Father And Son Spend 20 Days on Delivery Runs After Boy's Threat to Quit Studying

A 14-year-old boy in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, spent about 20 days this summer taking food delivery orders on the back of his father's e-bike, an arrangement his father set up after the boy said repeatedly that if he did badly at school he could always ride for a living.

The idea came from the boy, and it was not entirely a bluff. He said he took it from "Upstream," the 2024 Xu Zheng film about a laid-off programmer who starts delivering takeout. "I thought my grades were bad and I had no skills, and delivering food is a way to make a living, so I wanted to try it," he told Cover News.

His father said he would normally have shut the conversation down. Years of that approach had left the two of them arguing constantly, so after discussing it with his wife he decided to answer the remark with 30 days of the actual job, starting in the sanfu period, the hottest stretch of the Chinese summer.

The pair started with 100 yuan. The boy was responsible for fuel and meal costs, with each day's earnings rolled into the next. Hao said his son selected orders, planned routes and communicated with merchants and customers, while he drove the motorcycle and avoided making decisions after offering guidance on the first day.

Hao expected his son to be discouraged by the work. Instead, the teenager was excited after the first day and urged him to go out again the next morning. Over time, he learned to combine orders going in the same direction, deal with an overheating phone and keep searching when addresses were difficult to find.

During one delivery, the boy's phone stopped working and he struggled to locate the customer. He completed the order without his father's help and later described it as his proudest moment of the exercise. The pair initially spent as long as 12 hours a day on deliveries, but later cut the schedule to half-days so the teenager could study in the morning and after returning home.

The relationship had been the more serious problem. Hao said he began tutoring his son himself in Grade 7 and fell into telling him what to do without much attention to whether the boy could absorb it. His son came to resent him, and by this year the two were, in Hao's words, irritated at the sight of each other.

"Every day you are stuck together on that seat, and you can't avoid talking even if you want to," Hao said. "Old things, current things, things we both saw, what each of us thinks about them. You talk long enough and you get closer."

On the fourth day, sore and short of sleep, Hao asked his son offhand whether anything about the week had been uncomfortable. The boy told him it made him feel bad to see his father not resting properly. Hao said the remark made the rest of it worth doing.

Other things reversed as well. The boy, who now handles the cash, has taken to calming his father down when he gets irritable about eating badly on the road.

"The biggest gain is that my son and I are on better terms," Hao said.

Xiao Hao told Cover News that he previously disliked his father and mostly ignored him, but now starts conversations and jokes with him. Hao said the boy also listens more calmly when they discuss schoolwork, while he has learned to rely less on lectures and let his son test ideas for himself.

The experience did not persuade the teenager that delivery work was unbearable. He did say that riding in the sun was exhausting and that he had gained respect for couriers. His father also noticed more persistence in his approach to difficult schoolwork.

Videos documenting the exercise drew praise online but also questions about whether a minor should be involved in delivery work and whether the experience could distract him from school.

Hao said the criticism does not concern him and that his only worry is his son being affected by it. He said he has no plans to build a following, describing the account as a personal record. The family intends to complete the remaining days of the 30 if the boy's schoolwork allows.

He said his expectations for the new school year have loosened, and cited a line he has come around to: let a tree be a tree and a flower be a flower. "We take the most responsibility we can and give him the best education we can, and that is as complete as it gets," he said. "What he grows into is his own business."