The disappearing Chongqing "Bangbang"
Ran Guanghui tried to deliver food, made two orders, but quit, and now he is still his "Bangbang" in the Dazheng shopping mall.
Relying on this, Ran Guanghui supported his family and even bought a house in downtown Chongqing.
The mountain city of Chongqing is built along the mountains, and there are mountains in all directions.
Under such a terrain, people who carry a bamboo stick and two ropes and pick up jobs on the street to make a living have become an important force in urban transportation. They are called "bangbangs".
Statistics show that with the process of urbanization, the number of "bangbangs" has been declining year by year for 20 years.
In media representations, Ran Guanghui is a man regarded as the spiritual symbol of Chongqing's "Bangbang".
In 2010, this mountain city "Bang Bang", carrying goods in one hand and holding his son in the other, was photographed by photographer Xu Kangping, and then spread on the Internet. future".
Witnessing the demise of the industry, Ran Guanghui also began to try to transform.
Occasionally, he would turn on the large live broadcast light and sell Fengjie navel oranges to the front camera of his mobile phone, with many navel orange packaging boxes on the wall behind him.
In making videos and doing live broadcasts, half of him is for his own happiness, and the other half is to test water and e-commerce.
But these did not delay him from going to Taisho Mall every day to "work".
With a pack of 11 yuan of cloud smoke in his mouth and a weight of one or two hundred catties on his shoulders, he shuttled between the densely packed shops, running up the stairs faster than others going down the stairs.
Ran Guanghui, who carries the family, is 52 years old this year.
At that time, the youngest son was in the third year of junior high school and faced the senior high school entrance examination. There were only a dozen or so old brothers in the shopping mall still working.
He has a sense of crisis, and this sense of crisis comes from the accumulation of years, from a whole "Bangbang" era rumbling away like the water of the Jialing River.
Worked as a takeaway "infantry" for a day
The New Year has passed, and the girls' skirts brushed over the Jiefangbei. This is the most comfortable season in Chongqing.
Ran Guanghui also thought it was not hot enough.
He likes summer, even when it's the hottest. He doesn't wear a shirt when carrying a suitcase.
"Work without escaping (Sichuan-Chongqing dialect, meaning convenience)."
On February 26, he wore a round-neck long-sleeved shirt with thin fleece and hurried to the Taisho shopping mall.
This is the most prosperous area in Chongqing. He walked down Xinhua Road and arrived at his destination in about 10 minutes.
"Some people said that I went to deliver food, but in fact I went for one day." Ran Guanghui said that at the end of 2021, with the end of "Double Twelve", the "Bangbang" business began to enter the off-season. Under the advice of others, he tried Go for takeaway.
Originally, he thought that this job would not be more difficult than being a "bangbang", but when he really ran, he found that it was not the case.
In Chongqing with complex terrain, Ran Guanghui had to ponder the exact location of each unfamiliar order for a long time.
"Climbing up and down, there are no elevators in some places, and I'm very tired. I can't ride a bicycle, so I can only be an 'infantry', and the delivery depends on my legs." Ran Guanghui gave up after only two runs.
"A single order is four yuan and five yuan, adding up to nine yuan, and the platform will deduct three yuan. This money is not easy to earn."
It may not be uncommon for a "bangbang" to deliver takeout instead, but this "bangbang" is Ran Guanghui, which has attracted a lot of attention.
In 2010, photographer Xu Kangping took a photo of Ran Guanghui leading his son to deliver goods in Chongqing.
Later, after the second dissemination of the self-media, the image of Ran Guanghui holding the goods almost as high as himself on his back with one hand and holding his son with the other hand spread all over the country overnight.
Some people say that he "carries the family on his shoulders and the future in his hands".
Now, the news of his "transition to food delivery" has once again attracted the attention of the media.
ashes stick
At eight or nine in the morning, the merchants in the Dazheng shopping mall opened their shutter doors one after another for business.
Ran Guanghui put his own lunch box into the top of an inconspicuous shelf in the shipping aisle, took two steps deeper, and pulled out his flatbed cart from the narrow corner with no lights.
"Come here?" "Ah." Ran Guanghui would simply exchange a few words when encountering colleagues or shopping mall managers along the way, but he never slowed down.
Walking to the fifth floor, he put the cart in the old position and officially started the day's work.
As the "Bangbang" with the best business in Dazheng Shopping Mall, Ran Guanghui greets familiar store owners first every day.
His business is concentrated on the fourth and fifth floors. Is there any goods to be shipped today, how much, when, and what kind of courier to send. Ran Guanghui walked up and down, and he could have a certain spectrum in his heart, the approximate timetable and route. The picture slowly unfolds in my mind, and the rest of the work is to pick up and ship the goods according to the rhythm.
For the "bangbang" in the knitwear market, a year is also divided into low and high seasons.
Summer is the off-season, when clothes are light and thin, the number of boxes is reduced and the weight is also lighter; in winter, one box cannot fit many thick clothes, and one order has to send several boxes, so that you can earn a little more money.
But such a heavy box, Ran Guanghui remembered the heaviest order he had ever carried, a box of more than 400 pounds.
Although it is the best "bangbang" in this market, the business has become more and more difficult in recent years.
"It can't be compared to ten years ago. At that time, a shop shipped seven or eight or even more than ten items a day. Now, some shops ship one every two or three days."
When carrying the work, Ran Guanghui didn't answer any questions, and shuttled through the shopping mall passages extending in all directions, often disappearing as soon as he turned his head, and only relaxed during lunchtime and other work breaks.
"In this shopping mall, there were dozens of 'bangbangs' at first, but now there are not many people left. There are no new people entering the business. I might be the youngest here."
Ran Guanghui was born in a farming family with a few acres of thin fields. He is busy with farming every few months throughout the year.
After being busy for a while, I will come out to do "bangbang" when I have free time.
"One is that there is no other ability, and the other is to seek freedom."
During this day's work, he carried it on his shoulders, pulled it with a cart, and transported it with an electric vehicle... Ran Guanghui's pole was placed behind a sewer pipe in the shopping mall, and it never came in handy from beginning to end.
This is a bamboo commonly known as "hard-headed yellow". It has apparently been used for many years and has been polished to a smooth and shiny finish.
But now it's covered in a thin layer of ash, and it spends most of its time standing behind the stout white plastic water pipe.
There are also a few sticks stuffed here, of different colors, about the same thickness, about one meter long, and it seems that they have not been used for a long time.
Carry out a suite
When the sticks are no longer used, the "sticks" are gradually disappearing.
"Bangbang" was born in the 1980s.
According to the "Traffic Records of Shapingba District, Chongqing", in 1983, in order to invigorate the economy, Chongqing began to allow "peasants to enter the city for transportation".
The modern "Mountain City Bang Bang Army" in the true sense thus appeared.
At its peak, hundreds of thousands of "bangbangs" shuttled back and forth in the mountain city in Chongqing, but with the process of urbanization, the number of "bangbang army" has been declining year by year in the past 20 years.
Scholar Qin Jie once lived in Chongqing for a long time. After a long-term anthropological investigation of the "bangbang" group, she wrote the book "Chongqing Bangbang: Urban Perception and Relativity".
The book defines "bangbang" as "since the 1980s, scattered porters who carry a bamboo stick in Chongqing, rely on manual labor expenses, and mainly engage in manual handling."
Ran Guanghui has been in the industry for 20 to 30 years since he started working as a "bangbang" in pieces in the 1980s. Even if he officially came to Chongqing to work for a long time in 2009, he is also an "old man" who has been in the industry for 13 years.
When Ran Guanghui was in his teens, his relatives took him to "Chongqing". With a pole and two ropes, he could "pick up money" everywhere at Chaotianmen Wharf.
He remembered the market at that time. He picked up a load of things from the pier and went to the street, which cost about two or three yuan.
He runs diligently, rushes to pick up any job, and never picks. looked down upon by others.
Relying on his steadfastness and hard work, and because of his "star halo", he has virtually endorsed him. After more than ten years of business, Ran Guanghui now has more than ten regular customers in Dazheng shopping malls.
For the "bangbangs", it is very important to have regular customers.
"The market is not good now. If there are a lot of fixed customers, we can still support it. Without them, we would rely on scattered work, and many 'bangbangs' would not be able to move a few boxes of goods a day." Ran Guanghui had to send 30 per day Many boxes of goods go out, and there are more than a dozen boxes when there are few.
Boxes are removed from various stores, concentrated in one place, and then pushed down with a trolley at one time.
How wide and high the base is, and whether it can fit into the freight elevator, he "eyes are feet", and he knows it as soon as he sees it.
With just five or ten pieces of land, Ran Guanghui earned a house in Jiefangbei, Chongqing.
"60 square meters is not big, and it is not expensive to buy it early. In 2016, it was more than 7,000 square meters and more than 400,000 yuan." 400,000 yuan, calculated by the income of 10 yuan for carrying a bag of about 200 catties, He carried 40,000 bags of goods.
After buying a house, Ran Guanghui felt that he finally gave his wife and children "a home".
He spoke modestly, and the expression on his face was undisguised and undisguised pride, "Before buying the house, my wife and I took our youngest son to rent a house, 20 square meters, and we can't even live there."
At 6 pm, Ran Guanghui came home from work, and his wife had already started cooking.
There are a few photos hanging on the wall. Ran Guanghui doesn't look much different from ten years ago and ten years later. It's just that the son he was holding back then is now taller than his father's shoulders.
Ran Guanghui is very proud of his achievements, but does not quite agree with this identity.
He has always felt that doing "bangbang" is a work that is hard work and cannot be on the table.
But what he didn't know was that "Bangbang" had already become a business card of the city of Chongqing, reflecting the hard-working, hard-working and self-reliant local people. The results showed that the Chongqing "bangbang" group was shortlisted in the top 50.
Midnight "Bangbang Army"
As an industry star, Ran Guanghui feels that there will be no young people joining this job.
"Nowadays, all the children have read books. Who is willing to endure this hardship if they can find a decent job?"
But in fact, there are also newcomers, such as 23-year-old Fu Jialin.
"It's not good to work in the factory, and there are too many demands. Whenever you quit your job, you will lose your wages." When "Bangbang" is to receive money immediately after completing an order, this makes Fu Jialin feel at ease.
On the evening of February 26, Fu Jialin did the most tiring job since he entered the industry for more than a year.
"This order is enough for ten people tonight, you can arrange it." After receiving a text message from his friend Deng Changbiao, Fu Jialin called the experienced Lao Yin and Huang Shibin and others. At midnight, the group arrived at the subway. In the station, when he saw the goods to be transported, Deng Changbiao's face was not very good.
"The customer only said that it would not exceed 500 kilograms. I thought it was a vending machine, but it turned out to be a security checker."
According to the nameplate on the machine, the lump weighed 700kg.
Whether 10 people can do it, everyone has no idea.
"Both sides stick out a bit, so it's not easy to bear the load; the sticks are not carried properly, too short, so it takes two three-meter sticks to get them." Lao Yin has been a "bangbang" for many years, and he has the skills to carry the weight. Respected in this group of people.
He walked around the machine twice and felt a headache.
"Come on, do it." Lao Yin greeted him, and the crowd gathered around him.
Four sticks over one meter long, one on each of the four corners, and one on the shoulders of two people.
The young man couldn't stand the weight and could only work hard at the back. Lao Yin and Huang Shibin fought their old bones to clear the way at the front.
"Get ready, get up!" Blue veins burst out on the foreheads of the two of them, and the veins on Fu Jialin's arms behind him stretched forward.
Deng Changbiao was also in the team. He was so thin that he couldn't use much strength, but he tried his best to get to the top.
One, two, three, four, Lao Yin Hao Ha Ha Ha went forward four steps, "No, no, no! Put it down!"
Some people began to complain that this machine alone could not be moved up tonight: this subway entrance alone has three ramps, which add up to nearly 200 steps.
The rope thick with the thumb was loosened, re-adjusted and knotted; the young people's shoulders were immature and arranged to a less strenuous place... After a 15-minute rest, ten "bangbang" went into battle again.
"Hey!" "Hey!" "Hey!" "Hey!" Taking a step up the stairs and shouting, the men stepped on their feet and carried all their strength on their shoulders, and the stainless steel rods were pressed out. Obvious arc.
With the last slope to go, he was able to lift to the ground. Lao Yin was still able to persevere. The other leader was out of his mind. Fu Jialin was pushed up, and he felt the pressure of the front row for the first time.
On the 16th step, when they reached the 12th level, everyone's chant had changed to "Xiangqi!" Bang Bang bent Fu Jialin, and slid from shoulder to neck.
He tried his best to finish the last 4 levels.
"Bangbang is gone"
The midnight "bangbang army" gathered together dispersed in the morning light before dawn.
Almost each of them has several identities: working on the construction site, still studying at school, freelancers doing graphic design... "Bangbang" jobs are not enough to support them and their families, among their choices, " "Bangbang" is mostly a secondary option to make up part of the income gap with time and effort.
How long can I make this "secondary choice"?
Fu Jialin didn't think about this issue carefully, but as a senior, Ran Guanghui had already smelled the smell of winter. In addition to trying takeaways for a day, he also tried to sell navel oranges live, and also made small videos.
The aura of "Star Bang Bang" brings him traffic and attention, and his video account has more than 100,000 followers.
"Some companies have approached me and said they want to sign a cooperation agreement. I'm not ashamed." He has seen some contracts and felt that being an anchor is not much different from entering a factory. The money cannot be paid in cash, the live broadcast time is regulated, and even the income is three Seven points, I only get 30%.
"Look at me now, what's the matter in my hometown? I take a car back in the morning and come back in the evening. Who do I want to say hello to? It's very free." Money needs to be clear and time needs to be free. I chose it more than ten years ago" The reasons for being awesome” still apply today.
Ran Guanghui knew that he was getting old, and although he was ambitious and ambitious "to work for another ten years", he had already had problems with his lumbar spine, and his fingers were obviously deformed. He was worried that he would fall down at any time.
While Ran Guanghui is trying to transform, many "bangbangs" are also looking for more possibilities.
"There are people who change jobs to deliver food, go to the construction site, enter the factory, and open Didi freight."
Xu Kangping, who took a photo of Ran Guanghui more than 10 years ago, has always been concerned about this group. In his opinion, "'Bangbang' has disappeared." Xu Kangping said that several students from the School of Journalism and Communication of Northwest University for Nationalities have been in recent years. I did a survey on the living conditions of "Bangbang" in Chongqing, and the final conclusion was that "the number of people is less than 2,000, and most of them are the elderly."
With the construction of the city and the renovation of Chaotianmen Pier in the past few years, the stairs have been greatly reduced.
The road from Dazheng Shopping Center to Chaotianmen Logistics Station has been built into a ramp. People without electric vehicles can walk with a cart. Although it takes a little effort, it is still much easier than carrying it by hand.
Changes in the means of transportation have made the "bangbangs" porters in a broader sense.
They carry the work on their shoulders, save enough for a cart, send it downstairs with a cart, and then convert it into a large cart with a motor. People sit in front and twist the handlebars without any effort.
There are also some changes beyond Xu Kangping's expectations, such as the development of e-commerce and logistics, which squeezes the living space of "bangbang".
In addition, express delivery, flash delivery, etc., are also replacing some of the jobs of "Bangbang". The birth of the freight platform has also turned some young and more self-learning "Bangbang" to work as freight drivers.
"Or it can be said that 'bangbang' has disappeared. For this group of hundreds of thousands of people, the survival of individuals does not affect the judgment of 'disappearance'. Disappearance is not equal to zero, but approximately equal to zero." Xu Kangping said a little Feeling melancholy, he thought, the newly born children may not have the concept of "Bangbang" anymore.
Beijing News reporter Yang Xue