Nightmare before Christmas

With this title, I’m not referring to ghosts of Christmas past or life altering experiences. I’m simply referring to the nightmarish headache that is attempting to send a package from the Chinese post office.

I know I’ve said it before, but I will state it again. The post office is one of my least favorite places in China. It ranks right up there with public trough style bathrooms (those of you who have been to China will know exactly what I’m talking about) and the train station. The post office is one place in China that has a ridiculously lengthy set of rules and regulations that seemingly are created solely to make any task ten times more difficult and complicated than it needs to be. And unlike rules of the road, these regulations are for the most part strictly adhered to.

Monday I set off to the post office to send a package of Christmas gifts. I’ve been in China long enough to know trouble likely lay ahead, so I brought along back-up. Armed with the language and cultural skills of Stella, and with a plastic bag full of wrapped gifts, I headed to the post office. A plastic bag because you have to purchase and pack the box in the post office. We arrived at the office just outside our campus, and Stella explained we needed to send a package.

“Come back tomorrow.” My Chinese is good enough to understand that phrase. “Here we go…” I muttered under my breath. The postman had launched into a long spiel, of which I understood words like “no bags” and “maybe tomorrow” and “you have to come back.” With a wince, Stella looked at me. She knows my hatred of the post office.

“Uhhh…all of their mailing bags are full right now. They will probably get more bags tomorrow, so they want us to come back then.” I groaned and asked if we could at least get the things in the box and address the box then. More dialogue with the postman. And then a short translation from Stella, “No.”

Having a great deal of history with the post office, I had budgeted a generous hour and a half for the task, so Stella and I decided to grab a cab to the downtown office in hopes of them not being out of large mailing bags. We arrived at the crowded and smoke filled office and Stella announced our desire to send a package. A very grumpy looking man slowly made his way over to us. I put my plastic bag on the counter. He grumbled, “Unwrap it all.”

A quick sidenote here. The Christmas wrapping paper we can find here in our city is quite thick. The tape we can find in our city is quite weak. These two facts combined means that wrapping a present requires a lot of tape. Consequently, unwrapping all the gifts meant no hope of wrapping them again.

Stella argued with the man for a bit, but realized we were getting nowhere. Since the postman at the other office had seen the bag of presents and had mentioned no problems with them, we decided to press our luck and re-attempt the package sending the next day.

Because Stella is a terrific friend, she made a trip to the campus post office in the morning to check whether there were bags and to ask about the wrapping. Sure enough, the wrapping was going to have to come off. So, during my lunch break, I hurriedly unwrapped all of the gifts, remeasured and cut new pieces of wrapping paper for each gift, and packed a bag of the gifts, scissors, tape, and the paper.

Stella and I showed up once again at the post office. And once again, I heard the dreaded words, “Come back tomorrow.” At this point Stella was perhaps even more exasperated than I was. “But you said you have bags!” “We do have bags.” “Then what’s the problem?” “The van already picked up the bags for the shipment today.” At this point I didn’t know whether I wanted to laugh or cry. This was getting beyond the point of ridiculousness. “Can we pack the box today and you just keep it overnight?” “No.” “Can you look at the items now so she can wrap them tonight and bring them tomorrow?” “No. We must see her wrap them.”

Sometimes one of the best ways to deal with situations like this in China is simply not to budge. So Stella and I stood there. We were not leaving that office without some kind of progress in the situation. Stella started to approach the problem from different angles. “Can we at least weigh everything to see how much it’s going to cost?” This led into an argument about whether or not it was ok to ship candy to America. Eventually we persuaded them this was fine. They weighed the gifts. “Can we see if it will fit in a box?” The postman brought a box out and barely managed to fit everything in. “Do you think everything will still fit if it’s wrapped?” “Let’s try.” “Will we have to unwrap it again?” “No.” And so I proceeded, at the desk to wrap all of the presents in front of the postman. We managed to shove everything in the box. The postman started to tape the box shut and then gave us the shipping form to fill out. At this point, neither Stella nor I knew what the plan is, but we weren’t about to press our luck anymore by asking questions. We filled out the form. They weighed the package again. They told us the price. Stella asked if we needed to come back tomorrow. They said, no, they could keep the package.

And thus ended the 2010 nightmare of sending a Christmas package. And thus my dislike of the post office continued.