Sugar after Medicine, Art after Work.
- Shreya Dharavath
- 11 hours ago
- 3 min read
“If the life of delivering food is bitter and is the medicine consumed during the day, then my poems are the sugar after that medicine.” (Wang Jibing, Our China Story)
Wang Jibing is a 57-year-old food delivery service worker who has won one of China’s highest literary honors, the Lu Xun Literary Prize, for his poetry collection, “Low Flight”. He has written over 6,000 poems during his career, while traveling more than 150,000 kilometers on the road, interviewing over 140 delivery riders. He reflected that, “This occupation has deepened my understanding of life, or else I would have lost my creative inspiration. I prefer expressing genuine emotions, authentic life, and do not wish to whine without cause, or create empty works.”
His poetry is bred from the relentless strain and patience that delivery service requires. In a poem that he wrote after delivering food at a temple, he compares himself to a “Bodhisattva, facing numerous devotees”, his customers. In another titled Man in a Hurry, he was inspired by an incident where his customer repeatedly gave him the wrong address.
There is a deeply human and refreshing beauty in Wang’s creative process that rightfully strikes awe in all of his readers. He has managed to reframe the conditions of his life to supplement his labor for inspiration, and his inbuilt creativity for passion. BBC reported that Wang said, “Financially I don’t need this job to make a living, but I love the vibe of the work and it keeps me fit.”
Wang is part of a larger cohort of blue-collar writers who are being recognized for their literary voices. One of these outlets includes the Picun Literature Group, a collective of grassroots writers based in the village of Picun, on the outskirts of Beijing. In 2017, group member Fan Yusu’s autobiography, “I Am Fan Yusu”, earned nationwide recognition for documenting her struggles as a migrant worker in China. When asked in an interview why her work resonated with so many readers, she replied: “I’ve no idea. Do you?” In another interview, she added: “I have no talent… I have never dreamed of changing my destiny with a pen.”
Similar to Fan, the medicine consumed during the day has exhausted other ‘new workers’ of Picun, China, a term surfacing more broadly from its distinction from ‘migrant workers’. In an interview, Xiao Hai, one of the most active members of Picun’s New Workers’ Literature Group, distinguished that migrant workers “were actually looking forward to working in the city”, but the newer expression “suggests that my fellow coworkers and I have our own demands. We aren’t machines who can work twelve hours every day without ever getting tired.”
In the interview, Xiao recalls his earlier years of writing, where “I was in Guangdong, and I felt somewhat lost but also curious; in the next four years, I was in Ningbo, and I was extremely lonely and directionless; then four more years, in Shanghai and Suzhou, I felt everything was falling apart. I had tried so many different jobs, but nothing seemed to be getting better in my life. It was during those four years when I wrote the most. If I didn’t write I’d feel as if I wasn’t alive… I had nothing but literature, I had nothing but my passion.”
There’s a stark difference in Wang and Xiao’s work environments, one always returning from or traveling towards a person’s brief, yet nonetheless human, company. The other, stuck in between the isolated industrial labyrinth of a factory. Wang’s ability to create comes from his constant interaction with a variety of customers, but Xiao’s comes from its absence. Where Wang could recognize the people he’s conversed with, Xiao scanned a room at The Observer’s office to look for products he manufactured throughout his career: “a hidden circuit board, an iPhone, a trouser drawstring.” What they share, however, is a found recognition within a found community.
Above all, in its earliest, rough form, writing is an act for oneself. Whether it is a means of survival or a chaser after the workday, sugar after medicine exists to soothe its consumer, and art after labor exists to reconcile with its creator. Still, it would be easier to create an equilibrium than to carve out tentative time for dessert while exhausted from the medicine. Though medicine is bitter, we swallow the pill and tolerate its side effects.