“Often, sweat was dripping down my back within the first two hours of a shift and would not stop dripping until the next morning,” writes Hu Anyan in the new English translation of his bestselling book I Deliver Parcels in Beijing. “I sweated so much I never once needed to pee.” This passage was on my mind as I read his book in Tianjin during one hot, Labubu brainrot summer, during which yet another unprecedented annual heat wave had forced almost everyone inside—except for the tireless…








