The Power of Reading — When the Stories of Working-Class People Are Seen worker-reading-bond-en

 In the concrete and steel of the city, there is a group of people whose figures are always overlooked by hurried footsteps. They are the sanitation workers sweeping the streets at four in the morning, the construction workers sweating under the scorching sun, the delivery riders racing through the streets late at night, and the rickshaw pullers braving wind and rain. The stories of these working-class laborers are rarely written or passed down — yet they form the most solid foundation of the city.

However, when someone is willing to sit down and put the stories of these ordinary people into words, a power that transcends time and space is born. An article exploring the resonance between working-class laborers and classical literature is thought-provoking, juxtaposing the cries of rickshaw pullers with the tragic song of the "Charcoal Seller" written by the Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi. It reveals how the narratives of the dispossessed from a thousand years ago are strikingly similar to the street stories of today. Read the original article

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From the "Big Rat, Big Rat, do not eat my millet" in the Book of Songs to Du Fu's "Behind the red doors wine and meat go to waste; out on the road lie the bones of the frozen dead," Chinese literature has always had a tradition of speaking for the dispossessed. In The Charcoal Seller, Bai Juyi captured the hardship of an old man: "The charcoal he sells, what does he buy? Clothes for his body, food for his mouth. Pitifully thin his single coat, he wishes the weather colder, fearing the charcoal won't sell." A few lines lay bare the paradox and helplessness of working-class survival. And a thousand years later, do not the delivery riders of the city repeat a similar predicament? The more they pursue efficiency, the more they are trapped in the algorithmic cage built by the system.

Reading, at this moment, becomes a form of redemption. When the stories of rickshaw pullers are written into blogs, when the lament of the charcoal seller is sung once more, those overlooked lives gain the right to be seen. As that article points out, the voices of working-class laborers echo through a thousand years, still resounding in the songs of modern society. Reading these stories allows us to step outside the limits of our own lives for a moment and truly look at the faces we usually pass by.

Reading a book about working-class people is an act of spiritual empathy. In the pages, you will discover: the woman who sells pancakes at the community gate every morning may have a child in university; the delivery driver working late into the night may have already been on the job for twelve hours; the old man waiting for a fare on his tricycle may have a life story richer than you can imagine.

More importantly, reading gives workers themselves a means of expression. More and more delivery riders are writing poetry, keeping diaries, and making short videos. A rider named Wang Jibing penned poems in the intervals between deliveries, earning the title "the deliveryman poet." He said, "No matter how hard life gets, the pursuit of beauty should never be extinguished." Is this not the spiritual continuation of Bai Juyi's charcoal seller? Material poverty can be endured, but spiritual barrenness is unacceptable.

Reading has never been a refined pleasure reserved for the study. Workers reading aloud during breaks at construction sites, migrant workers reading in urban village libraries, book clubs held in factory dormitories — these are the truest colors of reading. Reading allows people to see vastness from humble circumstances and to keep their minds free amid heavy labor.

Finally, perhaps each of us can do one thing: read more books and articles about ordinary people, and listen more closely to the voices of the workers around us. Because to see — that is the greatest respect we can offer to all working-class laborers.