I Deliver Parcels in Beijing by Hu AnyanMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
"Love amidst despair - this is the light that illuminates life."
If you thought your job was hard, you better read this book.
The first chapter alone had me exhausted.
I'm grateful for nonfiction books like these that bring us into very different life and work experiences. I come away from I DELIVER PARCELS IN BEIJING with so much more respect for our Kuya Grab couriers, and bakers, gas attendants and security guards, and convenience store cashiers and banketa sales ladies... just some of the many essential jobs that author Hu Anyan writes about with a seemingly clinical detachment, setting down frustration after frustration, noting his past self's reactions and lessons learned with hindsight's blessed clarity.
It reads as therapy with a bit of philosophizing, an attempt to craft meaning from a seemingly mediocre life.
But who is to say what is mediocre and what is outstanding?
Is the sole measure of a man the size of his salary, or the influence he wields at work?
Hu Anyan has shown that the every day man, no matter how outwardly humble, is defined by the freedom he feels, and by the weight of his soul, not of his purse.
The attempt, the struggle, is what humanizes us who are made by capitalism to become unfeeling cogs in a machine. This the author believes, embracing his individuality... nay, proclaiming it loudly against the void of a cruel world that has done him many wrongs.
And while unpleasant to read, in many ways, it is necessary reading.
(Recommended for STONER fans! Or even Stegner's CROSSING TO SAFETY )
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