In the twenty years after graduating from high school, Hu Anyan held nineteen different jobs. He worked as a 24-hour market clerk, a bicycle mechanic, a package courier, a security guard, in a logistics center, at a gas station, and in a cafeteria kitchen. He moved from one major Chinese city to the next, each time moving on when the work became unbearable and the boss too bossy, settling into a tiny room with nothing more than his well-thumbed copies of Chekhov and Carver. From the psychology of the pecking order in a gigantic package sorting hall to the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of human resources departments and the ideal design of a delivery route—with genuine curiosity and dry humor, Hu Anyan recounts extraordinary stories of humanity against a backdrop of immense hardship. "I Deliver Packages in Beijing" is an intimate account of life as a low-wage worker in the anonymous megacities of contemporary China. For the first time, it offers a glimpse into the lives of the masses who are marginalized, pushed into poverty, and forgotten by social realities, the nature of the economy, and state power. New product