“No no, this is wrong,” she said over the box I’d prepared for mailing. “I will come back.”
What could be wrong? I was sending a care package of cookies, old Reader’s Digest issues and funny tourist trinkets to a (cute!) American teacher who has having a rough time in another Chinese city. I’d found a good-sized box, wrapped it in grocery-brown paper. Then, not trusting my Chinese handwriting, I’d asked one of my students to address it. One look at my ready box made her giggle.
A while later she returned with a rough-fabric pillowcase, a needle and thread. Gesturing at my box she instructed, “Take everything out.” As I did so she repacked the items into the pillowcase.
“What are you doing?” I asked, bewildered. “That’s not sturdy. Things will break.”
“No, it will be okay. It must be this, or they will not send it.”
“Why?”
“They must check it.” Apparently packages received a blind touch inspection through pillowcase fabric to ensure … what?
Finished packing, she stitched the opening shut, then wrote the address in ballpoint pen, flattening the fabric against a hard surface within. “There,” she proclaimed. It looked like a floppy Santa sack, but she seemed satisfied. I strapped it to the back of my bike and headed to the post office.
March 26, 2008 at 12:51 pm
I bet people don’t go to the trouble of sending each other very many packages then if you have to SEW them! I’m often to lazy to get out the package tape let alone the needle and thread!
March 28, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Though it seemed antiquated and slow, my impression was that they accepted it as the standard way of doing things. Since they had less access to phones than we do, the mail service was actually a popular way to keep in touch, needle and thread notwithstanding.