With millions of people quarantined in Wuhan, delivery drivers offered them both hope and a source of life amid the nCoV crisis.

Driver Zhang Sai, 32, hovered over his motorbike outside an apartment building in Wuhan, the center of Covid-19 in China. The manager asked him not to deliver food to the customer's door, to minimize the risk of corona virus infection.

But the woman who ordered by phone pleaded with him, Zhang recalled. The food Zhang delivered was for her mother. She could not go to the first floor to receive the goods.

Zhang was relieved. He ignored the admonition and ran quickly up the stairs. When Zhang placed the food bag on the floor, the door opened. Startled, Zhang hurriedly left. For a second without thinking, he pressed the elevator button with his finger, touching the surface with very high transmission capacity of nCoV.

He drove back to the delivery station with a straightened finger, being careful not to touch the rest of the hand.

"I'm so scared," Zhang said. "Because I ride a scooter, I feel like my fingers are like a flag."

For many isolated people in China, delivery drivers like Zhang are their only connection with the outside world. Zhang and his colleagues are being hailed as heroes in Wuhan.

Across China, at least 760 million people face isolation measures ranging from restricting access to blockade of buildings and neighborhoods. Restrictions are particularly stringent in Wuhan, where the government has issued a blockade order to prevent the virus from spreading.

Every three days, each household can send one person out to buy basic necessities. However, many people still do not dare to step out the door for fear of being infected. The majority of the more than 2,100 deaths and more than 75,000 nCoV infections in mainland China are Wuhan.

But people still have to eat to survive. This is why Zhang and his army of delivery drivers are still plying the streets every day. While Wuhan and a number of other cities were frozen, the delivery team became an important artery of the nation, bringing fresh meat, vegetables and other essential items to those who did not. dare to leave home.

It was a tiring and dangerous job. Zhang, an employee of the Hema supermarket chain of Alibaba Group, travels the city with masks and a hand-sanitizer dispenser given to him every morning.

The company uniform allows local authorities to identify him as being allowed to travel on the road in the middle of a blockade. Nightfall, Zhang tried not to think about the disease. He listens to music and only watches the good news on TV.

The deliveries Zhang makes every day are not only a lifeline for Wuhan, but also a source of his own life. Zhang's family has 4 people, including him, his wife and two 4-year-old twins. Life depends on one hand. Zhang never considered taking time to rest, even after the outbreak in Wuhan. Family members once advised him to quit his job, but Zhang ignored it.

Zhang's family lives in a suburb of Wuhan and he cannot visit them because of the disease, but he still makes video calls with his wife and children every day.

If the delivery was quick and worked overtime, Zhang could earn 8,000 yuan a month (over $ 1,100), more than his previous mail delivery job.

Zhang and his colleagues regularly updated tips and prevention methods and information on the Covid-19 epidemic. A colleague of Zhang advised him to use the key to press the elevator button. One afternoon, someone wrote on the company's chat group that a patient suspected of nCoV infection died in a residential area of 125 and advised people not to go to the area. "Unfortunately," a colleague said. "I have an application to move there." To date, none of Zhang's colleagues have been ill, he said.

Although dangerous, the disease has brought some unexpectedly positive points to delivery drivers like Zhang. Previously, he sometimes had to pass a red light to keep his application on time during rush hour. But now, deserted streets help him "easier" when delivering applications.

Customers are also easier and more friendly, he said. Previously, many customers hardly opened the door and did not look at him. But after the outbreak, everyone said "Thank you" to the delivery driver.

However, such interactions are now becoming rarer. Last week, the Wuhan government ordered residential areas to set up a point of contactless delivery. When Zhang accepted the application, he would deliver the goods to a designated checkpoint in the customer's residential area, leave the item there and then leave.

For Zhang, the biggest and best change lies in the after-work routine. Normally, Zhang would watch movies or spend time hanging out with friends. These days, every night, he keeps a diary and sends to many websites. What makes Zhang happy is that they are excited and start sharing them.

Zhang's first article was published on January 30 in the online magazine Single Read. After that, he had 5 more posts.

He wrote about how he called a friend for help when his children were sick, about seeing two old men playing chess in the street without a mask or about a delivery day, driving around his Wuhan. .

"Normally, you will see people sunbathe, play chess, buy things or just sit and do nothing," Zhang wrote in the January 30 post. "Normally, I find it all too noisy. Only now do I discover that a city without human sounds is boring."

Zhang read every comment on his posts. Many people say they do not trust a delivery staff to write down such lines.

"I think people like me because I'm just an ordinary person like them," he said.

Zhang intends to continue his writing work even after the epidemic ended. He received fewer orders for more time to write. If the articles are no longer published, he will continue making money deliveries, but will not stop writing, Zhang asserts.