Return to sender
Yau Neih and were given a culture lesson yesterday--a course in addressing envelopes. Did you know that, in China, they write the main address in the upper left quadrant of the envelope and the return address in the lower right corner? We didn't, until yesterday. Actually, I had suspected as much, having seen an envelope with our colleges name and postal code preprinted in the lower right corner. But since China Post always accepts our letters to America, which are addressed in American fashion, I went ahead and addressed my letter to Maoming as I always have. "Maybe the preprinted envelopes were business reply envelopes," I rationalized.I should have recalled that they don't do checks here. Bills are paid by walking down to whatever office is involved and giving the clerk cold, hard cash. When we took our letters--the first in-country letters we've tried to mail ourselves--down to the post office, they gave us a scolding. And two new envelopes. We got out of line and transferred the contents of our old envelopes to the new ones. 'Twas a pity, because instead of being addressed by Ga Dai's elegant hand, our letters now bore my crooked, chicken-scratch characters. We were a bit intimidated by the whole deal and didn't try to write the return address. That was a mistake, because when we tried to submit the letters again, we got another scolding. So we got out of line again and finished addressing our letters properly. At least I hope it was properly. The clerk accepted our envelopes on the third try, at any rate. And, hey, that was one better than our ticket purchase in Maoming.
(Oh, yeah, I didn't write about the ticket purchase in Maoming yet. I really should do that soon....)
posted by John @ 8:11 AM
<< Home