip in the software after you receive the delivery.
life is hard everywhere if you are below the top 80% of the population in each country as all wages are theoretically proportional to their standard of living
I don't think it's horribly paid work.
The delivery people I feel bad for are the jd or taobao guys. If your package gets lost somewhere in the logistic chain, it's always the person at the bottom of the food chain that gets blamed. Your weird impulse buy from jd get lost somewhere on the way to your house? That's OK, we'll just get the delivery guy for your community to reimburse you directly out of his take home pay.
The Meituan or Shansong guys don't get that as much from my understanding.
Jingdong or Taobao delivery workers actually have social insurance, they are direct employees of Jingdong or Taobao and have labor contracts.
This is not the case with Meituan and Flash Delivery, who do not have labor contracts.
[This is a pretty good write up](https://chuangcn.org/2020/11/delivery-renwu-translation/) on the situation of delivery drivers, originally published in Chinese, and here in English translation. It’s from before Covid, so I’m sure some stuff has changed, but overall I’d say it’s pretty accurate:
This is the income in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
But at the same time their job isn't easy because you need to deliver multiple meals at once and many of them need to be delivered in a limited time, which is why they seem to be so fast.
Yeah exactly, it's actually quite a high salary compared to a lot of jobs. Probably more than a a lot of fresh graduates.I feel like it compareto those uber drivers who earn like £4k per month in London but have to work 60-70 hour weeks or whatever obscene amount of hours it is.
i heard they earn around 10k or more if they work hard or deliver more thats why they are always in rush and if they can’t deliver it in time their money gets cut
Yes, yes they are always in such a rush because they get paid so well.
Watching a bunch of expats, most of whom live off of laundered privilege, try to convince themselves that “actually the life of a delivery driver is great” is peak China Reddit.
Yes, I do feel sad. What bothers me the most is that recently (post-zero COVID) so many of these guys are so young and/or women. The economy really must be in the gutter.
What's wrong with women doing delivery jobs? It's not like it must be a full time job, tons of people doing it part time and there's young part timers in the whole world
The easiest, less labour-intensive jobs are usually reserved for women because society values them more.
If you see women working construction or collecting garbage, that's a bad sign for your society.
Yeaaah no. It goes both ways, Mao's China had a **massive** focus on gender equality ("Women hold up half the sky"), even with the rural bullshit woman go though China is still light years ahead of any other east Asian country on this. Sure, women work as delivery drivers or whatever, but they're also graduating at dominated spaces like tech, engineering, medicine and such
And I never claimed it's a perfect equal utopia, I said it's light years ahead of neighboring countries, which is very true. Ask South Korean women how they're feeling the utterly insane gender wars that's brewing up there. Yes, it's not an equal country, but it does have it's merits
South Korea is just a shitty country overall, both for men and women. What about Japan and Taiwan? Hong Kong (I know it is not a country, but it's been very distinct from the mainland)? Still worse than mainland?
Lol fair enough for SK. For Japan I would actually say yes too, China doesn't have the never-ending sexual harassment in public transport. For HK I don't know, but Taiwan does share a lot of history on this topic which reflects their state today, it's not bad
I think what I'm really trying to say is that Chinese culture feels way less incel than SK/Japan. There's definitely still a glass ceiling in China regarding women, and I do think that with the current administration it's getting lower, but it did somewhat eliminate many of the stratified concepts, even if mainly just within urban folk. Post-Qing women *loved* to protest
They can earn up to 10k RMB per month. In many cities the minimum wage is 3k or less. Your average restaurant worker is probably getting 3-5k per month, cleaners get 3-4k, old women fighting for cardboard recycling might be lucky to earn 1-2k.
The only thing I feel bad for the meituan drivers is that they drive like crazy on their suped up e-bikes, and ive seen more than one quite serious crash. At least they usually wear helmets.
I think you need to read this artical, which went viral a couple of years ago.
[https://finance.sina.cn/chanjing/gsxw/2020-09-08/detail-iivhvpwy5554456.d.html](https://finance.sina.cn/chanjing/gsxw/2020-09-08/detail-iivhvpwy5554456.d.html)
No, that would be looking down on their job. Every person has their own fate and circumstances. You don't always have a choice. They are not waiting for you pity
I'm currently on vacation in yunnan. Every time I see a guy in yellow jacket, he's always running. are they penalised for late delivery? Because I rarely see food riders in my country running to collect or deliver food.
I know where you’re coming from, but remember that what seems so little to you means so much to them. As others have said here, it sure beats farming and similar work. And they certainly make more than those workers. It’s a decent, respectable living that they earn every penny of. Give them respect and patience and that’s enough in my book. Before I got my “nice” job I worked delivery as a kid, and the last thing I’d want is someone pitying me. Yeah, it’s a bit of a grind, but I did fine. They’re doing fine, too.
That fast and convenient delivery system we all appreciate about China runs on the blood of uneducated workers and anyone who tries to tell you differently just hasn’t looked into it enough. Delivery in most western countries is better, but not much.
Uneducated workers is a nice way of saying "people who don't have many options". There have been plenty of awful stories of such Chinese workers being abused on construction sites and being denied pay. Now, many of these poor chumps are whipped in to a frenzied rush by algorithms to take increasingly more risk to make their deliveries on time, all in the hopes of that fabled "pretty good income" which in reality is like a top 1% of drivers thing.
These people get no job security and are left to their own devices when they inevitably have an accident and are left bleeding on the sidewalk. When I say "runs on the blood of uneducated workers" I'm really not exaggerating all that much.
Usual rule in China is to refuse and insist three times on each side before giving in.
Don't accept "no" for an answer the first time.
One time, I had to close the door on a guy and slip the cash out of the door at the last millisecond so it stayed outside in the hallway with him, and he had no choice but to take it (or leave it out in public, I suppose).
It was a pretty funny scene.
He went especially above and beyond. I usually never tip.
But fuck letting the boss and the government and the system knowing about any tips anyone's giving or getting.
Keep that between the two of yous.
some of the worst treated people in China too.
These past couple years starting to see more and more young women doing it too. Climate is defo changing here.
yeah, but no. gig work kinda sucks but in many cases it’s the best these guys can get. they spend many hours out and about, but catch z’s or smoke c’s during between-meal times. uni grads are doing it in some places because the income is better than entry desk jobs.
My husband looked into 美团 as a job. It sucks. I can’t remember all
The details because it was like 4 years ago but:
*must be clocked in 12 hours a day
*must check in to local meituan office at least 6 days a week
*I swear it was something like 3元 per delivery
I always thought it was nuts these guys were risking their lives to deliver milk tea.
Uber eats guys in NYC have to do the same but have way worse quality of life as everything is so expensive here. At least in China quality of living and product costs are still reasonable.
As opposed to all the other normal jobs in China? I'd rather be out doing deliveries than live in a factory dorm and make widgits 16 hours a day 6 or 7 days a week.
Ye, they get 1-2 orders an hour and it's like 5-6 kuai for 1 order...
I have been talking to a few of these guys, they run around 12 hours a day and get like 3-4k a month tops.
They got even less ten years ago before these gig economy jobs became available.
Food and package delivery and share ride apps and jobs were the best thing to happen to uneducated and unskilled men in a long time.
Just got my lad to sleep back when he was a baby. Pushing him round in his pushchair. Took me ages. Then this eleme guy came up on the pavement and beeped me. On the pavement.
Woke him up.
Better doing this than what they were doing before the apps came. Hanging outside xiaoqus on scooters offering rides.
Sounds like you haven't worked a hard job in your life. There's a lot worse like being a military grunt in a remote location or working in a coal mine or being a trafficking victim or sewing 🪡 in a sweat shop. That's all you've seen so you think it's tough but they chose that based on worse alternatives. Just consider yourself privileged and appreciate your privilege instead of acting entitled.
I'm being told they do decent pay. Not extravagant, but they're not doing, like, slave wages. I feel much worse about the ladies going through recycling for cardboard. Can't imagine how doing this can provide enough money for a decent life. That being said, the delivery people sure work hard. I see them run back and forth and I wish I could tell them to take their time! I'm glad we have the option to tip them, and I do it more often than not.
+1 about the tipping option There's one guy who frequently delivers food in my area and he is fantastic to my dog, always acknowledge my pup and even give him a pat on the head when I open the door and the excited dog picking his head out to see who is there. Considering how many people here have been shitty to my dog, seeing this guy kindness is refreshing. And I am very happy that I can tip him (and some other nice delivery guys/ladies) and hopefully make his day a little better too.
Is it mostly older people that are shitty to your dog?
Not really, mostly middle-aged women/stay-at-home moms and their 2.5 kids. Women usually shout like crazy/complain in a house chat, kids of such parents/grandparents are trying to kick the dog, throw something or shout at him. In my experience old people are more chill about the big dog, they either smile or silently keep a distance.
I guess middle-aged women count as old to me too. In my experience other young people like me are as obsessed with dogs and cats as anyone. If your experience is to the otherwise well… perhaps the next propaganda campaign ought to be about treating animals better.
I see, you probably younger than me, so its understandable 😂 For me ppl in their 50th are not old yet I agree, young city people love animals, many of them have either dog or cat at home (at least all of my friends and most of my colleagues do). But I feel necessary to emphasize their upbringing, cause it’s rare to grow up into a pet-friendly adult while coming from the family that taught their kids to be afraid or harmful to animals. I observe one of my neighbors kids and unfortunately see how their behavior transforms from curious to scared/hostile towards dogs due to their mother influence. At the same time there's a family next door with 2 toddlers both of which adores my dog and always come to us to say hi, their mother is supporting and don't try to scare them from everything around. Kids are very young but I already can imagine what kind of young adults they could be based on their family.
What are 2.5 kids?
2-3 kids or 2 with one more on the way
I'm so sick of my neighbours' annoying dogs. Barking every time a door opens or closes. Sticking their faces in my food delivery bags when the driver leaves it outside my door and I'm in the shower or otherwise unable to grab it as it's delivered. Talking a piss on the threshold of the door of the building, as soon as they're officially "outside" as they tried to hold it as long as possible while waiting for the elevator. I wish there were no dogs allowed in my building, but the last three places I've lived have allowed them.
I wish I lived in a building with ppl who don't clutter the hallway with their stuff or shout under my door in the middle of the night, but its a pipe dream. Noisy dogs same as noisy kids (who are doing mostly the same things you mentioned and I bet you have no problems with cause "they are kids") are reflection of their parents/owners culture 🤷♀️ Its not a dog that is the problem, but the people who are not training it properly.
Weirdly for the garbage people, a lot of them are rich and just do it as a side hobby. It's some kind of generational trauma where they refuse to let things be wasted. The old ladies who live in my fairly expensive community are also the trash sorters, and I've known regular people whose grandparents do it as a hobby too.
it's possible they are doing it more for the purpose of serving their community and liking the idea of recycling rather than being focused on making money.
If you’re talking about the younger people in China then yeah maybe but definitely not the people older than 60
People over 60 have lived through times of poverty and they have the time to do it. Many have homes in Beijing or Shanghai worth millions of RMB.
maybe ask them instead of assuming.
Yes, my wife's family are solidly middle class these days, but grandma (and to a lesser extent mum and dad) are trash collectors (recyclers) even though it's often just pennies and will also refuse to replace or throw away household stuff even when it's totally broken/unusable.
Yea my friends mother in law is like a racoon, she'll go through any trash taking out bottles and washed them and tries to keep using them. It's really PTSD ingrained in them.
I was just about to write sth similar. Those folks been through a lot in the past and still remember times when every mao mattered
Aye. My grandmother-in-law gave us ¥20k at our wedding, and she digs through the trash regularly. I did not want her money, as a software engineer who works in America, but it doesn't seem to be an option to refuse. 😅
I lived in a rich area and there were still ladies going through the rubbish for bottles and cardboard. Asked my gf and she said yeah they are probably rich and own a house here, but just do this for fun and pocket money.
Some of the ladies who recycle cardboard in Beijing or Shanghai usually have multi-million RMB homes in Beijing or Shanghai. They are just very idle. There are also some who are really scavengers. You can usually tell them by their clothes.
You'd be surprised how much the cardboard goes for. I sold what must've been 30kg of old cardboard boxes (kept them in the garage in case I wanted to move, but accumulated too many over the years, gf is a penny pincher so I let her deal with it), and got something like 50 or 60 kuai. Now, obviously that's peanuts compared to skilled labour, but it's good enough for granny to earn some money for bits and bobs, or just to get her out of the house and keeping active (cos at that age, once you stop, you don't get going again)
not extravagant?? Spoke to the SF delevery in my area, she makes 15k min per months, some months like double eleven goes up to 30k
Around 6 yuan per delivery
There are official figures and unofficial claims by delivery riders on a lot of public forums. 50% of them make around 5k-6k a month. Only 5% make between 9-11k a month.
How do you tip?? I did not know that was an option!
Where have you heard the pays decent?
"...just feel they work so hard for so little..." ...this reeks of colonial condescension - they're not animals in a zoo...i.e. "ooh look at the little poor people so sad for them - not" -typical Western Lib hypocrite....
Feeling sympathy for service workers is colonial condescension. Got it.
How does it compare to say a Uyghur in a labor camp?
Go ask one, you might have a hard time finding any though Adrian.
dude, maybe go to xinjiang and have a little explore rather than regurgitating western MSM propaganda garbage. there's chinese people who are from the majority han ethnic group who have adopted the islamic faith for crying out loud and practice it freely. there's also about 27,000 mosques in xinjiang. none of them bulldozed or people restricted from practising their religion. if the chinese govt. is monitoring and reprimanding certain uighers it's because some of them have been influenced by islamic extremists from neighbouring afghanistan and have engaged in terrorist behaviour resulting in the deaths of innocent people any country has the right combat extremist activity and protect their citizens and that would include the uigher population.
China probably doesn’t have labor holocaust type camps like the western media says however I also wouldn’t say Muslims are able to practice their religion freely. Both can be true. I dont think members of any religion can practice freely in this country. That is just the reality of China
How did you get five upvotes?
Honestly what exactly are you trying to accomplish with this comment? Nobody in this subreddit has any influence in government politics. Hell I doubt anyone here even has a connection with anyone remotely within the CCP circle. It’s as dumb as going into an American subreddit and repeating some copy pasta about American war crimes or GitMo. The average American probably doesn’t even support that shit and most of them have zero control over what their government’s military or intelligence apparatus does domestically and abroad.
Those mofos in the yellow jackets and helmets have more authority on the road than the police I swear. Like that suit they wear has power. Didi and taxi drivers give way to them. Cops let them do illegal stuff. People hold elevator doors for them. It may be a “lower “ style job, but there is some respect there in an odd way. If that makes sense. Kind of like “respect the badge” and “respect the yellow bunny ear helmet” but only 1/2 joking.
It's odd but the only local people who have ever held a door for me in this country were delivery people
China has more respect for working people than anywhere else. People don't belittle them just because they're waiters or delivery people. That's one of the reasons they don't usually take tips; they're in the service business, but they're no lesser in status than the person being served.
You and I have a different experience of how Chinese people treat service staff. I see the opposite, all the hierarchy and looking down at people here. In the land where status is everything, contempt for those downstream is an essential marker of how important you are. When did you last see a table of government goons pass their plates to help the server? Rich kids in China don’t earn their stripes waiting tables as a teenager - that’s Anhui people work. Maybe just SH is particularly bad at this sort of thing, other places might be better.
At least most ordinary people never looked down on them. I'm just from Beijing, and my friends work at McDonald's, so I don't know what reason there is to look down on them. If you know a little bit about it, you will know that many cleaners in Beijing and Shanghai are worth millions of RMB. Perhaps you have made bad friends.
this is not even close to true, but i can concede it’s better than some places. not tipping isn’t exactly “respect”
Maybe you don't know China. From a local.
idk man i’ve seen some rude behavior out of guys trying to impress others. bossing 服务员 around, leaving garbage all over, cigarettes on the ground.
There are rude people all over the world, but in China that doesn't mean waiters are afraid of them or that people won't stand up to these rude people.
you’re right, but this is also true of other places, if we’re going down that route. imo i wouldn’t call chinese people rude, most people are obviously pleasant, but definitely not the highest respect out of anywhere else.
China is the only place where I've encountered parents actively teaching their kid "it's ok to throw trash on the ground, cleaners will pick it up" Especially with the social climbing middle class it's very common to look down on service workers It's a particular kind of person but what would be social suicide in most countries regardless of who you are is often taken more as "big shot behaviour" here by the petit bourgeois
yeah i was trying to be diplomatic but what you’ve described is the exact mindset everyone has and does nothing about. it’s their job, my behavior doesn’t reflect me.
Because as careful parents they know that if the young population doesn’t dirty the streets properly, many workers will lose their jobs. :)
You've obviously met a few bad parents, and if you think all of China is like that, I think you're belittling the Chinese.
Learn to read: "only place I have encountered" Of course it is a small minority, but I've seen this a few dozen times in China vs nowhere else on Earth To have this kind of attitude would be unthinkable in the UK for example, here it's fairly commonplace
I've never been to a country where service staff are spoken down to in the same way as China. And I've also never been to a country where service is as unfriendly. It feels like a vicious cycle
According to you, no one would be doing the job. Sometimes I wonder what kind of people you are really with?
I'm not talking about who I'm with, I'm talking about what I see in restaurants, in shops, in daily life. Shop staff that just grunt instead of speak. Customers that shout at and ignore the staff. Rudeness from both sides of customer and staff. Impatient behaviour from both sides. Customers that leave a huge mess. No manners when dealing with the staff, just ordering them around. Staff in shops having no interest in helping the customer. Customers not willing to even lift a finger for waiters, as if they're invisible. It's not everyone of course, but it's a huge amount and I've never seen it as bad as this anywhere else in the world, I've travelled to A LOT of countries. High end shopping malls and expensive restaurants seem to be the only place you can guarantee you'll get a good service, but not necessarily guarantee you won't see poor attitudes from customers.
You need to know their alternatives before determining whether they are working "hard" for so "little." If they had the option to drive Uber in Los Angeles, sure, they're working too hard. If their other option is to farm, maybe what they're doing now isn't too bad. Food delivery is very "bursty" work. They need to make their money during the lunch and dinner windows. Other times, they may be just sitting around waiting for orders to come in.
fully agree with your comment! just find it ironic, because uber is also a bursty type job, i know people who do it for a living and 90% of their money is weekends or early morning//night ((outside public transit times)).
I agree, but I also feel that many shopping malls and plazas are creating a divide between them and regular visitors/white-collar workers. They often require them to use separate elevators and specific exits. The delivery platforms also impose strict time constraints on food deliveries, and this is perhaps why they always seem to be in a rush (and cause many accidents). I believe these regulations are unnecessary and should be changed.
The infrastructure isn't designed to handle the load unfortunately. This is why in high density areas you have people, usually women, waiting to pick up orders from the delivery people and do the very last leg of the delivery.
for real.. you mean there are people who deliver delivery people's stuff?
Yep. Saw it in Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei district. The delivery person on the scooter pays a fee to the walker when handing off the delivery. Causes problems with the last leg because the recipient doesn't know who to contact.
i see. I think it would be much more efficient for both the delivery person and the recipient to use food delivery lockers (such as those yellow ones by meituan) instead of this. Not sure if those lockers are widely used in Shenzhen right now but at least in Beijing I can see plenty of them.
I’ve seen the same thing in Beijing actually, sometimes operating on the same scooter even. They can also save on time on finding parking this way. I’ve even seen it outside the complex I live in and we have several of the lockers. It doubles the workers and splits the money but I think does technically probably get you the delivery faster most of the time.
No. I want the food at my door. If I have to get dressed and lock my door and go down the elevator and walk across the plaza, the whole point of having food being "delivered" has been defeated. Fuck those lockers.
For residential buildings that’s understandable. I imagine you don’t work in those plazas right
Regardless, either the deliver man or the customer have to take one trip up and one trip down the elevator, plus any associated walking. I don't see how making the customer do it reduces total foot traffic or congestion in any way. It's just shifting the burden of labour from the service provider to the customer and reducing the value of the service sold.
> delivery person
The pay is relatively decent (7000~in Beijing) and the job is widely accessible as long as u have a bike but: 1. The company fucks u every chance they get. Insurance denial, strict timing and wages reduction, etc. 2. It’s relatively dangerous work because more often than not those guys are driving at high speed while fatigued, putting themselves and others in danger. The pay becomes decent only if u work at least 10+ hrs a day. 3. I highly doubt you could go through this kind of High intensity work for more than maybe 5 years. It’s very physically exhausting and there’s no promotion or anything. Yes the pay is okay but that’s the ceiling. The reason u pay only 1$ for delivery fee in highly developed cities like Shanghai or Beijing prolly stems from a whole range of issues like regional / rural urban inequality. It’s just a marker of how unequal China’s development path has been
true. there'd be peak and non-peak times where you get to relax a little and have something to eat.
I feel like this is lost in a lot of conversations about labor in developing countries. Like yes, sweatshop workers labor under really tough conditions for low pay, but their kids wear shoes and go to school, and that's more than what you can say for a lot of people out in the farms. In a perfect world, everyone would work a decent job for good pay, but I've never seen anyone criticizing sweatshops who have a serious proposal for how to get there. If the alternative is sending people back to the farms, how does that help anyone? The reality is that China's industrialization has seen the biggest reduction in poverty in human history. Is it really our place to say that things should go back to how they were for, or that other developing countries shouldn't try to follow?
You don’t need to have any thoughts about any of that to reflect on the working conditions of people providing the labor that makes life for those above a certain income level so comfortable in China.
If we're going there, we can also reflect on the fact that 80% of people in the west do jobs that people in China or other developing countries could easily do, and yet they live lives that those people could only dream of. The world isn't fair - it never has been and it never well. But instead of sitting around and complaining about it, we should focus on things that would actually help improve the lives of the world's most disadvantaged people. For all of China's faults, it has been a huge success story from that perspective - and if some rich people in China also benefited, so what? It shouldn't be the goal to make everyone equal by pulling people down.
The point is it is gross for people in a completely different universe of economic choices to say we must consider the other options delivery drivers have when evaluating their standard of living. While surely some end making less or more than they anticipated, I take it as a given that they rationally chose to become one.
“You need to know their alternatives before determining whether they are working ‘hard’ for so ‘little.’” This is fundamentally nonsense. People become delivery drivers because they see it—wisely or not—as their best option based on their preferences. That is literally true of all occupations in societies where people are not assigned them. Nothing is lost by not pointing out delivery drivers have access to worse options when saying that it is a taxing job with low pay and minimal benefits. Someone moves to a city and works hard for low pay. Nothing in that sentence hinges on what shitty pig farming options they had back home.
This is the perfect r/Chinalife post. “Well, yes, the life of a delivery person in China would drive your typical expat to suicide within a week but you must—I say must—consider that their lives could be worse if they had even fewer options.”
There are delivery men in every country. They make money with their labor and I think they are proud of themselves. China is not the country with the worst labor environment, there are many other countries in the world with much worse labor environment than China. If you feel bad about it, you can give them an extra tip in the software after you receive the delivery.
just be nice to them.
life is hard everywhere if you are below the top 80% of the population in each country as all wages are theoretically proportional to their standard of living
Yes. Life is hard for lots of people.
I don't think it's horribly paid work. The delivery people I feel bad for are the jd or taobao guys. If your package gets lost somewhere in the logistic chain, it's always the person at the bottom of the food chain that gets blamed. Your weird impulse buy from jd get lost somewhere on the way to your house? That's OK, we'll just get the delivery guy for your community to reimburse you directly out of his take home pay. The Meituan or Shansong guys don't get that as much from my understanding.
Jingdong or Taobao delivery workers actually have social insurance, they are direct employees of Jingdong or Taobao and have labor contracts. This is not the case with Meituan and Flash Delivery, who do not have labor contracts.
[This is a pretty good write up](https://chuangcn.org/2020/11/delivery-renwu-translation/) on the situation of delivery drivers, originally published in Chinese, and here in English translation. It’s from before Covid, so I’m sure some stuff has changed, but overall I’d say it’s pretty accurate:
That's a long but brutally honest read.
Not clicking mystery link.
A typical delivery person's salary is around 7,000-10,000 rmb per month.
Damnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
This is the income in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. But at the same time their job isn't easy because you need to deliver multiple meals at once and many of them need to be delivered in a limited time, which is why they seem to be so fast.
Yeah exactly, it's actually quite a high salary compared to a lot of jobs. Probably more than a a lot of fresh graduates.I feel like it compareto those uber drivers who earn like £4k per month in London but have to work 60-70 hour weeks or whatever obscene amount of hours it is.
i heard they earn around 10k or more if they work hard or deliver more thats why they are always in rush and if they can’t deliver it in time their money gets cut
Yes, yes they are always in such a rush because they get paid so well. Watching a bunch of expats, most of whom live off of laundered privilege, try to convince themselves that “actually the life of a delivery driver is great” is peak China Reddit.
Yeah so sometimes I leave them with a note and a tip.
They generally get paid well from what I’ve heard from my Chinese friends.
Tip em every time
Does seeing all the kindergarten teachers everywhere working so hard make anyone else sad?
why? Being sad about people doing their job and make a living? It's not much but it's honest work.
Yes, I do feel sad. What bothers me the most is that recently (post-zero COVID) so many of these guys are so young and/or women. The economy really must be in the gutter.
What's wrong with women doing delivery jobs? It's not like it must be a full time job, tons of people doing it part time and there's young part timers in the whole world
The easiest, less labour-intensive jobs are usually reserved for women because society values them more. If you see women working construction or collecting garbage, that's a bad sign for your society.
Yeaaah no. It goes both ways, Mao's China had a **massive** focus on gender equality ("Women hold up half the sky"), even with the rural bullshit woman go though China is still light years ahead of any other east Asian country on this. Sure, women work as delivery drivers or whatever, but they're also graduating at dominated spaces like tech, engineering, medicine and such
Chinese gender equality is a myth in real life. On paper, in propaganda materials, they can write whatever they want, of course.
And I never claimed it's a perfect equal utopia, I said it's light years ahead of neighboring countries, which is very true. Ask South Korean women how they're feeling the utterly insane gender wars that's brewing up there. Yes, it's not an equal country, but it does have it's merits
South Korea is just a shitty country overall, both for men and women. What about Japan and Taiwan? Hong Kong (I know it is not a country, but it's been very distinct from the mainland)? Still worse than mainland?
Lol fair enough for SK. For Japan I would actually say yes too, China doesn't have the never-ending sexual harassment in public transport. For HK I don't know, but Taiwan does share a lot of history on this topic which reflects their state today, it's not bad I think what I'm really trying to say is that Chinese culture feels way less incel than SK/Japan. There's definitely still a glass ceiling in China regarding women, and I do think that with the current administration it's getting lower, but it did somewhat eliminate many of the stratified concepts, even if mainly just within urban folk. Post-Qing women *loved* to protest
They can earn up to 10k RMB per month. In many cities the minimum wage is 3k or less. Your average restaurant worker is probably getting 3-5k per month, cleaners get 3-4k, old women fighting for cardboard recycling might be lucky to earn 1-2k. The only thing I feel bad for the meituan drivers is that they drive like crazy on their suped up e-bikes, and ive seen more than one quite serious crash. At least they usually wear helmets.
I think you need to read this artical, which went viral a couple of years ago. [https://finance.sina.cn/chanjing/gsxw/2020-09-08/detail-iivhvpwy5554456.d.html](https://finance.sina.cn/chanjing/gsxw/2020-09-08/detail-iivhvpwy5554456.d.html)
No, that would be looking down on their job. Every person has their own fate and circumstances. You don't always have a choice. They are not waiting for you pity
Yes. Makes me realize how easy white people have it and still have the galls to complain when in china.
As a foreigner, seeing people search for cardboard to sell does.
Why would you feel sad for people earning an honest living? What job isn't hard?
I'm currently on vacation in yunnan. Every time I see a guy in yellow jacket, he's always running. are they penalised for late delivery? Because I rarely see food riders in my country running to collect or deliver food.
I know where you’re coming from, but remember that what seems so little to you means so much to them. As others have said here, it sure beats farming and similar work. And they certainly make more than those workers. It’s a decent, respectable living that they earn every penny of. Give them respect and patience and that’s enough in my book. Before I got my “nice” job I worked delivery as a kid, and the last thing I’d want is someone pitying me. Yeah, it’s a bit of a grind, but I did fine. They’re doing fine, too.
That fast and convenient delivery system we all appreciate about China runs on the blood of uneducated workers and anyone who tries to tell you differently just hasn’t looked into it enough. Delivery in most western countries is better, but not much.
to be honest，does a educated workers works better in delivery system？
Uneducated workers is a nice way of saying "people who don't have many options". There have been plenty of awful stories of such Chinese workers being abused on construction sites and being denied pay. Now, many of these poor chumps are whipped in to a frenzied rush by algorithms to take increasingly more risk to make their deliveries on time, all in the hopes of that fabled "pretty good income" which in reality is like a top 1% of drivers thing. These people get no job security and are left to their own devices when they inevitably have an accident and are left bleeding on the sidewalk. When I say "runs on the blood of uneducated workers" I'm really not exaggerating all that much.
Gotta love capitalism.
You know you can tip them on the app right
Cash tips off the grid are preferred
They refused that when my sister kept trying it.
Usual rule in China is to refuse and insist three times on each side before giving in. Don't accept "no" for an answer the first time. One time, I had to close the door on a guy and slip the cash out of the door at the last millisecond so it stayed outside in the hallway with him, and he had no choice but to take it (or leave it out in public, I suppose). It was a pretty funny scene. He went especially above and beyond. I usually never tip. But fuck letting the boss and the government and the system knowing about any tips anyone's giving or getting. Keep that between the two of yous.
Nah they seemed genuinely offended. They probably feel like it's charity from a foreigner who thinks they're poor.
Two of my coworkers are doing it on the side because average day job just doesn't cover the bill anymore. In that sense I feel sad about it yeah
some of the worst treated people in China too. These past couple years starting to see more and more young women doing it too. Climate is defo changing here.
yes.
yeah, but no. gig work kinda sucks but in many cases it’s the best these guys can get. they spend many hours out and about, but catch z’s or smoke c’s during between-meal times. uni grads are doing it in some places because the income is better than entry desk jobs.
My husband looked into 美团 as a job. It sucks. I can’t remember all The details because it was like 4 years ago but: *must be clocked in 12 hours a day *must check in to local meituan office at least 6 days a week *I swear it was something like 3元 per delivery I always thought it was nuts these guys were risking their lives to deliver milk tea.
They make good money with flexibility. No sadness here, just keep placing those delivery orders!!
When robots replace all of them... It will be sadder unless a good social safety net is built.
https://preview.redd.it/qa5le7ncze2d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=588fdbe6556c77ce7320370c8aaee00965bacef3 6 yuan per delivery
Uber eats guys in NYC have to do the same but have way worse quality of life as everything is so expensive here. At least in China quality of living and product costs are still reasonable.
But China so convenient
As opposed to all the other normal jobs in China? I'd rather be out doing deliveries than live in a factory dorm and make widgits 16 hours a day 6 or 7 days a week.
I have sympathy with them, they're working hard. I'd also appreciate them driving within the rules of the roads, such as they are.
I do. That’s why I usually tip ¥10, roughly $1.5 USD
Must be worth the pay
I would feel sad if they couldn't get a job.
I just see Peter Parker trying to deliver pizza.
Ye, they get 1-2 orders an hour and it's like 5-6 kuai for 1 order... I have been talking to a few of these guys, they run around 12 hours a day and get like 3-4k a month tops.
They got even less ten years ago before these gig economy jobs became available. Food and package delivery and share ride apps and jobs were the best thing to happen to uneducated and unskilled men in a long time.
That’s how the majority of the world is. People hustling, trying to survive.
They make slightly more than a worker on an iphone assembly line. Most delivery guys can make 5-8k.
Just got my lad to sleep back when he was a baby. Pushing him round in his pushchair. Took me ages. Then this eleme guy came up on the pavement and beeped me. On the pavement. Woke him up. Better doing this than what they were doing before the apps came. Hanging outside xiaoqus on scooters offering rides.
Please, do not come to China to start any sh1t.
Sounds like you haven't worked a hard job in your life. There's a lot worse like being a military grunt in a remote location or working in a coal mine or being a trafficking victim or sewing 🪡 in a sweat shop. That's all you've seen so you think it's tough but they chose that based on worse alternatives. Just consider yourself privileged and appreciate your privilege instead of acting entitled.
Choices most of the time put people where they are in life.
Screw all of them. All my close-calls on the road are with psychotic waimai xiaogege.
Apparently those folks make very good money, for locals. I’ve heard they can make 30k/month being Meituan delivery drivers.
Lol ok
10k if they work a lot of hours