It has been nearly a year and a half since the day I left that Christ-forsaken third world cesspool of ethnocentrism, xenophobia, primitivity, crime, peasant barbarism, laziness, unfathomable stupidity and Bronze-Age superstition. One could, perhaps, have reasonably believed that the window of opportunity for Chinese incompetence to damage my life was closed (give or take a little detail like the entire planet recovering from China's little Christmas gift to the world in 2019).
I certainly believed this.
As it turns out, I was wrong.
As most of my readers have no doubt become aware, I'm a voracious reader, and during my years in China I accumulated a modest little collection of about 300 volumes or so, many of which, since they came from Chinese state-owned propaganda mills publishers, would be hard to replace in the West. Even those that could be repurchased here, had entire volumes of my notes in the margins (complete with page references to other books) that would quite literally take years to reconstruct.
And we're not talking penny dreadfuls. These were the books I use for my research sources right here in this blog.
Well, given the hurried manner in which I left China, I did not have time to buy enough suitcases to carry all of these with me (nor am I sure if China Southern Airlines would have had the option of paying extra to check that many bags). So I left them in the care of a friend in Beijing (a fellow foreigner, not one of the moronic locals, who I would not trust with a collection containing so many "less-than-China-friendly" volumes), with the understanding that I'd send the money to ship them later.
It doubled in size since this picture, by the way.
Well, due to the difficulties of getting re-established after Chinavirus-19, it took me some time before I felt like I had the money to do that (and need we mention I was not in a place I considered permanent?).
At the end of March though, this friend began to hint that while he was not at the "get your damned books out of my closet now, chief" stage yet, the summer rains were going to begin soon and he would be faced with a choice of either leaving them under the bed where they're not in the way (and letting them get wet due to a leaky window), or move them somewhere where they would be in the way, in which case he'd get to the aforementioned point quickly. It was time to finally ship them here. Well, a colleague in China found a shipping company who could ship them for 8000 RMB (about $1300), which was a bargain compared to anything I found. So I wired her the 8K RMB and said "send me the receipt." The courier came to my friend's house, loaded the books, and went on about his business. I never did get that receipt I asked for, but all seemed well.
Seemed.
Now, I normally consider myself eloquent, and I've spent a week or so trying to think of how to summarize the ensuing debacle. The first answer that came to mind was something along the lines of "ugh!" though after due consideration (and a further examination of recent events), it began to seem that "FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!" better captured the subtleties of the situation.
Seriously, what the hell was I thinking? That the Chinese were going to do something right? As Joe Biden would say, "come on, man."
Two Weeks Later...
...a box arrived at my door.
That's A box, as in one.
The thing is, the shipper picked up 5 from my friend's apartment. I got an email from FedEx, in Ukrainian, that said the other box (singular) was in Tremblay, France and was being rerouted to Ukraine.
No sign of the other 3. None Whatsoever.
So I called the Chinese colleague and asked her what happened. She bombarded the courier, who sent her photos of 4 shipping labels.
Four shipping labels, for five boxes.
...?...
My first thought was "well, I have one and here are the other four." But the date on the picture showed me "no, this shows only four boxes were shipped and besides, one of these labels matches the one I got."
The explanation was "we combined 2 boxes into 1 to save money, so we only shipped four boxes." I knew for a fact all five of those boxes were filled to the brim, so this smelled like Chinese bullshit (yak shit?) to me. After some initial terror that Chinese Customs and Immigration had gone through the boxes and removed volumes that were banned in China (something I know they do on INcoming shipments but it never occurred to me until that moment that they might do so for OUTgoing shipments), I learned that I was attributing to malice what was actually the result of China's signature trait: incompetence. It took some browbeating to get to the truth out of Ah-Q's first cousin, the shipper, which was "we busted two of the boxes open by dropping them and had to put their contents in a bigger box."
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian girl close to me (whose assistance has become invaluable) took the barcodes from the shipping labels and immediately found the other three online, listed as "en route to destination." Apparently they were all four sent at separate times...
...by three different couriers.
And only one had arrived, while the other three were in-transit at various stages.
Fine. Whatever. Long as they get here eventually. And they're no longer in Chinese hands so I'm free of Chinese fuck-up-ery, right?
The idiot courier misspelled my name on the other boxes. To make matters worse, he didn't even have the God-damned common courtesy to make the SAME spelling error on every box. No, he came up with three completely different ways to fuck up the spelling of my name (which is not that difficult to spell) on every label. And of course, none of those spelling mistakes appear on my passport, and Customs and Immigration here in Ukraine, unlike their Chinese counterparts, are quite diligent about dotting their i's and crossing their t's. So Fedex had to hold them until C&I could "confirm my identity." But that's not the end of the problems.
It seems the shipper listed the boxes (which were personal freight) as "commercial freight," and listed the value of each box as $125 (awfully steep for used books, don't you think?). Why did they do this? So the Chinese government would insure them if they were lost, and guarantee to compensate the shipper for the loss of "their" property.
The problem is that this little white lie caused me yet another extra expense, and not a minor one. See, any parcel over 150 Euros requires an import tax if it's commercial (not if it's private), meaning this little "hey, let's lie on the paperwork just so the government will give us a kickback if the shipment is lost" stunt cost me more money still. To make matters worse, the boxes all arrived at Ukrainian customs on the same day, so they're counted as one delivery when calculating their value.
When I contacted the Chinese courier myself to chew them out for this, they insisted "we take out this insurance so we can compensate you if the shipment is lost." Given their "we are not responsible for loss or damage" policy in their contract, this bald-faced lie earned them a colorful "holy shit! The Laowai knows how to cuss in Mandarin" lesson.
Meanwhile, not only do I have to pay a $360 import tax because a bumbling, incompetent Chinese courier added "snivelling liar and nickel-and-diming toad" to his growing list of "yep; we've confirmed he is indeed Chinese" qualifications, but I have to go to Kiev to pay it in person. And this, of course, presumes they'll even take payment, considering that my passport contains my ACTUAL name, not any of the three misspellings the Chinese idiot listed as the intended recipient.
So now, I'm shelling out MORE money to get my books out of China (which was becoming necessary due to China's ridiculous culture of censorship and anti-foreign xenophobia), a task made more difficult because of a damnably incompetent and underhanded little gerbil of a Chinese courier, while every damned thing else in my life is up in the air because of a virus from China.
One can leave China. One can denounce China. One can boycott China, one can sever all ties with China and swear never to go back again.
But ladies and gentlemen...
Chinese stupidity, is inescapable.
It, is, eternal.
IT'S EVERYWHERE!
It's an unavoidable, unchangeable natural law!
I realize it's not like they have a monopoly on stupidity, but Bleeding Christ, I've never seen a country that takes such pride in guaranteeing that it pervades every aspect of everything they do, say, think or touch!
Truly I tell you, everything in this life is avoidable except death, taxes, and Chinese incompetence.