Package this.

It's been twelve years since I first came to Beijing, and, yes yes, this place has changed a lot, but certain aspects of the city retain their sense of mystery. For example, the mail.

China Post lost a big envelope of documents I sent express from California late last year, but the good news is that we received our first package at our new Beijing apartment and it's nice to know all postal systems are up and running smoothly.

If only.

On Saturday, a guy knocked on our door to tell we had a package arrive for us from the U.S. I thought, "Great." He then proceeded to have me sign a slip of paper and write down my passport number. Now, I'm generally used to signing for something, but the guy at the door had only the paperwork. He told me we had to go pick up the package at the post office. Well, that's no problem, seeing as how there's a post office right in our little housing complex. But, actually, the guy said, we had to go to the bigger post office farther down the street.

When we arrived at the bigger post office farther down the street, a uniformed staff at the information counter took us to the "Get Bag" counter. But the staff behind the "Get Bag" counter said they don't handle international packages and we had to go to a different post office on North Third Ring Road and didn't I see the Chinese characters in stamped red ink on the back of the slip that said I had to go to the Beitaipingzhuang office? I hadn't even thought to look at those characters because the guy who came to our door said we had to go the post office down the street and I thought that was good enough. By this point it was becoming less clear whether that guy worked for the post office, the building management company, or neither, because he wasn't in any kind of uniform, but either way, he apparently had me sign a slip of paper that says I have received a package that is currently being held at some post office 15 minutes away by taxi, depending on the traffic. At this point, we were quite satisfied with package-retrieval work for the day, and so we decided to postpone our trip to Beitaipingzhuang for later in the week.

Thanks, Avril for the Whoppers, Red Vines, etc. Maybe we'll see them soon. In the meantime, think about this: in a megalopolis of 14 million people, is there really just one post office that distributes all international packages? Mystery indeed.