Delivery Riders’ Plight and Middle-Class Anxiety: Who Can Save Whom?
What shocks me about this man’s suffering is that it was unnecessary.
— Bertolt Brecht
Two sharply opposing viewpoints have emerged within the discussion. Supporters argue that director Xu Zheng could have easily chosen any other subject matter; the mere fact that he chose to focus on the real lives of delivery riders is, in itself, commendable.
Critics, however, contend that the film essentially exploits the hardship of the lower classes. At its most charitable, it offers little more than hollow, cheap sympathy. At its worst, by celebrating the riders’ admirable qualities—diligence, resilience, optimism, and mutual aid—in the face of adversity, the film masks the genuine structural pressures they endure. For the audience, the more they settle back in their cinema seats, observing from a comfortable distance a working-class existence they can easily “keep at arm’s length,” the more a private sense of security settles in their hearts.
Compared with labourers in traditional sectors such as mining, automotive manufacturing, chemicals, catering, and sanitation, the broader social attention delivery riders attract today stems not merely from the public’s cheap sympathy for the underclass, but from a more pervasive social psychology.
Under the spotlight, delivery riders are indeed “seen” on screen. Yet, judging by box office returns and reviews since its release, audiences have not warmed to it. The reason lies in the film’s framing of the riders’ lives, which suffers from an insurmountable blind spot.
I. The Middle Class Hiding in Their Shells
In a metropolis such as Shanghai, countless individuals find themselves enclosed within such shells, basking in a sense of security and privacy. While these shells may insulate their occupants from the outside world, they remain fundamentally inextricable from the broader social systems that sustain them. Accessing information on a smartphone, for instance, relies entirely on telecommunications infrastructure; similarly, spending a tranquil afternoon at a café is made possible by beans shipped from distant lands and the service of staff. Human survival remains deeply interdependent, yet individuals typically perceive their role merely as “consumption”, blind to the arduous labour woven into the intermediate chains that supply them. Most café patrons are unlikely to grasp the struggles of Ugandan farmers, just as smartphone users rarely know that the minerals essential to their devices are extracted by enslaved children in the Congo. Consequently, consumers feel little guilt over the harsh working conditions endured by those labouring beyond the confines of their shells.
British Marxist Raymond Williams described this mode of existence as “flowing enclosure”, a condition that digital technology has only intensified today. From the outset, the film continually presents viewers with imagery of a digitalised society: the sharp beeps of QR codes being scanned, commuters on the underground scrolling through their phones, algorithms assessing employee performance, mobile live-streamers “talking to themselves” into their screens at all hours, and university students making a living playing online games, headphones perpetually on. Yet these images evoke none of the once-prevalent utopian visions of a digital future. Instead, the overall tone they conjure is oppressive, depicting a society in a state of extreme fluidity: information flows, people flow, goods flow, yet human existence grows increasingly enclosed, isolated, and strained.
Food delivery platforms have emerged within this highly fluid society, setting food in motion and allowing people to simply wait at home for their meals. Yet this time, the presence of delivery riders can no longer be ignored. As they act as living conduits, transporting food resources through their own mobile bodies, their labour process has become one of the most conspicuous features of everyday urban life. Those dwelling in their shells, particularly the middle class, continue to harbour a polished, secure, and prosperous image of the city. Yet they are inevitably intruded upon by the stark imagery of delivery riders: their laboured breathing after climbing the stairs, their silhouettes speeding along the roads, and their faces etched with anxious desperation.
Because they cannot ignore it, people feel compelled to say something about the existence of food delivery riders in pursuit of cognitive equilibrium. What the film sets out to address first is this widespread social psychology surrounding riders, and only secondarily the riders themselves. Thus, despite roughly 60% of delivery riders hailing from rural areas, the film chooses a member of the middle class undergoing “proletarianisation” as its protagonist to tell their story.
Labelling a high-earning programmer like Gao Zhilei as “middle class” is, in fact, imprecise, for he owns no means of production. Although the salaries of technical and managerial staff far exceed those of lower-tier workers like delivery riders, making them appear to belong to different social strata, both groups are fundamentally wage labourers who cannot steer their own destinies. A single P2P collapse, a wave of redundancies, or a serious illness is enough to cast the protective shell Gao Zhilei relies upon into a precarious state, leaving him unable to sustain his previous standard of living.
This is precisely where the film aims to strike a chord with its audience. Gao Zhilei’s predicament may well serve as a microcosm of the real-life struggles faced by many cinema-goers—bearing the full weight of family responsibilities, even a graduate of a prestigious university cannot afford to sit back and plan for the long term. Instead, they are left frantically hunting for any means of income, which makes becoming a food delivery rider an entirely logical decision.
II. What Choice Is There But to Survive?
Two narrative threads run through the entire film: one follows how Gao Zhilei and his family struggle to hold onto their precarious middle-class life after being laid off by a tech giant; the other traces the hardships endured by delivery riders in their work and daily routines.
As these two threads begin to converge in the final act, the film’s underlying values finally come into focus. The suffering Gao Zhilei witnesses and shares with the riders, combined with their optimism and resilience in the face of adversity, sparks a significant shift in the family’s outlook. They are no longer bound by the externally imposed ideology of consumerism; they cast aside the decades-old belief that individual struggle alone can lead to social mobility. Confronting the brutal social reality, they choose to “strip away the false to retain the true,” rebuilding their understanding of a good life from scratch, centred on what it truly means to be human. Ultimately, Gao Zhilei’s family relinquishes the hallmarks of middle-class status—a larger house, better schooling, and a more respectable lifestyle—to ease the pressures and anxieties of daily life.
The film attempts to explore this fantasy of an alternative lifestyle through the stories of delivery riders, yet in doing so, it allows the first narrative thread to overshadow the second. Indeed, the riders’ suffering has taught the middle class most vividly that life sometimes requires “retreating in order to advance.” Yet they fail to consider what choices remain for riders when there is simply “nowhere left to retreat.”
Operating under the logic that “survival is everything,” the film carefully selects and trims these real-life rider stories, suggesting that the only path to mere survival is quiet endurance. Dahei, a top-performing rider, pushes through agonising stomach cramps every day to race through heavy traffic, all to compensate a colleague left disabled after a crash he caused; single mother Xiaomin is forced to take her young son on her e-bike every night to make deliveries; and Laokou, even after being knocked down by a car and suffering a bleeding leg wound, steadfastly refuses hospital treatment, opting instead to save the compensation for his son’s leukaemia surgery.
Initially, Gao Zhilei could not stomach the riders’ belief that “one must swallow their pride just to survive”, and he too tried to push back. When stopped by security, he insisted that in his former life as a shopper he had been free to wander through upmarket centres at will; when a customer berated him to his face, he tried to stand his ground; when an order was cancelled for being late, he furiously hurled the bouquet he was carrying against a wall; when a customer casually handed him a bag of rubbish, he answered with a sneer; and when tasked with delivering coffee to a former colleague, he chose to turn away. Yet the price of such defiance was an inevitable string of complaints, negative reviews, and fines.
Under the pressure of a 15,000-yuan monthly mortgage, Gao Zhilei ultimately chooses to compromise, much as anyone enduring hardship inevitably does. This marks a turning point in the protagonist’s maturation. He resolves to commit fully to delivery work, learning logistics tricks from fellow riders and absorbing their optimism and grit. He gradually comes to appreciate the coordination with restaurant staff required to complete an order—that particular sense of fulfilment that only arrives when you truly settle into a new role. This section faithfully captures many of the finer details of a rider’s working life, charting a blend of hardship and lightness, and the human capacity to find levity in the grind. The work is undeniably grueling, yet the riders are sustained by a network of family and friends who look out for one another.
Yet shadowing this seemingly positive arc of growth is a cold, disciplinary control. There is one thing about a rider expending effort to transport a warm meal from a restaurant to a doorstep; there is quite another when platform capital and algorithmic management push them into overwork, even to the point of causing traffic accidents. When Gao Zhilei collapses on the pavement from hypoglycaemia, the fear of a fine forces him back to his feet to complete the ‘Smile Plan’ verification, though he cannot manage a single grin. To simply survive, you must endure: submit to the discipline, wear down your vitality, and ultimately sacrifice your dignity. Throughout, the film strives to strike a balance between hardship and joy, weighing the positive and negative implications of the conviction that “everything is done just to stay alive.”
Yet the film overlooks another path available in reality: resistance. Resistance, too, is a fight “to stay alive”, but one aimed at building a better life. Beyond the screen, food delivery riders are actively mobilising in the real world.
When dignity is repeatedly trampled upon, riders may choose not to endure it in silence, but to rise up and fight back. On 12 August, just three days after the film’s release, a delivery rider at the Xixi Century Centre in Hangzhou knelt on the ground after being fined by a property security guard. The incident sparked collective outrage among local riders, who gathered to demand an apology from the property management and security staff. As early as April 2023, riders in Shanwei launched a mass work stoppage after the platform fined them for refusing to work in severe weather. The platform brought in riders from other regions to cover the orders, but following negotiations, the standoff ended with the platform agreeing to increase the pay per order by one yuan. In May 2021, a rider in Weinan, Shaanxi, set fire to their delivery uniform and insulated box right in the middle of the street. Nor should we forget the organiser behind a rider alliance who once used the internet to amplify riders’ voices and helped numerous delivery workers resolve labour disputes. Meanwhile, hundreds of delivery rider protests take place across the country every year, though the vast majority go unnoticed due to their small scale.
III.“Programmers Don’t Understand a Courier’s Pain”
Programmers and delivery riders may well be the two most familiar types of ‘digital labourers’ today, yet because they occupy different nodes within the digital industry’s value chain, they cannot truly see one another, since the algorithms designed by programmers have instead become tools for platforms to control and exploit riders, which is why some joke that “programmers don’t understand a courier’s pain.” So, what happens when a programmer “falls” into the role of a delivery rider?
The film uses a violent clash between riders to depict the predicament of couriers operating under algorithmic control. ‘Top Rider’ Da Hei spends every day recording and poring over optimal delivery routes in his ‘secret playbook’. On the road, he cuts recklessly through traffic as if the streets were empty. While this secures his top spot, it also drives delivery time windows to their absolute limit, drastically increasing the difficulty for other riders to complete their orders. Over this very issue, Da Hei gets into a dispute with other riders, which ultimately escalates into a physical fight.
The algorithmic logic laid bare here is unmistakable: when delivery riders, driven by the pressures of daily life and attendance tracking, speed, ride against traffic, or run red lights on a given route, the time they save at the risk of their lives is absorbed by the algorithm and reproduced as a new baseline for delivery times. This cycle repeats until the delivery time allowance for every route is squeezed to the absolute limit. In the film, the protagonist Gao Zhilei is involved in multiple traffic accidents. Despite his ability to write code, as a rider he is forced to submit to the algorithm’s control. Even after being thrown hard to the ground by a car, he can only stagger and daze through his final delivery, driven on by the relentless countdown.
By the film’s end, Gao Zhilei has developed an app called “Lulutong”. The app identifies and marks the locations of schools, shopping centres, and delivery lockers along delivery routes, as well as minute details like block and flat numbers within residential compounds, all to help riders boost delivery efficiency. It embodies the practical wisdom Gao Zhilei has distilled from day after day on the road, merged with the sweat and toil Da Hei poured into that “secret playbook”.
Yet it is all too foreseeable that, without a change to the algorithm’s underlying logic, the time saved via “Lulutong” will simply trigger another round of delivery time compression. The most fundamental issue, therefore, remains the power dynamic between platform capital and digital labourers that drives the algorithm. At this juncture, however, the film sidesteps any critique of the platform companies, instead pinning its hopes on programmers to rescue riders from their plight through technical fixes.
Under different societal conditions, programmers could certainly leverage their technical skills to forge an alternative path for delivery riders. In France, the Coop Cycle movement has developed an app that allows couriers in different areas to adapt the software to local needs and launch their own cycling delivery cooperatives. In Montreal, Canada, the Radish delivery platform is co-owned by riders, merchants, and consumers, all of whom receive a share of the profits at year’s end.
Yet, in an era dominated by platform monopolies, embarking on such a venture demands critical reflection on platform enterprises and the courage to shatter the comfort of one’s secure shell. Gao Zhilei, whose approach is fundamentally one of stepping back to advance, lacks any impetus to make that leap.
As the film draws to a close, the ‘Lulutong’ proposal is placed before the platform’s chairman, and Gao Zhilei is poised to receive another offer as a platform programmer, hinting at a neatly wrapped-up resolution. In this denouement, his time with the riders has ostensibly taught him about human warmth and hardship, catalysing a shift in his personal values. Through ‘Lulutong’, he seemingly turns a setback to his advantage and secures his return to a major tech firm. The living hardships of riders such as Dahei and Laokou are smoothed over, and ‘Lulutong’ is positioned as the solution that will help riders navigate the myriad obstacles and dead ends of their daily work.
Let us imagine Gao Zhilei’s life ahead. If he truly values the relationships and emotional bonds forged during his time as a rider, how will he navigate the contradiction once he returns to work as a programmer? Day in, day out, he will be tasked with developing algorithms and building the very tools the platform uses to oppress and exploit his former “comrades-in-arms”. How is he to resolve this conflict? What course of action should he take?
In his later works, the German playwright Bertolt Brecht consistently sought to prevent the depiction of working-class suffering from becoming mere pastime for the audience. In the final acts, he deliberately preserved—rather than smoothed over—the contradictions and tensions within the narrative, prompting sustained reflection on reality and steering the characters towards new life choices.
Yet *Upstream* chooses to obscure the inherent contradictions and tensions of its own world with a self-contradictory conclusion, ultimately undermining itself: if Gao Zhilei, back in his role as a programmer, retreats once more into a safe, private shell and can peacefully accept the platform’s oppression of riders, on what grounds can we trust that his experience delivering food was seared enough into his memory to cure his middle-class survival anxiety?
Walking out of the cinema and seeing riders speeding down the street, the warmth the film cultivates reveals itself as an illusion, leaving the viewer feeling not empowered to move forward, but utterly powerless. The film does not spur audiences to imagine what actions society must actually take to genuinely help delivery riders out of their predicament. Life goes on, suffering continues, and we see not a single ripple disturb the surface of reality.
Editor: Wang Hao