Delivering the goods

摘要

YANG MING IS standing beside his red electric tricycle in a courtyard in Beijing. A former factory worker from an industrial town outside the capital, he and dozens of other men are awaiting the arrival of a lorry. As it pulls in from jd's warehouse, the men form an assembly line to unload boxes. They reload the packages to their tricycles and are off, weaving through the traffic. jd has about 400 such delivery stations in Beijing alone. Across the country, 2.5m couriers are at the ready to shuttle packages to their final destinations. When he first started several years ago Mr Yang made about 80 deliveries a day. Now the number is closer to 130 and still rising.