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in august this year, the movie "another day full of hope" was released. it is not only a movie that goes the deepest and furthest on the themes of takeout and algorithms, but also a rare masterpiece of realism in recent years.

on september 4, food express invited the film's director liu taifeng and producer zhu tong to record an episodefood talk podcastthis article is compiled from an interview with director liu taifeng.

in this article, the director expressed the social concerns behind the film's creation. the huge changes that algorithms have brought to society are not just a problem that the food delivery riders need to face. it can even be said that "everyone is trapped in the algorithm." director liu taifeng hopes that this film will eventually show the difficulties faced by different classes and leave a valuable record of this era.

●stills from "another day full of hope". the film begins with a car accident, in which an algorithm engineer from a food delivery platform hits his own rider, leading to a crisis between two families from different social classes.

in 2021, i almost hit a food delivery rider while driving at an intersection in beijing and waiting for the red light.

it was summer, and the countdown numbers on the traffic lights kept changing, and i started to feel irritated. everyone in front of me was either running red lights or preparing to go. when the green light came on, i subconsciously stepped on the accelerator, and a food delivery rider who ran a red light and drove against the traffic just passed by the front of my car, brushing against the license plate. i could feel the force of his body transmitting to me. if it had been a few tenths of a second faster, i would have hit him and sent him flying.

i felt a chill down my spine, and suddenly thought: if i really hit him, what legal responsibility should i bear? because as a motor vehicle driver, i did not see the road conditions clearly, but he ran a red light in order to deliver the order in a hurry, and the definition of responsibility is very subtle.

it just so happened that i had always wanted to make a film about people's livelihood issues and reflect social reality, but i needed a suitable perspective to approach it. all these elements came together in my mind at once. at that time, i said to the screenwriter cai zhiling next to me, why don't we write a script:a programmer who specializes in developing algorithms on an internet platform knocked down a delivery rider on the platform. let's see what happened.that’s how the idea for the script was born.

from that moment on, we began to perfect the relationships between the characters, so i visited many food delivery riders of different ages and genders, some of whom had been station managers, some did special deliveries, and some did crowdsourcing. this kind of accumulation is a necessary process in film creation. my screenwriter also talked with her friends who work in large internet companies. i also talked with the cleaners in the community and even the uncles who walked their dogs. i collected materials from life in the form of open chats, and then slowly polished the script.

it took less than three months from the decision to do this project to the start of filming. we started filming in hangzhou in the summer of 2022 and shot for a total of 40 days.

●the film was shot in hangzhou in the summer of 2022, and a large number of real scenes allowed the audience to see daily life during the epidemic on the screen.

1

is it really “zero cost” to be a food delivery rider?

in fact, there are many pitfalls in being a food delivery rider that outsiders cannot see. when recruiting riders online, the conditions offered are that they provide food and accommodation, and "zero-cost entry" is their slogan. they hope that as many people as possible will sign up to be riders.

but joining the company is not free. there is a hard requirement for being a dedicated delivery rider: you must report your resignation one month in advance, and your salary for the month of resignation must be split in half with the station. so if you want to join the dedicated delivery team, you have to work for at least one month and contribute one month's value to the station. so the station is guaranteed to make money regardless of the weather. some people work for a while and think they can't do this, so they work for nothing this month and the money goes to the station.

all the equipment of the riders is not issued by the station. they have to buy their own clothes, and rent electric bikes and batteries. there is a huge industrial chain behind it. before joining the company, the station will say, "i will provide you with accommodation." in fact, they will take you to a rental house and sign a rental agreement for you. you don't have to pay for these things, but they will be deducted directly from your salary.

so it is not zero cost, but it makes you take on the debt first, with no way to get out. if you want to get out, you have to "redeem" yourself.

● takeaway stations hold morning meetings on the roadside. the platform's personnel management, order coordination and other tasks all rely on grassroots stations. photographed by: tianle

during the interview, many site managers were also very helpless because they had the performance assessment pressure of the platform. the platform gave this site to the site manager because it could contribute high-quality fresh blood to the platform. the platform does not care about anything else. they have no labor relationship with the food delivery riders. the contract is just a cooperation agreement, and it is signed electronically on the mobile phone. this makes it very easy to find loopholes because you can't read every word carefully. but such a contract is related to the rider's future labor security and accidental claims.

but most job seekers have only one goal, which is to make money first, and all other issues can be put aside.regarding this job, most of the delivery riders i interviewed either viewed it as a transition in life or as a way to quickly accumulate disposable assets in a short period of time.

the lines i wrote for wei li in the movie:

"this is just a part-time job. do you know how many registered riders there are in the world? if all of them were covered by five insurances and one housing fund, would this company still be able to operate? they are voluntary, earning money for each order they take, and can rest when they are not taking orders. they don't have to face the various pressures of daily reports, weekly reports, and year-end performance appraisals."

these are the costs of part-time work: you have no relationship with the platform, and the cooperation agreement is only signed between you and the third-party labor company. everyone knows what a cooperation agreement means? it means that there is no guarantee including five social insurances and one housing fund. some of the terms are called overbearing terms in the words of the riders. because all the right to speak is in the hands of party a.

here are some details. as we all know, the riders have to pay three yuan insurance premium every day, but in fact, it only compensates the losses caused to the other party by the rider's negligence. if the other party is at fault, then the other party's insurance will be required to compensate. but there is a third situation,if the rider is injured due to his own fault, there is no solution., the rider will not receive any compensation, which is what happens in the movie.

2

everyone is trapped in the algorithm

in fact, the delivery riders and the algorithm engineers of the internet platform are just the entry point of this movie. rather than saying that the movie is about the delivery riders being trapped in the algorithm, it is better to say that all of us are trapped in the algorithm.

in addition to the delivery man being knocked down, there is another parallel event in the movie, the programmer was laid off. both families are in the city of contemporary china, but between different classes, even if we pass by each other in normal times, we won't even look at each other. why?because we are busy with our work, the relationships between people become distant and indifferent, and finally turn into irreconcilable hostility.

it is conceivable that if the car accident had not happened, the programmer would never have dealt with the deliverymen in his life, because the system told him that he could not deal with them and could not bring sympathy to them in his work.

●in this scene, the programmer and the rider passed each other in the elevator, which is also a scene we experience every day. interestingly, in the finished film, all the riders in yellow work clothes did not have the words and logo of meituan.

the goal of an algorithm engineer is to optimize the system, which is a behavior with strong professional attributes. his goal is not to study the plight of food delivery riders and design a mechanism to protect them. a qualified algorithm engineer must follow the logic of the algorithm to maximize commercial benefits while avoiding labor disputes.

in the movie, programmer wei li works very hard and has no time to consider other people's ideas. he is burdened with only a few things: kpi and performance appraisal, which determine whether he will be promoted, get a raise or be fired. he does not consider whether the algorithm will cause more or less harm to others.he must have complete faith in the work he does because the work environment requires it, otherwise he will be laid off.

it was not until the moment he knocked down the delivery man that he began to have some doubts, but they were not directed at the algorithm at first. it was just that the highlight of human nature was aroused, and he thought that since he had knocked down this person, he should take some responsibility.

the awakening process is slow. i think it is unrealistic for such an algorithm engineer to truly stand against the company. his college classmates asked him a soul-searching question: "what else do we have to worry about at our age except money?" under this premise, he was able to finally refuse the company's high-paying re-employment, which showed the brilliance of human nature, because he knew that some things cannot be measured by money and material things. so when facing the company's recruitment, he said:

“people are not oranges. you can’t just eat the orange and throw the peel away.”

in the end, although the wife of the delivery rider jin peng chose to give up treatment, the attorney decided to shift the accusation from the programmer to the platform.this is actually a tragedy, but it leads two people from different classes to subconsciously awaken.

3

what is the value of work?

an old man appeared in the film. he was a film projectionist when he was young. he told wei li about the scene when he went to the countryside to show movies to villagers when he was young. at that time, it was hard to get a ticket. later, he experienced marketization and was laid off in the 1990s.

in fact, this old man could be any worker who experienced that era. he was telling wei li: i have also experienced the layoffs you have experienced. i am so proud of the job i did when i was young, because i am serving the people, and everything i do is valuable and meaningful.

what about now? today, all the value we create can be measured by profit. but the food delivery rider who created the profit in the movie is lying in the icu, and no one cares about him. there is a conversation between wei li and the rider’s lawyer in the movie:

"we created this software, how much convenience has it brought to everyone? how much time do you save by eating takeout while you are working? this is its value. we even brought a whole new lifestyle. you can't deny this."

“i don’t deny that you have created value, but have you ever considered that the person who truly created value is now lying in the icu.”

wei li said that takeout can save you time, and that is its value. but where does the time saved by takeout go?you will find that there is never enough time.

everyone longs to have a moment of leisure after work, travel happily with family and friends, and do meaningful things, but most of our time is occupied by so-called work or transportation, and we can only use fragmented time to complete what we want to accomplish.

why do we rush around every day now? compared to the past, we now have mobile phones and cars to drive, but why are we so tired mentally? what is the price behind it? this is what i also want to tell the audience through the film.

●some photos from the set. the film uses many lenses to capture the reality of the city of hangzhou in 2022. director liu taifeng also mentioned in the interview that sitting on the side of the road and observing and recording all kinds of ordinary people is an important way for him to obtain creative materials.

4

the current situation is getting more and more "rolling"

it has been two years since the filming of the movie, and the situation in the food delivery industry has not improved, but has worsened. more and more people are engaged in this industry, and the unit price of riders has been reduced again and again. it is said that the three-yuan insurance has become two and a half yuan.

two days ago, we were on a roadshow in shanghai and went to a restaurant to eat soup dumplings. this restaurant has a very high reputation on the platform. after arriving at the store, the manager said that as long as you check in and write a good review, each person can get a side dish worth more than ten yuan. after several of us checked in, a table of side dishes was delivered. the manager said, "oh, there is no way. this is how it works on our street now. if you don't write good reviews, the reviews will go down and the platform will not promote us." but when we tried the main dish, it was not delicious, although it had a good reputation on the platform.

this is a vicious cycle, so the dining experience will get worse and worse. but i don’t blame the restaurants, because they are trapped in the algorithm, and they can’t make money if they don’t do this. many restaurant owners say,the takeaway business means losing money on every order, but it is just to maintain the customer base. if you don’t do it, you will disappear from the platform.

● catering industry under the platform economy: beijing statistics bureau data show that in the first half of 2024, the total profit of beijing's catering industry above a certain scale (i.e. annual revenue of more than 10 million yuan) was only 180 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 88.8%, and the profit margin was as low as 0.37%. during the same period, meituan's local business revenue was 60.7 billion yuan, operating profit was 15.234 billion yuan, and operating profit margin was 25.1%. photographed by: tianle

the same is true for the film industry. the evaluation criteria for a film or tv series are also based on data. this control can be refined to every plot, every scene or every character, as well as the choice of actors. they believe that if they design according to big data, the audience will definitely buy it. but where do the data and traffic come from? you can also find a way to "send side dishes". this is a common phenomenon in all walks of life, but it is most prominent in the food delivery industry.

in the past, restaurants could hire deliverymen and add a little more delivery fee to deliver the food to your home. cinemas radiate the surrounding communities, and people go to watch movies on holidays, with prices clearly marked there. at that time, restaurants and cinemas did not have such a hard time, and the surrounding ecology was healthy.

what the platform does is to integrate all these resources together. in fact, the platform does not only make profits from the business they operate, but they also value beautiful financial statements and growth figures. with these, the capital behind it and the operation of the stock market can bring it dividends. i think this is an underlying logic. beyond this, whether it is physical labor or mental labor, the value of the contribution is not that important.but now, the party that improves the efficiency of the algorithm and the party that executes the algorithm are tied together on a huge chariot, moving forward towards the goal of making profits.

a few years ago, when it took 40 minutes to deliver a meal, we didn't think it was slow. now we think it's slow if it takes less than 20 minutes. this is a change in a person's mentality. but it is not necessarily caused by ourselves. many consumers can tolerate it. for example, if i know i have to eat in 40 minutes, can't i just calculate the time and order the meal in advance? but why do we still have this mentality? in fact, there is some powerful driving force that is slowly changing our way of thinking and our lifestyle. you can say that these are already our consumption habits, but there are problems behind the habits.

i have come into contact with a large number of didi drivers and food delivery riders. where do their emotions come from? it’s the unreasonable system.the system needs a lot of humane improvements, not just because riders or drivers work for the platform, but to restore the dignity they deserve as human beings.

as a film, it is difficult for "another day full of hope" to change anything or strongly criticize anything. there is a systemic problem behind this. i just extracted the difficulties that each of us encounters in life, put them on the movie screen, and write a big question mark.

●photo of director liu taifeng working on the set.