"Brave the elements" — Phrase of the Week
New report reveals the lives of ordinary delivery riders
Our phrase of the week is: “brave the elements” (风里来雨里去 fēng lǐ lái yǔ lǐ qù)
Context
A new documentary about delivery riders in China has struck a nerve.
The Life of China’s Food Delivery Riders in 2026 (2026中国外卖员生存报告) was produced by LifeLab (三联生活实验室), which is a lifestyle magazine published by LifeWeek.
The documentary was released in mid-April and follows riders across three Beijing neighbourhoods: the migrant village of Yuxinzhuang (于辛庄村) a northern suburb near the Sixth Ring Road, the central business district, and Wanliu (万柳), one of the capital’s wealthiest enclaves.
China now has more than 13 million delivery riders. The average pay per order has more than halved over the last few years. Yet the number of riders has multiplied several times during the same period so now there’s more workers than ever chasing lower-paid orders.
The video has since been removed from the LifeLab website, but fragments of the film and some articles discussing it are still available on WeChat and continue to circulate.
One line in particular has resonated, spoken by a noodle shop owner who also offers delivery services:
“I feel like I’m just an average person, no different from the delivery riders.
The only difference is that I’m grinding away inside the shop while they’re out there braving the elements. It’s hard work for all of us.”
因为我觉得我也是一个普通人，跟送外卖的一样，只不过我是在店里熬，他们是风里来雨里去的，都很辛苦。
And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.
What it means
“Brave the elements” (风里来雨里去 fēng lǐ lái yǔ lǐ qù) is a colloquial expression that describes the hardship of physical labour. The five characters translate as “wind” (风), “in” (里), “come” (来), “rain” (雨), “in” (里), “go” (去) — literally, to come in the wind and leave in the rain, working through whatever the weather throws at you.
The phrase is widely cited as originating in the 1958 novel River Fen Flows On (汾水长流), by Hu Zheng (胡正), a writer from Shanxi province (山西) who was part of the “Potato School” (山药蛋派) of writters — a group of mid-twentieth century novelists who wrote in plain rural vernacular about everyday life in northern Chinese villages.
River Fen Flows On is set in a Shanxi farming community in the early years of the People’s Republic, and follows villagers navigating the upheavals of agricultural collectivisation.
The phrase appears in Chapter 19, spoken by a woman scolding her husband for sleeping through a downpour while she works outside:
“All you do is sleep like the dead. Look at me, I’m soaked through, and you can’t even be bothered to get up and help me change.
What do you think I’m out there braving the elements for?”
你就知道睡死觉，人家淋成这样，也不说起来帮我换换衣衫。我这么风里来雨里去的是为了甚？
The phrase entered everyday Chinese and is now used to describe anyone whose work demands they push through harsh conditions, particularly outdoors. It’s commonly applied to police officers responding in typhoons, surveyors working in winter, or journalists chasing stories in the field.
In recent years, it has become closely associated with food delivery riders, whose work takes them out in all weather every day. Which is exactly how the noodle shop owner uses it in this context. Delivery riders are working through wind and rain doing what they have to do to survive and make ends meet.
Andrew Methven is the author of RealTime Mandarin, a resource which helps you bridge the gap to real-world fluency in Mandarin, stay informed about China, and communicate with confidence—all through weekly immersion in real news. Subscribe for free here.
