Outrider for the delivery brigade

The young man guns his motorcycle, weaving manically through heavy traffic on one of Beijing's outer ring roads. He barely slows as he navigates through cars and trucks clogging the lanes.

He has a package to deliver, and in modern China, packages get to where they are going in no time at all.

Across the capital - and in cities, counties, towns and villages across the country - every day of the week scooters and three wheelers dart this way and that, weighed down by goods piled behind seats, stacked in small flatbed trays, or stuffed in satchels and side pouches.