2 min read
He squeezes poems from the same hours as his deliveries. Wang Jibing rides through the streets of Kunshan, China with food orders strapped to his back and verses forming in his mind — and this year, he won China’s Lu Xun Literary Prize, one of the country’s highest literary honors. His collection, Low Flight, was built from the ground up: over 140 interviews with fellow delivery riders, 60 questionnaires, and a poet’s attention trained on people the literary world rarely notices. The title poem opens with a quiet manifesto: “Who says spreading your wings means you have to fly high?” Wang dropped out of school as a teenager, worked construction, scavenged waste, and never stopped reading. He has now published three collections and plans to keep working as a delivery rider for three more years; as he puts it, he loves the vibe and it keeps him fit. There is something clarifying about a man who wins a major prize and says the award will never change who he is. Wang’s work belongs to a growing movement of blue-collar writers in China reclaiming their own stories — and his hope is simple: that readers will offer delivery riders a little more patience the next time a knock comes at the door.
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