For many, Taobao has become their best friend. After all, the process cannot be any easier. On a dreary evening, you scroll through the website in your pajamas, tap a couple of buttons and voila; everything you need will shortly arrive right on to your doorstep. The only energetic exertion you face is to get off the couch and fetch your package.
However, that package does not just appear at your door, as you know. There is a real person who has to deal with bad traffic, bad weather and occasional bad dogs to ensure that the last mile of the delivery process is complete.
Ming Zhu, or “Skinny Zhu” as his customers call him, is one of thousands of “last-mile” delivery guys who are in charge of the final delivery process to apartments in numerous neighbourhoods in Nanjing.
But there is more to Skinny Zhu’s identity. He is also the owner of a second-hand bookstore that has stood still in the heart of a mid-sized community compound by Xuanwu Lake for 12 years.
Yellow warm lights, the smell of fresh-brewed coffee, just you and the books and the rest of the world falls away. If that is the image of a bookstore you had in mind, Skinny Zhu’s is nothing but. A “battlefield” is the more appropriate word I would use to describe it.
In a 60-square-metre storefront jammed into the street, countless packages were piled up on the floor. Skinny Zhu was in the middle of the package hill, sorting through the packages to chuck them to his wife, a stout woman skilled in scanning package information into a computer; his mom and dad, both with sheer white hair but in very good shape as they bend double to put packages on the scales and load them into a mini van, driven by Zhu’s brother-in-law.
The Zhu family were like highly efficient workers along a production line, doing all they can to get the job done. It almost seemed like a crime to interrupt them for a short chat.
“Now our main business is shipping service, not selling books. If you want to buy books, why don’t you go to Taobao like everyone else? ” Skinny Zhu answered my question like firing bullets in Nanjing dialect, so fast and without even looking up from sorting through parcels surrounding him.
I’ve noticed this is the talking style of the entire Zhu family. Like everyone who makes a living in the delivery business, time is gold as their salary depends on the numbers of packages shipped and delivered per day. They usually get 1-2 yuan for every package shipped and delivered.
“300 to 400 a day. Maybe more than that. Who’s counting?” Skinny Zhu said in a snarky tone when I asked him about his daily delivery record. This was one the busiest time of the year for the family, right before the Chinese New Year Holiday. Working more than 14 hours from 8 am to 10 p.m. is just a normal day for them to make sure 300 packages arrive on time.
“This is nothing. Double-eleven is the real nightmare.” Zhu’s wife said. During “double eleven” online shopping festival last year, the big promotion created more than 50 million packages to deliver, lots of logistic companies worked overtime for an entire month.
It also takes a savvy mind to survive in the delivery rat race. “I’ll first call those who live on the higher floors. It takes time for them to come downstairs. In the meantime I can deliver one or two packages for those who live on first or second floor.” Skinny Zhu is very impressed with his own timing skills.
He is also proud of his good relationship with his customers. “Most of my customers are nice. They know me as the bookstore guy. ” He can match names to faces and even tell which two people are from the same household when they come to the bookstore to pickup packages.
“I’ve known him for years. I used to come to his bookstore to buy second-hand books,” said a retired University professor who lives in the neighbourhood, “It used to be a place with a soul.”
At its height, the bookstore used to be crowded; sometimes with people, always with books, stacked to the ceiling. Books lined up in bookcases. Books spread out on tables. People would come to the bookstore for a treasure hunt or simply enjoy a moment of serenity.
But running book business has never been easy in China. For a long time it was a relatively low-profit gentleman’s game. Over the years, Zhu’s bookstore has increasingly looked less like a bookstore. At first the Zhu family tried to sell children’s dolls on the front counter, but business didn’t look up.
“We were just thinking about closing down when the logistics guys found us two years ago. I asked my husband to give it a shot.” Skinny Zhu’s wife said.
The logistics companies needed a place nearby for easy pick-ups and someone who knows the neighbourhood inside and out . Skinny Zhu’s bookstore seemed like the best choice. It saves shippers the trouble from going to the logistics warehouse, which is in a remote area of the city, and makes it easier for local residents to pick up packages if not at home when they are delivered.
“Sometimes people would put their package in my store for days without picking up. It gives me a headache. ” Skinny Zhu complained. But they trust Zhu to keep their packages safe.
The bookstore has become crowded again, teeming with customers-but none of whom are here for the books. Now the “bookstore” has become nothing but a name.
By 2020, China is to become the next delivery empire second only to the United States. The total number of packages are over 14 billion. On holidays, 60 percent more packages than usual are delivered. China’s online shopping users are expected to reach 891 million by 2020( 2.1 times that of 2015) and the total e-commerce market is predicted to reach ¥13.91 trillion.
This means more business for the bookstore. “I’m thinking about making more space for packages,” Skinny Zhu gave a quick glance to the few dusty books remaining on the shelf; books such as How to Make Money Fast and Easy and The Secret to Survival in Today’s Business Culture.
The books have said it all, without even uttering a single word.
