In the ten years since he entered social work, Huan Yan has traveled extensively in Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, Shanghai, Beijing and other places. He has worked as a courier, night shift picker, convenience store clerk, security guard, bicycle shop salesman, clothing store salesman, and gas station refueler... He has turned every detail of his work and the joys and sorrows of life into a sincere self-narration, recording the hard work, selfishness, warmth, and righteousness of an ordinary person at work.
A year of picking goods at night in a logistics company left a deep psychological mark on him: "This job can also make people bad-tempered, because people stay up late and are overworked for a long time, and people's emotional control will be significantly reduced... I already feel that my brain is not working well, mainly because my reactions have become slow and my memory has begun to decline." During the two years of delivering express delivery in Beijing, he "viewed himself as a delivery machine with an hourly salary of 30 yuan. If he could not reach the rated output value, he would become angry and frustrated"...
But he eventually realizes that a life of resentment is not worth living. These work experiences, written in post-mortem recollections, are permeated with his attitude and reflection on life and the world, and are intended to express an individual's direct confrontation and affirmation of the meaning of life in the limited choices and cramped reality: many ordinary and meaningful moments in life are more decisive in life than all aspects that are troubled by reality.
The writing is very true