Wang Jibing Wins Lu Xun Prize for “Low Flight” as China’s Worker-Writers Gain Traction
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Aug 19
Wang Jibing Wins Lu Xun Prize for “Low Flight” as China’s Worker-Writers Gain Traction
2 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Aug 19
Summary
Last month, food-delivery driver Wang Jibing won the Lu Xun Literary Prize for his poetry collection “Low Flight,” marking the strongest institutional recognition yet for China’s worker-writer genre.
Wang’s poems draw on gig-work life—racing between deliveries, sending money home and enduring family separation—stories that have resonated as China’s economy weakens, wages stagnate and youth unemployment stays high.
Writers including courier Hu Anyan and former nanny Fan Yusu have also turned factory, migrant and platform labor into widely shared essays and best-selling books, some later translated overseas.
For many readers, especially China’s middle class, the appeal goes beyond curiosity: scholars say these narratives reflect growing anxiety that precarious work could become their own future.