The travels of Justin

On Thursday, Ryan and I went to the post office to see if any of our packages had arrived; both of us have been waiting for longer than we can remember for boxes from our families. China Post was very clear that unless we have a piece of paper with some kind of tracking/inventory number on it, they can’t check their shelves for it, despite my previous experience which directly contradicts this.

With amazing timing, a slip was delivered to our dorm Friday late-afternoon which happened to notify us of a package for Ryan at the school post office. We decided backup was in order, so we brought a friend with us. We walk into the small office and, while Ryan’s trying to get his package, I spot a large envelope clearly marked by Canada Post and addressed to me! By the time Ryan and our friend finish talking with the worker, we learned several things:

1. The slip we received that afternoon was labelled incorrectly: it was for me, not Ryan
2. The envelope I found collecting dust on the shelf was unrelated to the slips of paper. I have to wonder if I would have ever received my package despite the clear address — including dorm building, house number and even room number.
3. The office gave us a second piece of paper, because (apparently) both Ryan and I had each received a package — unrelated to the envelope I discovered — but had only notified us about the one for me (that had been mislabelled as if it was for Ryan).
4. Our packages are not at the school post office with all the other packages. That makes too much sense!

Instead, we had to take a 10-minute bus ride to the bigger China Post outlet where we had visited the day before and been refused. We hand our slips to the person behind the counter who yells to one person in the back room, who yells to someone else, who in turn yells to a man in his 30’s who bustles out to examine our slips. He disappears for a moment and returns with a box for each of us.

I thought I was just tagging along with Ryan as he picks up his mail and I end up getting an envelope and parcel in the process. China Post never ceases to astonish me, but at least the packages seem to arrive. Poor Ryan missed his last package when they delivered the notification slip to him one day after they returned the package to Canada because it sat for so long without being picked up.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 16th, 2006 at 10:39 am and is filed under Life and living, Tianjin, China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.