Over the years, digitalization has changed the lives around us, and it is also like a lane, giving another group of people the possibility to turn their lives around. Among them, there is a group of "mom riders".
Most of them come from townships and towns, come from poor backgrounds, have mud under their feet, have low education, marry early and have children early, and are always easily isolated from the formal job market. On the way to deliver food, they clenched the handlebars, as if holding another possibility in life. The biggest benefit of this work is that it is more laborious and instantly paid, and the biggest benefit is freedom, allowing them to have the right to choose and balance between working to earn money and parenting in a foreign country, even if it means more hardship.
After the epidemic, the number of female riders on the street has increased visibly. According to media reports, Linquan County, Fuyang City, Anhui Province, is the place where the most riders come out, and it is also the home of female riders. Linquan is China's most populous county, and it only took off its hat as a poor county in 2020.
We interviewed several "mom riders" from there to share their stories.
01 Reclaim freedom
At five o'clock in the morning, the two children and husband were still sleeping. With a dim streetlight, Liu Qin, 26, dragged the black electric car out of the house, put on a helmet and sunscreen suit, and put a mineral water bottle filled with warm water into the trunk. She pulled out another red pear-colored lipstick, gently applied it to the car mirror, and finally put on her mask.
The cool breeze on Changshu Yushan Road caressed the bare back of her neck, and she felt that even the air outside was sweet. Holding the front of the car firmly with both hands, it also seems to control some new possibilities in life.
Last winter, her husband, a full-time rider, suggested that Liu Qin run a crowdsourced rider and earn dozens of yuan a day, enough to buy vegetables. Anyway, the mother-in-law can help with the two children. She agreed without even thinking about it. The husband's monthly income is about 10,000, but the consumption of the two children is too high, the tuition fee of the eldest son's kindergarten is 6,000 a semester, plus nearly 1,000 yuan of rent, the economy is overstretched, and the two often quarrel over money. Sometimes she wanted to buy some toys for her son, and her husband always felt that it was a waste of money.
Part-time is the most realistic option for them. She graduated from junior high school, worked as a housewife for six years, and had no choice in the competitive job market, and she never dared to look for an office job.
The most important reason for not being able to work full-time is to have children. She was eager to go to work and often couldn't help but look at the recruitment posted at the door of the store.
She once passed by a Taobao clothing store and saw an advertisement posted at the door to recruit a packer, and she stood at the door hesitating for half a day, or did not have the courage to go in. The packer also had to take on the job of trying on clothes, and she worried that she didn't meet the body standards.
Now that the eldest son is finally in kindergarten, her mother-in-law, who lives nearby, can come over during the day to help cook and wash dishes. She just makes part of her time to work.
The rest of the time she still has to take on the role of mother. There are many things she has to do herself. For example, after the children's extracurricular tutoring, she does not trust her husband very much. Educating children requires too much patience, and husbands are prone to irritability. She believes that adults should reason with their children no matter what. All these years she has always read stories to her children before going to bed.
Every day, she runs at both ends, comes home around eight o'clock in the morning, sends her children to school, goes out again at ten o'clock, picks up her children at two o'clock at noon, helps with homework, and tells stories at night to coax children to sleep.
It is impossible for her not to be there if the child is sick. The eldest son's physique is not good, he coughs and vomits as soon as he catches a cold, and he lives in a hospital from time to time. But the illiterate mother-in-law can't even register. Once she was running a single, received a kindergarten teacher WeChat said that the child had a fever, she sent the order and rushed to the kindergarten. As soon as the child hung up the water for a week, she did not run a single again during this period.
Her goal is to earn enough of a hundred a day. In her opinion, one of the advantages of this job is that the interpersonal relationship is simple, not being managed, and not having to get along with colleagues who have intentions.
After graduating from junior high school, she followed her then-boyfriend and now her husband to Changshu because the other's father had been doing home improvement in the local area for many years. She has sold shoes and cosmetics here, because she is not extroverted enough, she is always assigned to sweep the counter, the orders are robbed by other colleagues, and the supervisor does not look up to her.
Delivering food doesn't have those bad feelings. The phone page was full of positive reviews, and one female guest reminded her that it was too cold to remember to wear gloves. She remembers the last time she was affirmed to be in elementary school, and her teacher praised her for studying seriously.
She cherished this opportunity and used the map software to familiarize herself with the route in her spare time.
Now in many places she doesn't even need to navigate.
02 As soon as the motor sounds, it rushes into the new world
After running for a month or two, she found herself addicted to running and uncomfortable not running. Her husband said that she didn't even like to bring children. The child pestered her to prevent her from leaving, so she went out in the early hours of the morning when the child was still sleeping.
As soon as the motor sounded, she rushed into the new world. Here she felt the warmth of strangers again—sometimes because she was female. Some time ago, when the south was hot, a man asked her to wait and came back and handed her a bottle of water.
Most of the people she had the impression of were friendly. She always had a smile on her face, and her temper was practiced with children. These people are more beneficial than emotionally unstable children. When guests blame, the rider's husband will also comfort that it is normal, and the weather is bad and will be late.
She likes to take scenic orders the most. She has been in Changshu Yushan for six years, and she has not yet felt the charm of the country's five-A-level scenic spots. Her radius of activity is usually pushing a stroller within a kilometer downstairs, and occasionally telling her husband to take her children to the scenic spot, the other party refuses to say "there is no need to spend this money". Now she calmly rode into Kuncheng Lake, located on the southern outskirts of Changshu City, which was wider and brighter than she thought, and she stopped from time to time to take a picture or two.
There is always suffering in the real world. Sometimes it rained heavily, her eyes were always hurt by the rain, her face was full of water, she couldn't see the road ahead, she was a little scared in her heart, but comforting herself that driving slowly would always arrive. The weather is not good, the income is rising, and the overall mood is still a plus.
All these years she has been shrouded in the anxiety of poverty. Shame grew into an ugly tumor in her body.
The first is the outward inferiority complex.
The mobile phone photo album has accumulated a lot of green and shiny lake water, but never took selfies. After marrying at the age of eighteen, her weight soared from 96 pounds to 130 in one breath, and her husband also disliked her for being fat.
"There is facial anxiety." Feeling gray and dark, I didn't even dare to walk into the mall, and my peers inside were wearing makeup, as if they were glowing.
Then there is health anxiety, she takes the child with everywhere it hurts, always worried about her terminal illness on the Internet.
After delivering the takeaway, she felt a little more energetic. She also tried to cut off her inferiority by bit with the reward of her labor. She first made a weight loss card that she had watched for a long time, and her husband was out of the big head, and she was out of the small head. My favorite gift was two Korean brand lipsticks, which cost a total of more than a hundred years. She prefers the red pear color, and when she thinks of it during the delivery process, she takes it out and paints it.
In fact, she wore a mask throughout the work, and no one could see it, but she looked at herself in the mirror and was beautiful enough.
She had met two female riders at the intersection, one of whom was heavily dressed and "not at all like a delivery man" and the other was dark-faced. But they all had a look of concentration on their faces.
The biggest change is that it's cheerful. Afraid to talk, she will take the initiative to chat with the store. Some shopkeepers complained to her that the business was not good and wanted to run takeaways. She chatted with the rider again, and the rider's wish was to open a takeaway shop. The contradictions of the real world are a bit funny.
03 "My child can't be a left-behind child"
From the moment she gave birth to her eldest son, Liu Qin felt that her soul did not belong to her. After giving birth to her youngest son four years ago, she was attached to the child in its entirety. The mother-in-law also gave up her job in the fabric shop to help her with housework, and she still could not bear the consumption of her mother's job. It was 12 o'clock at night when her husband delivered the takeaway, and he basically fell asleep, not to mention giving her mental support.
Loneliness often hung over her, and she also had a local Mother's Hometown, but ten kilometers away, the two had little communication. The child-rearing partner came from online, when she gave birth to a child in a hospital in Suzhou, the same ward people built a mother group, most of which are office workers, after giving birth to the child, she went to work, in front of them she was a little ashamed of herself, do not like to talk. The only friends are neighbors who are also from out of town, and the two occasionally share parenting experiences.
Liu Qin was born in 1995, likes to study, and after learning that she scored more than 600 points in the middle school entrance examination, she was happy and entangled. The family owed a lot of debts due to the failure of the chicken farm business, and she eventually gave up her studies and went to Changshu to work.
The second child was accidentally conceived, she made up her mind to abort the hospital, and the mother-in-law asked her mother to intercept it - the mother-in-law succeeded, and she always compromised in front of her mother.
After the birth of her youngest daughter, she was even more powerless. What broke her most was that the younger daughter couldn't move to beat the eldest son, the eldest son cried and hit back, and the younger daughter also cried, crying one after another, violently tearing her brain nerves. She really didn't know how to solve the disaster in front of her, and sometimes she just cried together.
She confessed that she regretted having two children, and even more regretted entering the marriage prematurely. She never talked to her mother about her vulnerability. She actually understood her mother--the local countryside of Linquan was too poor, and most people still faced the loess and turned their backs to the sky to cultivate the land for a living.
Most girls graduate from junior high school and marry early to have so-called dependence, and only a small number of female classmates with good family conditions go to university in big cities.
There was no more contact between them, and she was in two worlds, and she didn't know what she could say.
Therefore, she has a strong will to change the fate of the next generation.
"My children can't be left-behind children." For the first time, her tone was firm. When she was a child, her parents sold vegetables in Shanxi, and she worked as a left-behind child for three years, she knew that sense of loneliness, and she did not want her children to be around her grandmother.
She wants to give her children a better education and more possibilities. She loves to buy storybooks, sometimes hundreds of them, and her husband and mother-in-law feel completely unnecessary, "Why spend that money?" "She had to secretly buy these picture books and secretly read them to her children."
She has the confidence to earn money on her own, and she no longer needs her husband's consent to make some decisions. She recently bought two books for her children, namely "Hands Are Not used to Hit People" and "I Have Good Habits." She plans to enroll her son in a painting class, two sessions a week, more than 10,000 a year.
She also plans to send her daughter to learn piano and dance. In junior high school, she was taken to town by her mother, and her classmates were all talented, singing and dancing, playing the guzheng and playing the guitar, while she stood on the podium and didn't know anything—she couldn't let this scene repeat itself in her daughter.
The weather was clear the previous Sunday, and the eldest son sprayed the black electric car with a small green water gun, and the water splashed everywhere. She felt a long-lost happiness.
Recently she noticed more and more mom riders on the road. She loves to brush up on the rider community news, and the story of a female rider whose performance is at the top of the list excites her, "With two children, it's so powerful, we are no worse than men." ”
She's not the only rider mom who becomes happy. A few days ago, she turned out the circle of friends to show her husband, which was a group photo of her female rider and girlfriend, with the text "I am a little takeaway, I run I am happy." "She's so resonant.
When the youngest daughter goes to kindergarten, she plans to be a full-time running rider. She predicted that she would definitely not be able to beat her husband, whose rank was not low, and the unit price was higher than hers. But what does it matter, it's her own path.
04 Earn money for the first time after marriage
Eight o'clock in the evening to one o'clock in the middle of the night is the busiest time for the rider Blue Snowflake. She has the most late-night takeaway orders in the Shifan Street area of Yueqing City. She was not timid, there were no street lights in some places, and she dared to rush in with a piece of dark paint.
In order to pay off the family's debts as soon as possible, Blue Snowflake became a crowdsourcing rider. Last year, she and her husband opened a fried chicken shop in Yueqing, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of principal were cobbled together — including the seven thousand yuan that her grandfather left for her when he died. But unexpectedly, the epidemic has seriously affected the catering business, and the return to the original is far away. The streets are a little deserted, and sometimes no one takes orders, they just want to come by themselves, and they can also take orders from outside to earn money.
The crowdsourced rider's account was applied for by her husband for her. The husband had said he was going to run, and she was at home to watch the shop plus take the children. She thought it would be better to run on her own.
When no one really helped her watch the children, she would find a strap and carry her little daughter in front. She is very careful about the safety of her children. The harness is tied as tightly as possible and the car drives as slowly as possible. Fortunately, the little daughter was very well-behaved in her arms and hardly made a fuss. There was a cool breeze on a summer night, and the two of them really felt like a ride. After ten o'clock she usually does not take her children out.
She always meets good people. Some guests saw her holding the child, cast a sympathetic look, said oh so late the child child is not sleeping, no one to help you bring it? So hard. Later, there was an extra ten yuan tip on the account. She replied with a thank you.
Compared to her previous experiences, she still likes the job. After graduating from junior high school, she left her hometown Linquan and worked in the electronics factory, garment factory, and chemical fiber factory in Jiangsu Province, sometimes sitting for twelve hours, her ass was numb, and she was still angry. She used the wedding dowry money to buy a small van for her husband, sold fruit in the open air for several years, and the eldest daughter was tanned. Some time ago, she made some electronic products at home, and she didn't get a few dollars every day for back pain.
She doesn't like to work in a closed environment and is comfortable to move. Sometimes when delivering food comes across an old house without an elevator, she carries her daughter up the sixth and seventh floors, "Not tired, get used to it." ”
Blue Snowflake has a patriarchal mother-in-law. After giving birth to the eldest daughter, she was in The Ring, but the mother-in-law frantically persuaded them to have another one, she would help bring it, and the father-in-law's six thousand yuan pension was also their couple's. As soon as the family put pressure and lobbied, her heart softened.
Three months after she was pregnant, she asked her in-laws if she wanted to check the sex of her children. The other party said that it didn't matter if you checked or not. When she entered the delivery room and learned that it was a girl, the other party suddenly ignored it. In the hospital, she borrowed six thousand yuan from relatives. After returning to Linquan after sitting in the confinement, the mother-in-law said with a dark face, you see that the neighbors are four or five children, and the youngest is a boy. She felt uncomfortable, but she didn't know what to say.
The shop was deserted, the children were crying, and the husband was throwing a tantrum. She was often helpless, did not know who to hate, had to hate herself. But she also knew that there was no regret medicine in the world.
When the rider let her earn money for the first time after marriage, even if it was only twenty or thirty yuan, it also made her regain a little self-confidence that she had lost for a long time. The eldest daughter has just entered the middle class, and the tuition fee is more than 4,000 a month, and the interest class must be added 1,000. After a year of delay, she finally enrolled her daughter in an Orff music class.
The reward she gave herself was an octopus durian of dozens of pieces, which she took home and ate with her two daughters. In the past, as soon as she smelled durian, she wanted to throw up, and after giving birth to her second daughter, she inexplicably began to like it, as if it was a rare sweet fragrance in life.
The road is sad, there have been many nearby road construction lots recently, and her ankles have been cut by a stone. But when the little daughter pinched her face and the pink mouth muttered to make her laugh, none of that mattered.
The day before yesterday, she and her husband quarreled over money, and for the first time she said loudly, I take the child, I still earn money, you are not satisfied, you are still arguing with me. Her husband apologized to her, saying that he didn't want to get angry, but the pressure was too great, and he knew she was hard.
It was also after so many years that he finally expressed empathy for her.
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