Published : 08/05/2023
"We all live in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." The 19th-century British literary figure Oscar Wilde's words are apt to describe the protagonist of today's story.
His name is Wang Jibing, a deliveryman who has penned down a staggering 4,000 poems.
Why does he write? Wang Jibing says: If the life of delivering food is bitter and is the medicine consumed during the day, then my poems are the sugar after that medicine.
Wang Writes poetry in between deliveries
"Squeezing wind out of the air, forcing blades from the wind, igniting fire from bones, and drawing water from fire. Those who rush have no seasons, only one stop and the next one..."
In 2022, this poem titled "The Rushing People" went viral online, amassing 20 million views and making its author, Wang Jibing, famous.
But, Wang Jibing is not an author. He is just a food delivery person among the millions. This work of fame is actually born from an unpleasant delivery experience.
One day, Wang Jibing received a delivery order. After huffing and puffing up to the 6th floor following the given address on the order, he found that the customer had provided the wrong address.
He immediately got in touch with the customer and arrived at the right location in the second community, but the address was still incorrect.
On his third attempt, he finally delivered the order after climbing up to the sixth floor of another building.
The customer was a young man and was quite rude when receiving the food, "Why did it take so long? Can't you even find the address?" He curtly shut the door after talking.
Because of this order's delay, Wang Jibing was late for the next three deliveries in a row.
While apologising to customers, he was conceptualising in his head and wrote "The Rushing People" during his trip back after work.
The poem blew up online, causing a Beijing-based publishing house to reach out to Wang Jibing and propose to publish his poetry collection.
In 2023, the poetry collection of the same name, "The Rushing People," was officially published.
Wong picked up scraps and ran a bookstall without giving up on writing
Success with one hit poem might look accidental, but behind it lies decades of persistence.
Wang Jibing was born in Pizhou, a small city in Jiangsu. As a child, he had a passion for learning and was a promising student. However, due to his poor health, his family sent him to a martial arts school before he could finish middle school.
A few years later, to support his family financially, Wang Jibing went north alone to work on a construction site.
In his free time, while his coworkers would be eating, drinking and playing cards, he would be reading at second-hand book stalls. His habits didn't fit in with the group.
In the 1990s, he wrote a novel called "Small Car Enters the Village," which was selected for publication in a local magazine.
Just as he was preparing for wider exposure, his father, thinking he was ignoring his duties, burned his 200,000-word manuscript.
This severely affected Wang Jibing. He stopped submitting his works for publication but secretly continued his habit of writing.
After several year, Wang Jibing moved to Kunshan with his wife. They ran a street stall, opened a bookstore, and even scavenged during tougher times but after years of hard work, they finally opened a grocery store to support their livelihood.
As soon as their financial situation improved slightly, Wang Jibing immediately saved up to buy a computer. He posted articles on online forums and sent his poems to literary magazines.
The royalties that he received were not substantial, but seeing his own words printed in type, Wang Jibing found the courage to persevere.
Wang composes "Song of the Workers"
In 2020, amid the spreading coronavirus pandemic, business in their store dwindled. Wang Jibing had to switch occupations again and became a delivery man.
Although the job may seem grueling from the outside looking in, for Wang Jibing, it was an ideal career, as it allowed him to meet different people and see different things, providing him with a never-ending source of inspiration for his poems.
Once, he was delivering a meal to construction workers at a temple. He wanted to pay respects to Buddha following the habits in his hometown, but calls to rush the delivery kept coming in.
Wang Jibing thought to himself, "Why do I need to worship a Bodhisattva when I myself am the living embodiment of one?"
On his way back, he wrote a poem called "The New Temple": "Time is pressing, and I have many other orders that need to be delivered punctually. Right now, I am the Bodhisattva, facing numerous devotees."
On another occasion, he delivered a meal to a drunken man per the order details but received a call from a female customer who claimed that she'd mistaken the address and sent the meal to her ex-boyfriend's place.
When Wang Jibing reluctantly tried to retrieve the meal, he saw the drunk man crying. When he gave the food back to the woman, he couldn't help but tell her: He still cares about you.
On the way back, Wang Jibing penned down the poem "Please Forgive": "Please forgive these howling winds, forgive our darting through streets and lanes, filling every crack, just like forgiving a bolt of lightning for the scar it etches on the sky."
All the big and small events that occurred during his deliveries became inspiration for Wang Jibing's creations: "This occupation has deepened my understanding of life, or else I would have lost my creative inspiration. I prefer expressing genuine emotions, authentic life, and do not wish to whine without cause, or create empty works."
Some people believe that the reason Wang Jibing has garnered attention is not just for the stark contrast between "deliveryman" and "poet," but also because his words reflect a genuine "song of laborers'.
With 150,000 kilometers covered and 4,000 pieces of work to his name, Wang Jibing continues to jot down inspirations on cigarette packs or discarded newspapers during his delivering breaks.
His second poetry collection, "I Clumsily Love this World," will soon be published. He says that in the future, he will continue to write: "With dreams in heart, we can always carve out a piece of sky wherever we are."
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