Stairway Porters Rise to the ‘1,000-Yuan Man’ Challenge
As job interviews go, few are as physically challenging as those for kanglou (“stairway”) porters in Guangzhou, in China’s southern Guangdong province. To prove their strength and agility, candidates must carry a sandbag weighing 50 kilograms on their shoulders up and down four flights of stairs 10 times in under 40 minutes.
These manual laborers spend their days navigating this bustling metropolis’s aging apartment blocks — most of which have no elevators — hauling heavy loads of sand, cement, and other building supplies, as well as sundry bulky items, up narrow stairwells.
It’s back-breaking work, rife with sketchy labor practices, and extremely competitive, with many quitting before they have even picked up their first paycheck. Yet, for those who stick with it, the job can bring life-changing rewards, with lucrative contracts up for grabs, and even the chance of social media fame.
Xiangzi, a 28-year-old former food courier and scrap collector, had 300,000 yuan ($41,900) in gambling debts when he started working as a kanglou porter in 2023. Desperate to make money fast, he was inspired to switch jobs after seeing online videos produced by Ah Xing, an influencer with about 1 million social media followers who fought his way back into the black through the same grueling work.
Last summer, in the scorching heat, Xiangzi was hired as part of a crew to transport construction materials for renovations at a Guangzhou subway station. For two weeks, a gang of young, muscular men lugged tiles, adhesive, putty mixture, and building waste up and down stuffy stairwells, with some occasionally collapsing from heat exhaustion or injury.
The project provided newcomer Xiangzi with an opportunity to shine. For eight straight days, he worked from at least 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., stopping only for lunch. While others carried one 40-kilogram bag of mortar at a time, he insisted on carrying two. It meant he earned on average more than 1,300 yuan a day, making him a “1,000-yuan man,” a mark of pride in his profession. Determined to be the highest earner, one day he worked late into the night, long after most porters had clocked off, making just short of 2,000 yuan.
“I couldn’t stop. Even after my glycogen was depleted, willpower carried me through,” says Xiangzi, who has a muscular build, a deep tan, and no shortage of confidence. “This isn’t just ‘show muscle.’ A ‘2,000-yuan man’ has to be tough.”
Every kanglou porter has his own technique for pushing past his physical limits, according to Ah Wen, who worked alongside Xiangzi on the subway station project. The 29-year-old former soldier — who has more than 250,000 subscribers on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok — says he simply takes it floor by floor, focusing on the path ahead and the financial reward that awaits at the summit. A common saying in the industry is, “Being too kind to your body means being unkind to your wallet.”
“Don’t overthink it — just get it done and collect the money,” Ah Wen says, explaining his motivational mantra. He sees cargo as coins in motion: for example, carrying 1,700 boxes of rice becomes “4 grams of gold,” which is around 3,000 yuan by today’s price.
Ah Wen now runs a small crew of his own, having enlisted Xiangzi, a quietly spoken cousin in his late 30s, and a father-of-two known as “Chief” Wang. He says that while strength is a factor in the job, what really drives workers on is stress, as each tends to carry a mental burden much greater than their physical workload, such as gambling debts, mortgage payments, their children’s tuition fees, or the need to save for marriage.
He recalls seeing porters push on even after stepping on a nail, seemingly immune to the pain. Male bravado plays no small part, with admitting weakness seen as taboo. Once, Ah Wen’s crew had been moving cabinets and desks at a school when, after several days, Wang confessed he couldn’t take it anymore and needed help. Only then did Ah Wen reveal that he, too, was struggling.
Losses and gains
Ah Wen grew up in an underdeveloped area of China’s southwestern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. His family was poor, and his father gambled. He began helping out with farmwork in his village at age 5, and as a teenager he sold tofu before enlisting in the People’s Liberation Army at 18.
Over eight years of service he earned three third-class commendations, silencing his critics back home who always said he wouldn’t amount to anything. Yet, when he was discharged, he began to have concerns about his employment. His mother, now in her 60s, was still working tirelessly, holding down seven jobs as a housekeeper and cleaner to pocket just over 20,000 yuan a month. “She was haunted by poverty — being poor means being looked down on,” Ah Wen says.
Last year, he moved to Guangzhou to become a freelance kanglou porter. In his first week, he earned just a few hundred yuan, but before long he was making about 9,000 yuan a month, working 10-hour shifts. However, in addition to the project manager taking a 10% cut of his salary, he noticed that established porters were receiving considerably larger pay packets.
Ding Haisheng, who’s around 40 years old and has worked in the industry for the past five years, says “hidden taxes” are common. “Newcomers are born to be exploited,” he says, explaining that project managers will deceive inexperienced workers carrying granular materials, such as sand, taking advantage of the irregularity of how it spreads to understate the volume and pay them less. They will also offer porters 1.2 yuan per bag carried while charging the client 1.5 yuan — while still taking their 10% cut.
Novice workers also face fines for being too slow, damaging cargo, or arguing with clients, while some employers will withhold salaries for up to two weeks, hoping that some of the porters will leave town before they have collected their payment. In reality, Ding says, many porters quit before earning enough to cover the costs of their medical checks and insurance.
There are also unwritten rules and tricky hazards. For example, even if an apartment block has an elevator, a kanglou porter would be unwise to use it, considering they’d be entirely liable for any damage. Meanwhile, a building’s security guards might answer to a different master and have no obligation to let in workers who arrive onsite early, or let out those who stay late, leading to potential conflicts.
Yet, even in this tough line of work, moments of humanity shine through. Ah Wen once accepted a low-paying job carrying 90-kilogram fire doors through a narrow fire escape for nine hours. That client later helped him land a contract worth 300,000 yuan. “If I’d rejected that first job, I might have missed this better opportunity,” says Ah Wen, who reflects that sometimes taking a loss leads to greater gains.
Team spirit
Besides Ah Xing, the content creator on Douyin who inspired Xiangzi’s job switch, at least a dozen kanglou porters have social media accounts with 10,000 or even hundreds of thousands of followers. As a result, while being a “1,000-yuan man” remains a top goal, other metrics for success now include exposure, likes, and potentially valuable e-gifts and sponsors.
Ah Wen initially dipped his toe into the water by making short videos with two colleagues, but they both quit when the going got tough, with one returning home to the southwestern Sichuan province, while the other became a security guard in Guangzhou. Then, in July, he met Ah Tao, who was hired straight out of university in 2022 as a photographer at a removal company and had some experience running his own social media channel.
The pair decided to go into business together, eventually building a following of 250,000 on Douyin. Ah Tao handles the camera and the editing, while Wen takes care of the heavy lifting, literally. Despite high expectations and a decent number of subscribers, engagement on the channel has remained low, causing the photographer to develop anxiety and sleeping difficulties. Yet, the duo is resolute in the belief that creating content is the path to prosperity. “If there’s a chance, we’ll persist,” pledges Ah Tao.
However, industry insiders say some of the videos being produced by, and about, kanglou porters are misleading, providing a false impression that hard work guarantees a good income, with viral hashtags including “The 1,000-yuan man challenge” and “Make a 1,000 yuan every day.”
In reality, Ding says, it’s just not possible to make that much money regularly, no matter how strong you are. “Yet workers are flocking to Guangzhou, each believing they’ll be the exception, not the victim. Even earning 500 yuan a day means 15,000 a month, but actually most fail at even their first test.”
Ding still earns a living with his hands, but also now makes extra cash by managing a pool of about 500 porters. He shares news of upcoming projects and orders from the clients through a group chat he set up on the messaging app WeChat.
Based on his experience, Ding estimates about 20% of the porters in his group are in debt — one telling sign is when WeChat freezes their payment function, usually due to a court order — with the most common reason being gambling.
As it did for Xiangzi, becoming a kanglou porter can offer a fresh start for those who have struggled elsewhere. When he worked as a food delivery rider, first in nearby Shenzhen and then in Guangzhou, Xiangzi worked around the clock to pay off what he owed, but his inability to break free of his gambling addiction trapped him in a vicious cycle. Since switching jobs, he’s managed to kick the habit and clear a third of his debts.
The emergence of porters turning to social media has also led to another problem: To guarantee content, some influencers are massively undercutting their competitors on price or offering clients add-on services, like free unloading.
Whenever Ding finds one of these “market-disrupting” content creators in his group, he instantly expels them. “Once they succeed, they don’t care about the survival of anyone else,” he says, adding that lower salaries naturally push people out of the industry, while those who stay are sometimes forced to risk working without accident insurance to save money.
Ah Wen says that his Douyin account brings in one or two jobs a month, but he concedes that the industry has changed dramatically in the past year. For example, in 2024, clients would pay as much as 2 yuan per floor for every 50-kilogram bag of cement; now they are barely willing to pay 1 yuan. Competition has also been intensified by the increased use of electric-powered trolleys, which can help carry extremely heavy loads up flights of stairs.
To stand out from the crowd, Ah Wen’s crew now specializes in irregular-shaped items. “Let’s see an electric trolley try carrying glass,” he says, adding that the pair have moved everything from solar panels, aluminum sheets, and calcium silicate boards to children’s play slides.
Such items demand special techniques. The heaviest was a 250-kilogram cabinet that even four men couldn’t budge — they had to roll it using two poles. Such extreme loads are the test of a team’s trust: If one person falters or suddenly releases their grip, the others could be injured. This happened to Xiangzi, and hundreds of kilograms of steel rebar ended up crushing his thumb.
Wang says team spirit is crucial, as lone wolves don’t succeed in this business. “United brothers find fortune everywhere,” he says, explaining that he avoids working with anyone who lacks strength, is picky or overcalculating, or is financially irresponsible, “as you can’t help those who won’t help themselves.” Wang himself cannot be faulted for his work ethic — he’s known for missing the birth of his second child because he passed out, exhausted, in a hospital hallway due to hauling goods right up to the moment his wife went into labor.
Ah Wen’s four-man crew now works solely on a contract basis and is defined by each member’s fierce determination to prove themselves, putting reputation before reward.
In January, a client they were working for cut the project time by half and questioned the team’s ability to finish on deadline, suggesting that he should have hired an eight-man crew instead. Ah Wen and his colleagues stayed quiet and carried on working, eventually finishing two hours ahead of schedule. When the client contacted them later for another project, Wang proudly told him, “You want cheap day laborers. Send a message, and they’ll come rushing.”
Reported by Jiang Wanru.
A version of this article originally appeared in White Night Workshop. It has been translated and edited for brevity and clarity, and is republished here with permission.
Translator: Chen Yue; editors: Wang Juyi and Hao Qibao.
(Header image: Ah Wen unloads a truck in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, Dec. 30, 2024. Jiang Wanru/White Night Workshop)
