After rush for lunch, it’s time for ChinaDrivers of food delivery.
Liu Lijie, halfway within 1 o’clock, parked his electric scooter in front of the restaurant in Beijing For its selection, a lamb of a noodle soup on the sides of the acidic cucumbers, for 12 yuan ($ 1.65), a 6-juan discount with regular prices.
A reduced price meal is part of the movement that offers free or reduced meals to people who need questions.
Known as “AIXINCAN” or “Love meals”, are available in some restaurants in major Chinese cities, home to the big population of migrant workers who come in search.
“It’s a lot of pressure in life since I came to Beijing to work, so eating Aixincan and economic and practical,” said 40-year-old Liu, who arrived two years ago from nearby Shanxi Province.
You want to return to earnings, he digs in your meal in the branch of the Yushi restaurant branch, without even stopped removing your helmet, marked with the name of the popular app Ele.me.
The movement, also known as “suixincan” or “meal tracking”, can be monitored on the early 2000s. It is available in Chinese state media and on social media, including the posts in which the impact are as hungry customers in need to highlight the generosity of the restaurant.
Luo Shuai, the Meitai Driver, the largest food delivery service in China, learned a yuhi initiative through colleagues and since then it becomes a daily buyer in the Peking chain, which serves food from his gender Henan Province.
“He reminded me of his hometown,” said 27-year-old Luo, who moved to Beijing at the end of last year.
Among the whose workers who are almost 300 million migrant workers, it increases the workstation based on GIG, such as delivery of driving over the factory work, has occurred in recent years. There are now more than 200 million workers for economic economies, according to the Government’s data.
For full-time drivers, the average monthly salary on Meituala can reach more than $ 1,500. But only 11% of the driver’s app works full time. Parts of the timer in the largest cities, such as Beijing and ShanghaiOn average it is closer to $ 1,000 per month 2024. years.
The existence of discounted meals reflects the shift in the Chinese city landscape, according to Xiang Biao, the head of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany.
Earlier migrant workers could cut their own spaces by helping each other, he said, but those networks disappeared with the erosion of non-formal restaurants in cities for hygiene and security reasons.
“They will have to seek the help of strangers,” Xiang said.
State cleansing from the end of the 2000s “urban villages” – spaces where migrant workers would live together with urban development – increased these pressures.
The stigma seeking free food exists in all societies, Xiang said, although it may not be a problem for the delivery drivers in China, because they are already socially marginalized.
Feng Yong, 43-year manager “Pitea” Doornaila “- so called because its food resembles round wooden nail covers on the classic Chinese door – spends a lot of your day in a methlimine restaurant in Beijing.
He said that the restaurant began to serve Aixincan to help people in need and inspire others to do the same. Shandong Roon Province moving to Chinese capital more than 20 years ago, Feng said he had a deep understanding that the outsider being fighting in a new city.
He is crucial, he said, is avoiding a shame for customers who are in need. Some hesitate at the entrance. Staff do what they can help and are not asked about the potential circumstances of the customer.
“We don’t refuse them anything, as long as they are full,” Feng said.