Special delivery

Last week our postal carrier informed me that we had a large box which she had tried to deliver when we weren't home. Because it was large, she didn't want to bring it again and left it at the post office for us to get ourselves. She told me the post office was "next to the grocery store."

When I went to the grocery store, there was no post office in sight. I asked a few guards there and on the street where the nearest post office was, but in typical Chinese fashion they had no idea. This a lamentable aspect of society here - people have no clue about things outside of their own zone of responsibility.

We found a post office which looked abandoned and was locked. There was a large, lone package on the counter which I fervently hoped wasn't ours ("Looks like the foreigners aren't coming. Let's ditch!"). We returned home and hoped that the postal carrier would have mercy and bring it again.

This afternoon I was over at a neighbor's house preparing it for my family's arrival, when there was a knock on the door. It was our postal carrier. She looked at me for a moment like, "Do I know you?" then proceeded to show me a large package and say, "Do you know this person?" It was my name on the box.

She had gone to our house, and finding us not at home, decided to go find another foreigner under the presumption that we all know each other (and in this case, a good assumption). So all's well that ends well and we have our package.

A sad post script to this post though is that this may be our last delivery from Book Depository. They have suspended shipping to China for the time being. And there is great despair in the land.