The riders live as a pair of legs
Takeaway riders are embedded in the city, often seen as a pair of legs, but their complete lives are not cared for. Documentary photographer Yang Yifan decided to restore them to living people, and as the perspective sank and deepened, the bitter pleasure of the riders also made him examine his own destiny.
Source|Official account "True Story Project Pro" (ID: zhenshigushi3)
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Lottery tickets that didn't win
When Yang Yifan arrived at the urban village on the edge of Chaoyang District, it was just after 7 o'clock in the morning. There are skyscrapers, old red brick houses inhabited by migrant workers, old roads are scattered with sand and gravel, and the signboards of roadside shops have several Anhui panels. Yang Yifan parked his car on the sand, picked a noodle restaurant, and near 8:30, he left for the rider's house.
The rider lives on the second floor of a private bungalow, scrawled with cement outside the house, with only a simple steel ladder leading to the house. The shooting continued into the evening, and Yang Yifan joined the riders' dinner.
It was Sunday, the day of the two-color ball draw. At 9:15 p.m., plastic balls began rolling on second-hand television screens, and riders sitting around put down their dishes and chopsticks and swiped out lottery tickets from their clothes.
Photographing riders for nearly five years, Yang Yifan found that many riders have the habit of buying lottery tickets. Some people will buy lottery tickets on specific days, and some people will always insist on buying the same number, "What if you get rich overnight." " is the most commonly heard answer.
Most of the people who wander in big cities have an ambition that matches the big city. For riders, there is not much hope for ambition, and buying a lottery ticket is one of them.
Others are more pragmatic. Some riders described their plans to buy a house in Beijing, and the serious look reminded Yang Yifan behind the camera of his fledgling self.
It was 2008, Yang Yifan graduated from Chongqing University and entered the newspaper as an intern, making a name for famous seniors in the industry. The senior didn't talk much, and it was not easy to speak, and he asked Yang Yifan to come up with good content before signing the internship report. After a year of internship, Yang Yifan got the internship report, and the senior wrote him a long farewell email, encouraging him to stick to his journalistic ideals. In the next 10 years, Yang Yifan insisted on the front line of news, in addition to recording grand narratives, but also filming obscured individual stories.
At that time, he also had the same ambitions as the rider in front of him. Riders want to win the lottery, or put down roots in big cities, and Yang's ambition is to win the Hesai Award, the highest award in the photojournalism world.
None of these ambitions stand up to scrutiny. None of the riders who bought lottery tickets won the lottery, but most of them were in huge debts, experiencing unimaginable poverty and stress, struggling in big cities and needing to "play for their lives" in order to earn money.
The riders galloped faster and faster, gradually leaving only one pair of legs.
A few years ago, "Takeaway Rider, Trapped in the System" was popular all over the Internet, but as long as the platform system exists, it is difficult for riders to get out of control, and "playing with life" will not stop. Not long ago, Yang Yifan lost a rider, the other party ignored the red light, the cheap electric car in the middle of the road in the wrong direction, turned, drifted, the speed surpassed all vehicles on the road
Leaving life safety and recorders behind, the hope that the rider is pursuing is so slim, just like the Hesai Award that Yang Yifan no longer thinks about. In 2018, he said goodbye to journalism after 10 years and founded his own non-fiction label, but under the influence of the epidemic, the company quickly failed to pay salaries and the team was disbanded. After that, his high blood pressure became more and more serious, dizziness often came, the sky was spinning, and Venus appeared in his eyes
Clapping the rider became a kind of sustenance. Every morning, when Yang Yifan wakes up from a home full of photographic equipment and household debris, the first thing he sees is the crooked lines painted by children on the white wall, when his wife often has already left for work, and after hastily washing, he puts on a tripod and equipment and drives to photograph takeaway riders.
Strangers
Yang Yifan tried to reduce the riders to coherent, complete people.
Since 2018, he has photographed nearly 60 riders, from urban villages in Beijing to mountainous areas in Guizhou, to cities where riders gather in Hebei, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Shanxi, Sichuan and other places, and his goal is to photograph 100 people and put their portraits in the museum. Let the specific people under the blue and yellow skins be seen, and thus reflect on themselves.
Figure | Three brothers of Wangjing
"Three Brothers of Wangjing" is Yang Yifan's deepest project in the early stage of filming. In September 2019, he went to the Wangjing Laiguangying area of Beijing's northeast sixth ring road to look for interview subjects in Dongxindian Village, a rider gathering area, and he saw a young Peugeot young man lying on the exterior wall of a dilapidated residential building, charging his battery car.
The young man pulled a wire out of the room, through the window, and plugged it into the electric car against the outer wall. The window was about three meters above the ground, and the young man's toes tiptoed into the tiny bulge in the corner of the wall, lightly connecting the wires.
His name was Yang Cheng, a native of Tianshui, Gansu, and Yang Yifan was led by him to the rented house where he lived. Yang Yifan described it as a room where "people without faith can't stay", with two double beds crammed into a space of less than 15 square meters, and the four people living together each occupied a corner of the bed. The table and floor are full of water bottles and cigarette butts, and the wall is just a window, because the screen window has not been cleaned for many years, and it is so dark that you can't see the scene outside.
Figure | Three brothers chatting on the rooftop
Yang Cheng speaks little, and has an old man who does not match the age of 27. Soon after arriving in Beijing as a rider, he called his brothers Li Huijun and Zhou Xuxu. Running and suffering did not immediately change the fate of the three brothers, and before they became riders, they each owed foreign debts. Yang Cheng opened a restaurant in his early years, but later owed foreign debts due to poor management. Because Li Huijun gave birth to her daughter prematurely, she spent 60,000 yuan on hospitalization alone, and all the money for medical treatment was borrowed. In order to please his daughter-in-law, Zhou Xuxu borrowed 300,000 bride money from relatives and friends, which is another mountain of debt.
Yang Cheng's day began at 6 a.m., opened the platform software, and information immediately poured in. His phone rings every two or three seconds, and the message tone is like an alarm being sounded, which is tense but continuous. Yang Cheng moved his legs at high speed according to the prompts, and worked non-stop until 12 o'clock at night. He takes one day off every month, but he doesn't want to stop when he's on vacation.
Figure | Yang Cheng is processing information
It has also become difficult to stop and drink water, and when you are thirsty, you can only endure it, busy after a peak period, and then fill your mouth with a bottle of water. For lunch breaks, many riders give up their orders in exchange for a 15-minute break on the floor of the mall's stairwell.
After entering Yang Cheng's life, Yang Yifan remembered his time when he ran breaking news, so he could understand that Yang Cheng's usual quiet was related to the overdrawn physical strength caused by work. Heavy tiredness falls on the body, and the first manifestation is that there is less talking, because there is no longer a little extra energy to waste on communicating with others.
During his ten years as a reporter, Yang Yifan rarely had a full sleep, and even at three o'clock in the morning, he would wake up to check group messages to see if there was breaking news looking for him.
2017 was his last year as a journalist. The most exhausting interview occurred in the spring of the foglock country, and someone in the group sent a message in the early morning: "There is life, go @ Yang Yifan", he rolled over from bed, drove to Sanlitun to meet colleagues, and then turned to Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province to shoot the smog.
That night, the road visibility was less than two meters, and he drove for twelve hours in what would have been a three- or four-hour drive. Arriving near the Hebei Courtyard, Yang Yifan took out the drone to prepare for shooting, but suddenly found that there was no touch on his hands, and his eyes could not focus.
That year, Yang Yifan rushed to the breaking news scene one after another. From the illegal detention case of Yuzhang Academy, Li Wenxing's death in a pyramid scheme, to the explosion of Xuzhou Kindergarten, he kept walking, but his feeling of exhaustion became stronger and stronger. He spoke noticeably less, and rarely opened up to the outside world anymore. The negative emotions that accumulated in his heart brought depression, and he lingered daily in insomnia, depression and self-doubt.
In order to save himself, Yang Yifan once forced himself to build a spiritual barrier to avoid investing too much emotion in news events. But every time he thought of facing tragedy, he showed an attitude of not caring about himself, and he felt guilty for his cold blood.
In 2018, Yang Yifan, who was on the verge of a depression outbreak, resigned and followed his wife to the countryside of Winterthur, Switzerland. He and his wife live in an old house, not far from the maple forest, and on weekdays, Yang Yifan sits on the lawn in front of the door, watching the neighbor's cows and alpacas come and go.
When he returned to China, Yang Yifan became a precarious freelancer, and his small family was supported by his wife in the medical industry. Later, a former colleague who used to do PR on a food delivery platform approached him and asked if he would like to film the story of the rider. Out of the purpose of making a living and curious about riders, he took on the project of photographing Yang Cheng.
Figure | Yang Cheng is on the mountain in his hometown
During the days of shooting, Yang Yifan found that Yang Cheng's life and himself formed a certain mapping. He followed Yang Cheng on vacation back to his hometown, which was the village of Pangjiashan in Tianshui, Gansu, a place completely unrelated to the modern city, but like the Swiss for Yang Yifan, Yang Cheng received real nourishment in the village of Pangjiashan Province.
After returning home, Yang Cheng talked more. He happily spun around the household, rushing to the mountains to pick apples, chop firewood, and cook in front of the blackened stove. In his spare time, Yang Cheng likes to go for a walk in the mountains. On the day I went to the mountain to follow the shoot, it happened to rain, the mountain road was slippery, Yang Cheng strode ahead, and Yang Yifan fell into the mud in embarrassment.
Figure | Yang Cheng went to pick apples
It was the Mid-Autumn Festival, relatives gathered together, and Yang Cheng cooked a large table of dishes. During the dinner, his mother was worried about his safety and told him to pay attention to safety when riding, Yang Cheng nodded and listened, while serving dishes to his mother. After dinner, Yang Yifan wandered in front of the ancestral hall and bumped into Yang Cheng, who was chatting with his sister in the back room.
He was surprised to find that while chatting with his sister, Yang Cheng had a smile on his face that had never been seen in Beijing. He didn't have time to pick up his camera and snap it, but he remembered the image in his mind.
The Mid-Autumn Festival holiday passed in a blink of an eye, and the group embarked on a journey back to Beijing. On the return train, Yang Cheng did not speak, and Yang Yifan could not see the emotions of the 27-year-old young man.
Figure | Yang Cheng who fell asleep during the journey
The train rocked for 17 hours, and everyone returned to Beijing.
Just after getting off the train, Yang Cheng took a hasty night of rest in the rented house, and the next day turned into a running machine. The smile, freedom and relaxation he had shown in his hometown disappeared, and he used his toils to dilute the anxiety of not being able to take root in the big city.
Patting Yang Cheng, Yang Yifan remembered the young colleagues in the previous company, those young people who grew up in the city and went to college, life seems to be never short of fun, they are familiar with the glamour and nightclubs of the metropolis, and travel around the world during vacation, in contrast, Yang Cheng's days as a rider in Beijing, heavy as an old man.
Covered grievances
When he didn't pat the rider, Yang Yifan rarely paid attention to this covered crowd. He is a professional and a busy consumer, and if a rider times out or spills takeout, he will think the rider is unprofessional and will give the rider a face.
With the continuous involvement in the life of the rider, Yang Yifan's attitude towards the rider has changed. When there were enough riders to shoot, he began to rethink the meaning of documentaryism, he abandoned the cold spectator perspective and began to intervene in it with an equal and friendly perspective.
What touched him the most was the deaf "replacement" filmed in November 2020. The deaf rider's meal is set in a three-bedroom dormitory, with several bunk beds in the living room, and a long table made of two tables in the middle. There were a total of 9 deaf and mute people present, they opened the takeaway and ate it, the room was full, but there was only the sound of chewing food.
After the meal, Yang Yifan found a lower bunk and sat down, talking to a deaf rider next to him. The rider is not old, named Chen Zhitao (pseudonym), and relies on the text-to-speech system provided by the platform to deliver takeaways.
Chen Zhitao did not use his real name to deliver takeaways, in the early years, due to sudden reasons, he "ghostly obsessed" stole the battery of other people's battery cars, was caught to the public security bureau, left a case record, the platform learned that Chen Zhitao had a case record, removed him and closed his account, he can no longer deliver takeaway normally, crowdsourcing is not good.
Chen Zhitao's disability makes it impossible for him to follow the path of education like a normal person. In addition to being a rider, he could no longer find the foundation to come to Guangzhou to drift, and finally he thought of a way to replace a crowdsourced rider and then deliver food.
Yang Yifan understood the difficulties of the platform, and also saw the structural dilemma faced by the deaf rider, and he initiated an impulse from his heart to record the difficulties of the rider in front of him. But this impulse was quickly stopped by the producers - the story was overly negative.
Chen Zhitao was abandoned along with the recorder Yang Yifan.
In March 2020, in the wealthy area of Tianzhu Town, Shunyi, Beijing, Yang Yifan met another rider, Chang Yupeng, who had nowhere to live. This is a thick and honest young man, with a fat face, and his eyes narrowed into a slit when he laughs. In the restaurant next to the Photography Art Museum, Yang Yifan was ready to open the chatterbox with a few regular questions as usual. When he asked, "Are you happy as a rider now?" Chang Yupeng cried out with a wow.
Figure | Chang Yupeng was eating
"This kid is so lonely." Yang Yifan recalled that Chang Yupeng was urged to marry by his family for many years, but the busy work of the rider made him have no time to make any friends, let alone find a partner. Yang Yifan can empathize with this loneliness of fighting alone in a big city, and in the conversation full of empathy, the two are like mosquito repellent water in each other's hot days, sending each other a cool comfort.
Yang Yifan saw more and more riders' grievances. Especially in the past two years, prices have risen, platform systems are iterating, riders have to pay more physical strength than before, but the return is not as good as before. The growing anxiety of the times has made more consumers vent their emotions on riders.
In December 2020, when photographing Harbin female rider Zhang Liuyi, Yang Yifan witnessed discrimination. On this day, Zhang Liuyi hurriedly climbed the stairs, ran through the black-pressed corridor, and when he knocked on the recipient's door, the order was still overtimed. A middle-aged man took the takeaway angrily, and screamed down the female delivery man, Zhang Liuyi quickly apologized, the man still did not adhere to it, until he scolded her and cried.
Figure | Zhang Liuyi, who is delivering the order
Many grievances are unspeakable. According to survey data released by Meituan in 2019, 1% of riders have a master's degree or above, and the group of highly educated riders is expanding, Yang Yifan tried to photograph a rider with a college degree, but received more than 20 responses, none of them were real college students. He was a little disappointed, but he thought about it, under the kidnapping of secular concepts, if he was a college student, he might not be willing to expose himself as a rider.
Going around in circles, Yang Yifan realized more and more that he was just an ordinary person. But he is glad that he can sink his perspective and find the obscured group. The riders live in the grooves of the city, and Yang Yifan describes himself as a fish, walking through the grooves, recording the most vibrant group of people in the city.
Figure | Zhang Liuyi on his way home
Whether it is photography or food delivery, it must be diligent, and the physical or intellectual output of one order after another, not everyone can eat enough. To be a rider, you must be smart, you need to have a high understanding of the attributes of each road and each community, and you need to open up the relationship with security and property to make the delivery work efficient and smooth.
Yang Yifan believes that the real connection with the fate of the rider is in an ordinary shoot. On this day, a rider was about to enter the mall to deliver food, but was stopped by security guards, who told the rider that he could only go through the side door. The rider was not convinced, believing it to be discrimination and argued with the security guards.
The warm winter sun hit Yang Yifan's face through the glass, and he stood in the mall known for its luxury, instinctively holding up his mobile phone, intending to record the heated argument outside. Suddenly, his arm ached, and someone grabbed his arm hard, which was not a well-intentioned physical contact.
"What are you filming, quickly delete it!" A mall security guard approached him and said sharply.
Yang Yifan insisted, the security guard pushed and shoved him, and a physical altercation was ready to break out.
- END -
Written by Li You
Photography|Yang Yifan
Editor|Yuan Suwen