Labor in food and farming systems, migrant workers, labor rights, and changes in production-side work.
Riders eat just twice a day, pushing through peak delivery hours on biscuits and flatbread snacks. Medical studies across multiple countries show that the dietary imbalance and chronic stress wrought by intense delivery work are driving up gig workers’ risk of depression, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
At a slaughterhouse in eastern Sichuan, over ¥100 million in investment, daily beef sales mean pre-dawn complaint barrages, lost orders over scarce back sirloin, and blood stench that won’t wash off — nineteen years of education shattered by the butchers’ flexibility.
Lufeng’s lychees have had a bumper crop year, yet without a centralised collection point, local smallholders have no alternative to courier shipping. Courier and packaging fees eat up about a third of each order’s revenue—so those bountiful red fruits still don’t come cheap for consumers.
Heat-driven crop losses and surging tourist numbers are merely the fuse. The legacy of the rice acreage reduction policy, JA’s monopoly on procurement and pricing, and a farming population averaging 68.7 years of age are the agricultural crisis truly reflected by the “rice disturbances of the Reiwa era”.
In a Jing’an District McDonald’s, part-time pay is 19 yuan an hour — just two yuan more after 1,000 hours. Five stations, each worker locked to their post; rainy-day delivery surges send riders and staff unraveling together. The assembly line cuts apart workers’ shared lives.
Kangli, a Yunnan Yi woman, put herself through school on matsutake and rooted in Chuxiong; Jinpeng returned to the Greater Khingan forest, supporting his family by mountain foraging for over a decade. They discuss wild mountain produce pricing, depopulation of mountain villages, and the real labour under climate change.
Young Chinese people on a Working Holiday visa deliver food on foot in Melbourne, earning over 1,200 AUD a month; the platform sets no delivery deadline, and customers say “take it easy” – here, individual workers are seen and respected.
Since the 1980s, Taizhou growers have criss-crossed the country growing watermelons. In Yannan Village in southern Jiangsu, twenty households make polytunnels their home, dismantling and rebuilding year after year, running husband-and-wife partnerships across land that demands crop rotation.
This spring, Shaanxi logged its lowest average precipitation for the same period since 1961. Shitouhe Reservoir — the “Water Tower of Guanzhong” — is nearly dry. Mei County fruit growers pay steep wages for migrant workers to race the flowers; wheat fields yellow and wither over vast stretches.
Riders’ monthly cost: RMB 525 versus 1,500; pension benefits could differ by more than thirty times. Meituan’s “loss-making” claim crumbles under a close reading of its financial statements, while riders put it plainly: protection is not a luxury.
