From nobody to somebody, China's delivery men inspire many by embracing 'slash' careers

Zhang Fangyong, a delivery man, has captured widespread attention with his inspiring story of working his way up to becoming a nominee for the Laureus Sporting Moment of the Year at the 2021 Laureus World Sports Awards.

Zhang Fangyong. (Photo/cctv.com)

While engaging in the delivery business as a part-time job, the man from southwest China's Chongqing municipality never stopped chasing his dreams by training hard on a day-to-day basis. In 2017, he became China's first World Boxing Association (WBA) youth bantamweight champion.

Photo shows the boxing gloves and mouth guard of Zhang Fangyong. (Photo/cctv.com)

There are countless delivery men like Zhang who are embracing a slash career to find greater fulfillment through the juggling of multiple jobs and titles.

Photo shows Lei Haiwei reciting poems while waiting for food parcels. (Photo/cctv.com)

Lei Haiwei, also a food courier from east China’s Hangzhou city, made headlines when he won the top spot in the third season of the Chinese Poetry Competition, a popular TV show aired in 2018. Lei had served as a deliveryman for 13 years. Obsessed with ancient Chinese poems, he spent most of his spare time reading and studying poetry. Even while riding his e-bike to deliver parcels or food, he would still recite poems by heart while weaving through the traffic. Lei, who is a full-time teacher at present, always encourages his students to appreciate that the efforts they make in their education now will be rewarded at a future moment down the road.

Statistics from a food delivery platform indicate that about 56 percent of its delivery drivers in China had a second job – with 26 percent of these people operating a small or micro business, 21 percent working as technicians, 4 percent working as bloggers, and about 1 percent taking up the role of sanitation worker.