The U.S. Chinese immigrants running Temu shipping centers from their homes.

In Eason Lin’s cramped one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, the living room is a maze of hundreds of boxes. All of the packages will soon ship out to Americans who shop on Temu and TikTok Shop. 

Lin, 28, hails from a small town in China’s southeastern province of Fujian and arrived in New York in 2022. Lin worked as a waiter at Chinese restaurants for a few months but grew frustrated with the grueling hours and low pay. When he heard the logistics industry was thriving, he saw an opportunity. He turned his small living room into a makeshift warehouse, offering order fulfillment services to sellers in Shenzhen, China’s e-commerce hub. 

“It’s a comfortable job,” says Lin, who wakes up each morning to check orders, print shipping labels, and pack items. He transports packages on foot, either in a backpack or on a trolley, to a nearby post office, since he doesn’t own a car. For every package he processes, he charges Chinese sellers about $1.

“I can potentially make it really big,” Lin said, hopeful despite the modest earnings. Although Lin struggles with spoken English, he is able to converse with postal workers and call shipping companies to negotiate rates on bulk orders.

Many sellers ship orders directly from China to the U.S. to keep prices low. But the U.S. government’s moves to crack down on cheap e-commerce parcels from China have pushed sellers to rethink their business strategies. Rather than relying on long-distance shipping, many now use commercial logistics companies or small warehouses like Lin’s.