Who Is Wang Jibing? Food Delivery Rider Wins China’s Prestigious Lu Xun Literature Prize
Wang Jibing, a 56-year-old food delivery rider known across China as the “delivery poet,” won the poetry award at the ninth Lu Xun Literature Prize, one of the country’s most prestigious literary honors, for his collection “Flying Low.” The prize was announced on Wednesday by the China Writers Association, which organizes the award every four years and has traditionally reserved it for professional, established writers.
Wang said his first reaction to the news was relief, followed by joy. “After that came calmness, and then happiness,” he told reporters following the announcement. He’d already described himself as satisfied simply to have been shortlisted, calling himself part of “a new generation of everyday creators.” Fresh off the win, Wang said what he actually wanted to do that day was get back on his scooter and return to deliveries.
Wang’s recognition, alongside that of Chen Hui, a market-stall vendor also nominated for this year’s prize, marks a notable shift for an award historically dominated by career authors, critics and translators, and one that’s being read as a broader signal that China’s literary establishment is opening its doors to writers whose work comes directly out of manual and gig labor rather than academic or professional writing careers.
From construction sites to delivery routes
Born in 1969 in Jiangsu province, Wang left school during junior high because of financial hardship at home. Over the following decades, he worked a string of manual jobs, including construction, sand dredging, running a street stall and collecting scrap for resale. Despite the instability, he kept reading whenever he could, often lingering at secondhand book stalls and combing through discarded newspapers. He eventually settled with his wife in Kunshan, Jiangsu, where the couple ran a small shop and saved for years to secure a mortgage on an apartment.
In 2019, at age 50, Wang became a delivery rider after hearing the work could pay well, making him the oldest courier at his station. Racing across the city on an e-bike against the delivery app’s countdown timer became the backdrop for his writing; he composed verses in the fleeting moments spent waiting for meals, standing in elevators, or between customer stops. That algorithmic pressure directly inspired his breakout poem, “Man in a Hurry,” which went viral online in 2022 after being inspired by a frustrating 2019 delivery gone wrong.
What “Flying Low” is about
Published in February 2024, “Flying Low”, translated from the Chinese “Di Chu Fei Xing”, captures what Wang has described as the unvarnished realities and emotional undercurrents of life as one of China’s more than 10 million food delivery riders. To build the collection, Wang interviewed roughly 140 fellow delivery riders, at times paying them small amounts out of his own pocket to participate, and gathered dozens of usable responses to ground the poems in real experience rather than his perspective alone. “I am one of them,” he said. “I face pressure, and I have moments when I break down.” He said he’d rather not judge the book’s literary merit himself, adding only that he hopes readers feel the sincerity behind it.
Why his win resonates beyond literature
Wang has said the emergence of grassroots writers like himself carries social significance that goes well beyond questions of literary craft. “Our connection to real life is perhaps deeper, and our expressions more sincere,” he said. His win lands amid a broader conversation in China about the more than 80 million people working in what the government classifies as “new forms of employment”, delivery riders, ride-hailing drivers and livestreamers among them, a workforce increasingly recognized as central to keeping cities running and consumption flowing, even as its members contend with algorithm-driven pressure and long, irregular hours. An English-language edition of “Flying Low” is reportedly in the works.
