I DELIVER PARCELS IN BEIJING: One Man's Quest to Speak the Truth about the Global Gig Economy, deeply saddening, all too common story

I DELIVER PARCELS IN BEIJING: One Man's Quest to Speak the Truth about the Global Gig Economy
HU ANYAN (tr. Jack Hargreaves)
Astra House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Non-Fiction For the week ending November 3, 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In 2023, I Deliver Parcels in Beijing became the literary sensation of the year in China. Hu Anyan’s story, about short-term jobs in various anonymous megacities, hit a nerve with a generation of young people who feel at odds with an ever-growing pressure to perform and succeed.

Hu started posting essays about his experiences online during COVID lockdowns. His recollection of night shifts in a huge logistics center in the south of China went viral: his nights were so hot that he could drink three liters of water without taking a toilet break; his days were spent searching for affordable rooms with proper air-conditioning; and his few moments of leisure were consumed by calculations of the amount of alcohol needed to sleep but not feel drowsy a few hours later.

Hu Anyan tells us about brutal work, where there is no real future in sight. But Hu is armed with deadpan humor and a strong idea of self. He moves on when he feels stuck—from logistics in the south, to parcel delivery in Beijing, to other impossible jobs. Along the way, he turns to reading and writing for strength and companionship.

I Deliver Parcels in Beijing is an honest and startling first-person portrait of Hu Anyan's struggle against the dehumanizing nature of our contemporary global work system—and his discovery of the power of sharing a story.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I see why this was a literary sensation in China. It's a real telling-truth-to-power story of how labor exploitation functions; it's an honest appraisal of the personal costs of the gig economy in a country where that is fresh ground to be broken.

It isn't so new a topic here. We have many books about the gig economy and the evils of end-stage capitalism taking over our lives. But Author Hu is a man possessed of a self-deprecating streak, as well as personal humility, coupled with self-awareness. It makes his take on economic exploitation broadly relevant as well as personally centered. He is a worker, a man who feels the need to do the job he has taken to the best of his ability. Not for him the do-the-minimum slacking life! That has the downside of making him susceptible to manipulation by unscrupulous bosses whose desire to extract ever more labor from him he has trouble coming to terms with.

It's a struggle he becomes aware of as he realizes what this character trait he is lauded and exploited for is causing him real harm.

promotional art from the publisher

It's a sad truth that hustle culture is a sharp knife in the ribs of any kind of satisfying social life. Author Hu learns this early...and sadly often. It is mildly frustrating to follow the man as he grows into realizing he has only acquaintances instead of friends yet not see him really take steps to deepen his non-work connections with others. I can see the issue, of course; he's leading the same life as the people he meets.

Author Hu does say, as the end of the book approaches, that he is no longer the pushover he was. I wonder...I saw no sign of it because he told me this as a fact, in a kind of summing-up of his working (and only) life, and ended the story. He's quite young. It makes a kind of sense. It does make one want to yell, "AnYan! stop telling, start showing," until realization hits: He can't, there hasn't been time yet. It's a story in progress. I think it made the read more urgent for me after I really internalized that fact.

A book you might be tempted to read down, to think of as an incomplete memoir, that is really a call to Author Hu's age cohort to recognize and correct course on their own iterations of his behaviors. A very honest look at a very dark side of global labor exploitation that does so much to enable our spoiled, luxurious lifestyles.

Worth your time and treasure to get for your TBR.

AFTER THE DRAGONS, nice and subtle multilayered title

AFTER THE DRAGONS
CYNTHIA ZHANG
Stelliform Press
$7.99 ebook platforms, available TODAY!

Shortlisted for the inaugural Ursula K. LeGuin Prize for Fiction!

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Dragons were fire and terror to the Western world, but in the East they brought life-giving rain…

Now, no longer hailed as gods and struggling in the overheated pollution of Beijing, only the Eastern dragons survive. As drought plagues the aquatic creatures, a mysterious disease—shaolong, or “burnt lung”—afflicts the city’s human inhabitants.

Jaded college student Xiang Kaifei scours Beijing streets for abandoned dragons, distracting himself from his diagnosis. Elijah Ahmed, a biracial American medical researcher, is drawn to Beijing by the memory of his grandmother and her death by shaolong. Interest in Beijing’s dragons leads Kai and Eli into an unlikely partnership. With the resources of Kai’s dragon rescue and Eli’s immunology research, can the pair find a cure for shaolong and safety for the dragons? Eli and Kai must confront old ghosts and hard truths if there is any hope for themselves or the dragons they love.

After the Dragons is a tender story, for readers interested in the effects of climate change on environments and people, but who don’t want a grim, hopeless read. Beautiful and challenging, focused on hope and care, this novel navigates the nuances of changing culture in a changing world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The entire world is burning up...including the people in it.

We are in an alt-Beijing in a future based on today. Climate change has gone into overdrive, and Beijing's famously poor air quality has never been worse...or warmer. There is a new lung disease, fatality rate as close to one hundred percent as to be indistinguishable, called "shaolong" or burning lung.

Oh...and dragons are real, and are very common in Beijing. Little dragons, not like the hulking fire drakes that medieval Europeans hunted to extinction. Small, delicate, beautiful...but not particularly valued. In fact they're used much as cocks are, for dragon fights. (While this isn't gone into in detail, it leads me to remind thoose sensitive to animal harm that this factor exists.)

Eli comes to Beijing from the USA. He is a mixed-race Black and Chinese diasporan child with a working grasp of Mandarin and a strong desire to make his mark in biomedicine. Kai is a dying victim of shaolong who meets handsome, healthy Eli when he comes into Kai's...well..."job" implies he gets paid which he does not...position at a dragon sales shop-cum-dragon fight ring. Their attraction is mutual but stuttering at its start: Eli can't help noticing Kai's illness and thus sets up the pity dynamic...unintentionally, of course, but inevitably...which makes Kai resist his reciprocal feelings for Eli.

Their dance of approach and stillness and retreat and stillness was beautifully handled, while never leading to a Conclusion. They are involved...in a coupling-type thing...and it's making them both happy...today. The way we're left at the end of the story, that is all we can expect to hear about these young men. I would like to say aloud that I would love to read more stories set in this world because its depth-of-field in this novella is amazing and has not come remotely close to exhausting the possibilities it contains. What does it mean to fall in love with someone who is dying? What kind of world can you, the healthy one, believe in once you've realized he will die before you? Not things I'd know about at all....

I did not expect to think the AIDS parallels were particularly well-done or even necessary. I was wrong. The story is very much enriched by the author's quiet acknowledgment that these men face a short future and a rough road to the end. Nothing is made of that, as in there are no set pieces built around it, but it pervades their oddly tender yet standoffish dynamic.

Anyone who can make the Bird's Nest from the 2008 Beijing Olympics into a ratty-tatty old hulk where wild dragons swarm is someone who needs to delve far more deeply into this world they have made. The details that bring it to life...the drought causing the poor to pay so much for water while there are still fountains in the wealthy part of town, for example...made my greedy little story bandit within coo and gurgle.

This is the second novella I've read from Stelliform Press (after The Impossible Resurrection of Grief, reviewed here), and they have both been excellent cli-fic books with stellar (!) production and design values. It is clear that this press has a very well-defined mission and is using the best kind of writing...tense, intense, high-stakes storytelling...to get your attention. You will enjoy the trip even while you're unhappy with the implied destination.

More, please. Soon, please.