UPS DALIAN REDUX
We just came back from a Major Adventure finding Dalian's UPS location -- I said to T., "No one can really grasp what we go through, what it takes to get done the things we considered to be easily accomplished "in the Old Country." His opinion was, not only would people we know have no frame of reference, "they probably don't really want to hear it." Or would beg the question, what was our point in being here...a vulnerable point to be protected from critical people, i.e. his family.
We found the UPS place we'd been to at X-mas time, when we went downtown to a bleak semi-occupied old "Sinotrans" building with dirty terrazzo floors, small piles of trash in the corners of the stairwells and a view from the hallway of the floor's bathrooms. (The old-style is just to have an opening in the wall to indicate bathroom areas, with old-fashioned cloth dividers marked with male and female silhouettes.) At the time, their cluttered office had old boxes we recycled and after spending a lot of time helping us pack two boxes for two families to distribute in different parts of the country, they gave us a great price/discount.
The company that was the UPS Dalian proxy was no longer there -- so we went into another office with three young people and asked if they knew where they were. I had no idea if we were in the same exact office or not; but it was a large room, but mostly empty space, with a few computers, a water-cooler and a couch -- and absolutely no indication whatsoever of the nature of their business! I sat down and T. gave one of the two women our UPS business card and she called them. I sat down and another woman brought us water (!) --
If you can believe this, after the woman got of the phone, she grabbed her purse and she and a young man set off in the mid-day heat and humidity to walked with us (over twenty minutes) to get us to the new UPS. They stopped and asked questions until we reached a large modern building on Zhongshan Lu. T. tried to pay for them to take a taxi back, but they wouldn't go for it. We'll probably go back with a cake from Holliland, the faux Western bakery chain here.
The new office turned out to be the Business Development branch of the local "new" UPS -- It's in a slick new building near the upscale Western hotels; the office interior could have been a new office in Anytown, U.S.A. except for the signage.
The staff was friendly, and knew a little English. One man brought us into a conference room with a white glass board and wrote some words in English on it. I wrote too, words like, "envelope." It was the first time that I'd tried this even though I've known for months that most people here learn but don't speak English. Many times people will draw something on their open palm, a word, a number.
Turned out that they had no scale there, so they asked our permission to use the scale of the restaurant downstairs!
We were willing to go out to the "operations center" near the Coca Cola factory not far from where we live, but they discouraged us. We asked if they could "pick up" but we determined that the drivers would not have scales in the cars so that we couldn't pay on the spot -- that was the "two month projection" -- translated, their goal is to have drivers with scales two months from now.
Two hours or so after we started, we left on our way to have lunch at about 3:30. They said that the package would arrive in L.A. by Friday the 8th, since the Dalian UPS had already gone that day. Does this sound like a city of 6 million or so? That's what we mean by everything looking slick on the outside but no infrastructure. I've just come in from all day out and I'm beat and probably not too articulate.
On the way home we stopped at Olympic Square, went downstairs, behind a poster into a room hidden from the po-po, who occasionally bust the DVD vendors, and bought about 9 films. As we rode home in the taxi trying to decide what to watch first I realized that we changed our moods with the movies as if they were drugs, something fast, something slow, light, deep, you may know what I mean.
We found the UPS place we'd been to at X-mas time, when we went downtown to a bleak semi-occupied old "Sinotrans" building with dirty terrazzo floors, small piles of trash in the corners of the stairwells and a view from the hallway of the floor's bathrooms. (The old-style is just to have an opening in the wall to indicate bathroom areas, with old-fashioned cloth dividers marked with male and female silhouettes.) At the time, their cluttered office had old boxes we recycled and after spending a lot of time helping us pack two boxes for two families to distribute in different parts of the country, they gave us a great price/discount.
The company that was the UPS Dalian proxy was no longer there -- so we went into another office with three young people and asked if they knew where they were. I had no idea if we were in the same exact office or not; but it was a large room, but mostly empty space, with a few computers, a water-cooler and a couch -- and absolutely no indication whatsoever of the nature of their business! I sat down and T. gave one of the two women our UPS business card and she called them. I sat down and another woman brought us water (!) --
If you can believe this, after the woman got of the phone, she grabbed her purse and she and a young man set off in the mid-day heat and humidity to walked with us (over twenty minutes) to get us to the new UPS. They stopped and asked questions until we reached a large modern building on Zhongshan Lu. T. tried to pay for them to take a taxi back, but they wouldn't go for it. We'll probably go back with a cake from Holliland, the faux Western bakery chain here.
The new office turned out to be the Business Development branch of the local "new" UPS -- It's in a slick new building near the upscale Western hotels; the office interior could have been a new office in Anytown, U.S.A. except for the signage.
The staff was friendly, and knew a little English. One man brought us into a conference room with a white glass board and wrote some words in English on it. I wrote too, words like, "envelope." It was the first time that I'd tried this even though I've known for months that most people here learn but don't speak English. Many times people will draw something on their open palm, a word, a number.
Turned out that they had no scale there, so they asked our permission to use the scale of the restaurant downstairs!
We were willing to go out to the "operations center" near the Coca Cola factory not far from where we live, but they discouraged us. We asked if they could "pick up" but we determined that the drivers would not have scales in the cars so that we couldn't pay on the spot -- that was the "two month projection" -- translated, their goal is to have drivers with scales two months from now.
Two hours or so after we started, we left on our way to have lunch at about 3:30. They said that the package would arrive in L.A. by Friday the 8th, since the Dalian UPS had already gone that day. Does this sound like a city of 6 million or so? That's what we mean by everything looking slick on the outside but no infrastructure. I've just come in from all day out and I'm beat and probably not too articulate.
On the way home we stopped at Olympic Square, went downstairs, behind a poster into a room hidden from the po-po, who occasionally bust the DVD vendors, and bought about 9 films. As we rode home in the taxi trying to decide what to watch first I realized that we changed our moods with the movies as if they were drugs, something fast, something slow, light, deep, you may know what I mean.
posted by Anonymous at 7:40 PM
5 comments
