A last-mile runner takes orders from a food delivery driver outside SEG Plaza, one of the tallest skyscrapers in Shenzhen, China. An informal network of last-mile runners close the gap between harried delivery drivers and hungry office workers in a Shenzhen skyscraper. Photo / Gilles Sabrie, The New York Times
SEG Plaza, one of the tallest skyscrapers in Shenzhen, China, has about 70 stories and thousands of tenants.
During the lunch rush, the wait for a lift can stretch to half an hour — a nightmare for a food-delivery driver trying to fill as many orders as possible.
The solution? People like 16-year-old Li Linxing.
As lunchtime approaches on a Monday in August, he positions himself near the building’s entrance, eyes scanning the surrounding streets.
When a delivery driver appears, Linxing thrusts his hand into the air and shouts: “Delivery stand-in!”
The driver, still straddling an electric scooter, hands an insulated takeaway bag to Linxing, tells him which floor it goes to and scans the QR code that Linxing wears printed on a card hanging around his neck, to pay him 2 Chinese yuan, about US28c.
The whole operation takes mere seconds. And then the driver speeds off to the next destination.
The last leg of the journey is up to Linxing.
He squeezes into the lift lobby with dozens of other people — many of them fellow delivery runners — to go up to wherever his hungry office worker awaits.
Then it is back downstairs and repeat for the rest of the day, from lunchtime through the afternoon and into dinner, until around 8pm.
This logistical feat, a gig economy within a gig economy, is another example of the entrepreneurial spirit of Shenzhen, a city of about 18 million in southern China that pioneered the country’s embrace of a market economy.
None of the dozens of last-mile delivery workers who mill outside SEG Plaza every day has a formal contract.
Most are retirees, although during the summer, teenagers like Linxing appear, too. Some are there out of financial necessity, others for fun or exercise.
All of them are there because there was a need, and someone had to meet it.
Linxing had started a few weeks earlier, after the school year ended, at the suggestion of his uncle, a delivery driver. “Originally, I just came to see what it was like. Then, I started doing deliveries myself,” he said.
It was tiring standing in the sun from 10 or 11am until 8pm, he said. The building was a maze, too, with dozens of lifts, some going only to certain floors. But there was a simple reason Linxing kept coming back: “The money”.
There is actually not much to be had. Runners say they generally earn about 100 yuan (about US$14) a day — far less than the average wage of about US$37 a day for private sector workers in Shenzhen.
The delivery drivers usually earn between 4 and 8 yuan per order, so giving the last-mile runners 2 yuan is no small cut. But the drivers say it is worth it to speed up deliveries.
And for the runners, the pay is enough to be worthwhile — pocket money for teenagers, or extra cash for retirees who would have trouble being hired elsewhere.
To get an edge over their competitors, many sprint to flag down a driver first. And some runners have perfected their techniques for maximum efficiency.
They won’t head upstairs until they have enough orders to make the trip worthwhile — sometimes as many as six or seven bags in each hand.
A runner in a purple visor, who gave only her last name, Zhou, pressed the call button for a down lift as soon as she reached her floor. By the time she had finished her delivery and had run back to the lift bank, it was waiting.
She said she started doing deliveries after hitting the mandatory retirement age of 50 at her job in a cafeteria. “It’s exercise,” she said. “I can’t sit at home. Doing nothing is tiring and unhealthy.”
Zhou picked up a steady stream of orders throughout the day, but by far the highest volume went to Shao Ziyou and his wife, who were positioned on a prime corner in front of SEG Plaza.
They had so many packages that they subcontracted the actual running to a dozen people working under them. The couple took 1 yuan for every bag, the runner the other.
This arrangement is possible because Shao is known, in local media and according to the other runners and drivers, as the first to set up outside SEG Plaza, and many drivers said they know and trust him.
Shao, 47, said he came to Shenzhen from Anhui Province in eastern China, and for a time sold circuit boards in the building’s sprawling electronics market.
Seven or eight years ago, he said, he was taking a smoking break outside when a passing delivery driver complained that the building was confusing to navigate.
Shao said he could help make the delivery. The driver offered to buy him some water in return, but Shao said he could just pay him instead — 3 yuan, the price of a bottle.
At first, Shao said the task was something to do during lunch breaks. Some drivers were nervous about handing over the packages, he said: “They worried I’d take it out and eat it”.
But word spread, and in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic stopped foot traffic to the electronics market, Shao switched to deliveries fulltime, joined by his wife.
Soon, others caught wind of the opportunity: retirees from the neighbourhood and people from the building’s cleaning staff, after their shifts.
Inevitably, competition stiffened. Some runners offered to complete the delivery for 2.5 yuan, then 2. But business surged nonetheless, because the pandemic had made people so reliant on online deliveries. Runners expanded to some nearby buildings, too.
“Everyone’s used to it, and people are lazy. Sometimes, you send it to their door, and they’re sitting inside and say, bring it to me here,” Shao said. “Do you want me to feed you too?”
On an average day, Shao said, he and his wife dispatch 600 or 700 orders to their assistants.
If a customer complains about a missing delivery, the driver demands that Shao track it down or pay compensation. (Drivers can be fined 50 yuan by the delivery platforms for lost orders.)
Heated scenes over wayward deliveries play out multiple times a day.
“5911B doesn’t order food until noon!” Shao said to a runner who had delivered to that suite in error. “I’ve been around for so long, you think I don’t know who orders early and who orders late?”
“OK, OK, I’ll pay for it,” the runner eventually said.
Still, the atmosphere is generally civil, if chaotic. There are enough orders to go around, and most drivers said they weren’t picky about who they handed off to.
There was one exception. This summer, a new group of competitors emerged: children, some of them in primary school.
Their parents had brought them to get a taste of hard work during their summer holidays.
Viral videos on social media showed hordes of children, some in pigtails or school uniforms, swarming around delivery drivers and clamouring for orders.
Shao Yang, a driver, said he would not entrust the children with his orders. “I was afraid they’d get lost,” he said. “They were all really small.”
Soon after the videos surfaced, the local government prohibited children from deliveries, citing safety concerns.
The legal age for regular employment in China is 16, so Linxing could keep running. He didn’t plan to stay for long, however. He wanted to find a factory job instead.
“I like that kind of work better,” he said. “Sitting in an air-conditioned room.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Vivian Wang
Photographs by: Gilles Sabrie
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