*There was an alternative title to this post. I'll leave it up to your imaginations, suffice to say it was clean but very much taking the biscuit*
Will it never end? Seems like we get a couple of days when things run smoothly, and then everything hits the fan again. Two examples from the past two days.
POSTING A PRESENT ABROAD
How hard can it be to find a post office with an international service? This is a big deal - every other country I have been to has a facility for international postage in every post office, regardless of size, location, or how often this function is required. Sending a package to another country is as simple as going to a desk, filling out the required forms, and watching your post disappear into the black hole of the post office backroom. Here, it's enough if I can find a place that's open when I want it to be. Doesnt help that on the most recent holiday (Mid Autumn Festival?) the post offices stay closed but the banks open. Kind of like an odd bank holiday. So my second attempt to send this parcel was scuppered by poor timing (my first was ruined by the post muppet telling me that the present - a mug, yes you guessed correctly Lucy - was for drinking tea, and the letters -rolled up inside the mug for convenience - were for posting; actually I thought this was quite insulting and I wanted to hit the bloke square in the face for being so obnoxious, I was already having a crap day). Anyway, finally the post offices were open and I thought I would get this sorted once and for all. I went in and was informed there was no international service at that office. Honestly, what is wrong with this stupid place? I asked where I could find a branch to send my package and they said Hongshan. I asked if that was the one near the Xinhua Bookstore and they said yes, take the 101 bus (yes, yes, I know THAT). So I took the bus, it was the middle of the day, blazing hot, and I wasn't feeling good at all. But I got there, and it was a lot cooler inside, and then the fun began again. Turns out they don't have an international service. And after I got quite frustrated with them, it turns out they aren't the Hongshan branch, it's another 2 stops up the road. Gaaaaargh. I asked why they couldnt just have an international service in all branches like in England (or anywhere else for that matter) and was told (in English), "Ah, but that is your country and ... this is China" (yes, it IS China, which is fast becoming synonymous for "difficult" and "hopelessly slow" - aptly I learnt a very good Chinese word this week, 乱 (luan) which means "messy" or "disorganised".) Feeling even worse, I went to the Hongshan branch, where (after a LOT of hassle, rewriting my address on the parcel, and filling out various customs forms - acerbically I might add, the frustration by this point becoming tangible) the package was good to go and all that remained was the small matter of RMB 86 to pay for it. WHAT?! GBP £7.00!!!!!!! for a small parcel?! Gobsmacked, and with no other option, I paid for this service, but really, that is extortionate. I think post day is going to be a once a week, maybe once every ten days affair, and will mainly be limited to sending letters, certainly nothing much bigger if that's how much I'm going to have to pay!
On the plus side I wasn't required to show my passport (a first, maybe?)
OBTAINING A RESIDENCY PERMIT
It has been about 10 days since we got our temporary residents' permits, which took about 18 days from arriving in China (there was a 30 day limit, it wasn't exactly optional, but the process took forever). Now we need the permanent ones (apparently we have another 30 days to get this sorted, good, we'll probably need it), which are both a sheet of paper and a sticker in the passport (I think). This morning we finally got the uni to give us all the necessary documents for this permit, and off we went to the PSB office. For the record, our handbooks state that a member of the international school staff should accompany us, but I didn't see anyone offering, and like most other things I'm beginning to suspect it was a load of mouth and not much trousers. We got to the PSB offices at about 1220, took a ticket when we went in and noted the number ... 1070 ... the display was reading number 1032 or something ridiculously far from our turn, and as usual a massive crowd of people was aimlessly shoving and trying to plonk their docs on the table first (despite this numbering system, it would seem the Chinese attitude of "just barge and shove and get in front of everyone else" has infected foreigners now) ... so we decided to go for lunch and see what the numbering system was doing when we got back. about 45 minutes later and it was all the way up to 1042. hardly an improvement, and quite frankly shocking - if these people would actually QUEUE and follow some sort of discipline, I'm sure it would have gone a lot quicker. And finally, at 1330, the guard from the front door comes along and starts making a cut off point, because the office stops working around then (WHY?!) and informs us they will reopen at 10 the next day, please come back then. So we are skipping classes (I sent my teacher an apologetic text, explaining this), just to get this stupid bureaucractic rubbish done, when it should have been sorted weeks ago, we should have had more assistance, and it certainly shouldn't have taken longer than today to finish.
In brief, I would suggest the following changes to improve efficiency and keep people happy:
* Make your postal service, just that.
* Do the same for your banks (remember the hassle we went through earlier?)
* Work proper hours, and don't send everyone off to lunch at the same damn time, that's what SHIFTS were invented for.
* Research, and subsequently enforce, the idea of queues in public offices (at least, if not everywhere)
* University, if you say you are going to provide a service, provide it.
As soon as we have this stupid permit sorted, we are going out to celebrate in a small (but very nice) restaurant near our house. And we're taking at least one of our teachers with us, we have two absolute stars to thank.
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2 comments:
wow, so much trouble to send a mug (detective skillz... wash it before i use it, eh?) - thank you. i'll let you know when it arrives :) less than three.
I am back!
Posting: only Hongshan deal with parcels. Most cities in China only have one or two offices which will send parcels. Don't ask why. Asking why is asking for an obtuse and unhelpful answer. If you're asking a Chinese 'attendant', at any rate. This is why at the other post office they, assuming you knew everything they did in their typically autistic Chinese sense, thought that your cup was for drinking tea, because at that office it would be impossible to send it.
Oh, and the price of the parcel is because you are using the most expensive rate. There are 3 rates for parcels: most expensive, which gets there within a week, apparently. Middle, will take 3-4 weeks. Cheap as chips, takes 3 months over land and sea. This last one is useful for sending masses and masses of stuff you have acquired home. It is cheaper than any shipping company could ever hope to offer, so remember that when the year draws to a close. Or 3 months beforehand, anyway. Just take everything with you (on several occasions we took whole suitcases full of stuff up to Hongshan) and they will pack it for you in giant boxes. Expect that sometimes you will have to shout at them (the only way to get them to listen) if they insist that this tiny box will fit all your stuff when to a 5 year old/monkey/amoeba (delete as appropriate) it would be obvious that it does not.
Largely the things to be sent were souvenirs and clothes (you'll need a summer wardrobe and a hefty winter wardrobe whether you like it or not), but the main culprit was books. Squillions of them. Because it makes better financial sense to buy books here and send them than it does to buy them in the UK. I bought £100 pounds' worth of books, which can be shipped for around £50. Buying these books in the UK would have come to roughly £2300 by my calculations. Big savings : D
Letters, on the other hand, can be sent by UPS which will take 2-3 days and costs a flat rate of 220 kuai, or by their normal rate which in fact only takes a couple of weeks.
乱 and 麻烦 are the best Chinese words you will ever know. Largely because they can be applied to practically every situation you will be faced with in China, and also because that is how the Chinese complain themselves, so they will feel your pain. They won't care, of course, but they may just feel it.
I am very British. I queue, I don't push and shove, I don't demand attention until I have waited my turn for it. I most definitely do not shout at people employed to serve my needs. Oh no, wait, put all that into the past tense, because let me assure you now, in your naive green state, that it is just no good being polite and British in the PSB or anywhere else in China. You will soon come to learn that everything does in fact work out faster (for you) if you push and shove and shout. Not for anybody else, mind, but screw them, they don't care about you either. It took me about a month in China before I just snapped and stopped caring anymore. It did me a world of good. If something is bothering you, let them know, as loudly and obnoxiously as you can. Likelihood is, they'll deal with you promptly if just to shut you up so they can get back to more important things like drinking tea.
I don't know, you may be luckier than us, but they refused to give our passports back when we came back on the allotted day and then the next two occasions when they requested we return. It finally took Anniwar pulling some strings for us to get our passports back in time for us to go travelling. But they did say there was a problem with the computer system. This was only a problem on ONE of the days though, on another occasion, this is what happened:
me: Hi can I have my passport back please, here's my receipt.
[I wait 40 minutes.] him: uh no, sorry. Your passport is actually in the other room.
me: so I have to go to the 'other room' to get it?
him: no, it's in our other private passport storage room.
me: well can you go and get it?
him: no, it's locked.
me: can you unlock it then?
him: no, someone else has the key.
me: well can he open it then?
him: no he's not here today.
me: when will he be here?
him: tomorrow
me: then can I come back tomorrow when he will be here?
him: no, he'll need a stamp and the man with the stamp won't be here tomorrow.
me: [frustrated gurgling and choking sounds are all that can be heard]
him: come back next week.
I stuck around a little longer but to no avail. At this point, if I remember rightly, Liam was also doubled up outside the PSB in extreme agony as he had caught the hallucinatory 'food poisoning' which I had so generously passed on to him. Good times.
Remember you will have to pay them as well when you pick it up. 400 kuai if I remember correctly.
Having said all that, when my passport got stolen and I had to do it all over again, they were really perfectly acceptable.
Oh, and I have no idea where you read it but you said something about your student card not having been given to you yet? Perhaps things will have improved now Deng is here, but some students in the university never received their cards, and others only mid-second semester. We only got our cards (In September) because Catherine lost it, went up to the 8th floor and yelled at them. She told them she wasn't leaving until she had the card in her hand. They said, okay, it'll take 20 minutes to do though, so it's probably better that you come back tomorrow afternoon. Catherine was not falling for that one. Nope, I'm staying here for the full 20 minutes. The card was in her hand after 5. Liam and I went the following day, and demanded our cards. No, no student is allowed to have their card until every student on the course has registered (Kazakhs bloody hurry up!). We said that our friend had received ours, oh and by the way, we're not leaving until we get ours either. 10 minutes later, two student cards. Lesson: you just HAVE to be forceful. There's no two ways about it. Play on the Newcastle connection as much as you can, as well. (Oh and I think they may ask for another passport photo, I can't remember).
Oh and your suggestions... I agree entirely. I've lost count of the times I have thought the exact same. Problem is, nobody but the foreigners care enough. Plus, you should see what it's like when they take everybody off on lunch break at the same time at a central Chinese big city train station in the middle of Spring Festival when the main north-south line has been destroyed by extreme weather. ******* idiots.
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