On one hand, Ni Xing Ren Sheng (Upstream in English, and we’re calling it that from here on) is the story of an underdog’s triumph, which usually works quite well in cinema. But its unmissable glorification of a kind of toxic work culture in the delivery industry is hugely problematic. The movie’s lead literally delivers a food order even after suffering a terrible accident in order to become the champion rider of the year. His house is at stake, which is the driving force here. Now I wouldn’t claim to know exactly how things work in this industry. Especially in a country like China, it’s very likely to be exactly how things are shown in Upstream. But instead of pointing out the flaws in it, the movie pretty much embraces it. I am all for hustling, but even then this is quite hard to accept and admire. It is technically quite good, though, and you never really feel bored thanks to the snappy editing. Anyway, in this article we’re only supposed to talk about the story of Upstream and its ending, which leaves us with a little bit of ambiguity. Let’s ride.
Spoilers Ahead
What happens in the movie?
Diabetic programmer Gao Zhilei’s world turns upside down when he’s abruptly laid off from his job due to downsizing. Like what most men would do, he hides the secret from his family—his parents, his wife Xiao Ni, and his daughter Jiajia. His father eventually finds out, gets mad, and starts toiling hard at the convenience store he owns to make ends meet. That doesn’t go well, as the old man soon suffers a huge health scare and ends up in the hospital. Gao has no other option but to tell Xiao about him being unemployed. Xiao, being a good wife and the smarter half of the couple, immediately gets on with what can save them. She decides to restart her drum lessons and do everything else she can do to bring in some bucks. However, even after doing all kinds of math related to their finances, they seem to fall quite short. With Gao’s father now needing medical attention on a daily basis and Jiajia in an international school, it’s doubly hard for the family. Despite telling Xiao that he would take care of the situation, Gao is unable to land a job even after trying too hard, as companies are more into hiring young professionals than giving a middle-aged man the chance to save his family.
The story really kicks in when a chance meeting with delivery guy Yang prompts Gao to consider a career as a food delivery partner. Yang, a happy-go-lucky young man, is currently working for the company Foodie, and fortunately for Gao, they’re hiring. Gao doesn’t have it easy, though, as the manager, Mr. Zhu, is not at all convinced that a pot bellied man coming from the elite class would be able to do the job right (he’s not wrong, in my opinion). But Yang persuades him to give Gao an opportunity. Gao explaining why he is in need of money so much also helps. So it begins, Gao’s journey as a food delivery man.
Does Gao’s fortune change after joining Foodie?
Given how formulaic Upstream is, Gao actually finds it much harder than he thought. Yang takes him under his wing and tries to train the man as best he can, but Gao fumbles a lot with the routes and struggles to meet the deadline for most of his orders. He is not a fast rider, and he also doesn’t know how to work in the service industry, so this was bound to happen. Despite the best efforts, he keeps getting bad reviews from customers for not being able to do his job properly. The difficulties a delivery executive faces are well depicted in this segment. There’s this scene where the customer accidentally puts a wrong address in, and Gao has to deliver the food after taking a long detour, and then he has to apologize to the customer for being grumpy.
Gao’s career at Foodie doesn’t take off, but his relationship with his colleagues is still fine. This is where we meet the other important supporting characters: a cheery woman, Qiu, who’s pretty great at the job and has a kid (which we find out later); Stingie, who patches everything up – from helmet to phone – and is also not a great rider (although he’s better than Gao); and then there’s Big Black, the best rider, who mostly keeps it to himself but is fantastic at his job. Black even has a secret notebook where he has all the shortcuts and tricks to deliver orders faster. Needless to say, he doesn’t share it with anyone. Gao approaches Black for help, but it doesn’t turn out to be that fruitful for him. Gao’s struggle at work keeps increasing, and his fortune doesn’t seem to change. If that’s not enough, one day he has to deliver food to his former colleagues at the office where he worked before, and he finds it humiliating. Shortly after, Gao has a meltdown while working, goes viral after destroying a bouquet of flowers after failing to deliver it, and then has a fight with everyone at home, including little Jiajia.
Does Gao manage to save the house?
A movie that’s titled Upstream was never gonna let its hero lose, right? So I suppose we all knew Gao was going to have his moment at some point. I’m sure some of you saw Gao’s knowledge as a programmer coming in handy eventually. So he ends up developing an app for all his colleagues at Foodie that helps them do the work better—by finding better routes and letting them know about traffic and other troubles on the road. This only proves that Gao is inherently a good man. We get to see several other examples through other common subplots. Gao let Stingie have his bike after the latter has an accident. Upon dropping Stingie at home, he finds out that the guy has a son with leukemia and is saving money for the boy’s surgery. He also gives away his raincoat to Qiu so that she can safely take her kid home. These are all plot devices both to explore Gao’s philosophy as a good human and also to flesh out these characters, which mostly works. Big Black, meanwhile, has a breakdown and takes a break. We then find out that he’s doing it to pay off the debt for a person who used to be his partner at work but now can’t ride anymore after losing a leg in an accident. Black then hands over his secret notebook to Gao to make his app better.
As the movie sprints towards the big climax, it ultimately comes down to Gao having to become the number one rider for Foodie by the end of the year. If he fails to do that, they’re going to lose the house as they won’t be able to afford the mortgage. Gao’s competitors are Yang, Qiu, Stingie, and another rider, Sun. Stingie bows out in the middle of the race as he has to go to the hospital for his son’s surgery. Qiu and Sun both fall behind. Yang gets stuck delivering an order in a building where he has to climb loads of stairs. The movie could have just had Gao deliver the last order and win it, but to make things overly dramatic – he had to have a freak accident, then rush to a nightclub where he finds it really difficult to deliver the order with the buzzing noise around. He manages to pull it off in the nick of time, though all bloodied and bruised. He ends up winning an award, where he speaks about riding safely on the roads and not being like him (that’s some damage control, I would say). Despite saving the house, Gao and his family move to a smaller house in a humble, working-class neighborhood. Interestingly, a person from Foodie’s rival company, Rapideliver, comes to deliver food to Gao during the move. The man is new and comes late, but Gao ends up giving him a good rating and a tip. This is obviously a sign of good faith and leaving the audience with hope. Also, Gao’s diabetes gets magically cured as he no longer needs to take insulin.
Does Gao land a tech job at Foodie?
Upstream ends with the top bosses of Foodie talking about how one of their riders (Gao) has made an app that has made things easy for every other rider and earned the company a lot more profit. They’re considering whether they should offer this man a job as a programmer, but we don’t find out how this pans out. My guess would be Gao is offered the job, but he might let it go, as he now has everything he needs to be happy: family, a bunch of good colleagues, and a great manager. And the movie never gave any impression of Gao missing his old job either.
