Hubei rural courier bridges mountain communities

Before dawn breaks over the mountains of Hubei province, Zhang Qian is often already on the road.

On the days he drives to the Changyang Tujia autonomous county to collect parcels, Zhang gets up at 5:30 am and leaves his home in Xiufengqiao village at 6 am. The road winds through fog, slopes and sharp bends. In good weather, the trip to the county takes more than three hours. In winter, when ice forms on the road, he has to put chains on his tires, and the journey can take up to four hours.

For Zhang, 38, this has been part of life for more than a decade. Years on mountain roads have darkened his face, but when he smiles, he looks friendly and unpretentious.

His ZTO Express delivery station serves five villages spread across more than 200 square kilometers of mountainous terrain, where about 2,000 households live between 200 and 1,600 meters above sea level. Some of the most remote settlements are located more than 30 kilometers from his delivery station. In some places, vehicles cannot reach the door, and parcels have to be carried up stone steps by hand.

A modest role model

In May, Zhang was named one of China's Top 10 Couriers, a program usually held every two years to highlight role models among front-line delivery workers.

Yet, Zhang said, the title has not changed the way he sees his work.

"What I should do is continue to do my own job well," he said. "When villagers need help, I try to think of a way to help them. Many things are just small favors, but if I can do them, I should."

Zhang's story is not only about the hardships of a rural courier worker. It is also about how China's express delivery network, once concentrated in cities and towns, has been extending deeper into remote villages — bringing medicine, household appliances and consumer goods into the mountains, while helping local produce move out.

China handled 198.95 billion express parcels in 2025, up 13.6 percent year-on-year, according to the State Post Bureau. Express delivery services also reached more than 95 percent of China's administrative villages over the same period, giving most rural communities, including many remote settlements, access to parcel delivery services.

For Zhang, those national changes are reflected in the parcel volume at his own station: from only several parcels a day in the beginning, to about 200 around Spring Festival in 2016, more than 1,000 during peak periods in 2017 and 2018, and around 2,000 a day in recent years.

Business began at home

Xiufengqiao village, where Zhang was born in 1988, used to be a delivery blind spot. Zhang left home after graduating from college and worked on construction sites in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, earning about 8,000 yuan ($1,180) a month. After his grandfather died in 2013, he returned home to be closer to his aging parents.

"I always felt I was floating outside," he said. "When I came back, my first thought was simple — I wanted to stay near my parents."

At first, he opened a small grocery store. For Zhang, it was not a planned business strategy but a practical rural solution: use what the family already had and find a way to make a living at home.

His connection with the courier business began with a washing machine. When he tried to buy one for his family, he found that delivery could only reach the area, not the village. He had to borrow a vehicle and bring the bulky appliance home himself.

"In Shenzhen, express delivery was already very common. You could order online, receive goods quickly, and have many choices," he said. "But when I came back, I found there was no delivery service in our village."

In 2015, Zhang made a white light box sign with red characters announcing courier services and hung it outside his store. During the National Day holiday in October that year, young people returning home noticed the sign and asked whether parcels could be sent and received there.

"It was very troublesome at the beginning," he recalled. "I had to teach them step by step how to write the address — first to the county, then transfer it to me. Small parcels could be carried back by passenger buses, but I told them not to buy large items yet because I did not have a truck."

Soon, passenger buses could no longer handle the load. Zhang bought a secondhand truck, using it to bring goods for his store and parcels for villagers from the county.

Today, Zhang's station is operated by a team of six, including his father, his wife and three helpers. His two children, aged 6 and 8, have grown up around parcels. His oldest son sometimes helps call out phone numbers when villagers collect packages.

The work remains exhausting. On pickup days, Zhang drives to the county, visits different outlets to load parcels and usually heads back in the afternoon. He often arrives home between 7 pm and 9 pm. Sorting about 2,000 parcels can take five to six hours, and going to bed at 1 am is considered early.

His wife sometimes asks him to consider another line of work.

"She stays at the station, also our small grocery store, almost every day. It is repetitive and tiring for her," Zhang said. "We do not rest much, except for a period during Spring Festival."

The business has not made him wealthy. Zhang describes his income as average locally. But he said the job has allowed him to stay with his family, build a life in his hometown and serve people he has known since childhood.

For villagers, the service has changed daily life in concrete ways.

"Now even villagers over 80 can shop online," Zhang said. "They tell me it is convenient. Things they had never seen before, things they saw on the phone but did not dare to try, they can now buy. If they do not like them, they can return them."

Medicine, rice cookers, washing machines, furniture and gifts from children working in cities now arrive at the village station. For elderly residents whose children live far away, parcels have become a way of maintaining family ties.

Goods move both ways

The flow goes both ways. Zhang's truck brings consumer goods into the mountains and takes local products out. He has nearly 5,000 contacts on WeChat, including local villagers and their children living elsewhere. When villagers have fruit or other produce to sell, he helps share the information and collects only the delivery fee.

Tang Yingquan, director of the Changyang postal industry development center, said Zhang's station has shortened delivery times and helped villagers develop e-commerce and cooperatives. "A parcel delivery station is like a link between the city and the countryside," Tang said.

Despite being held up as an industry role model, Zhang is more modest about his role.

At dusk, when lights begin to appear in village homes, Zhang is often still sorting waybills at the station. In his truck, villagers sometimes leave apples, chestnuts or kiwifruit — small gifts from households that see him not merely as a courier, but as a familiar link to the world beyond the mountains.

"I am just doing my part," he said. "But if the villagers need me, I will keep running."