The Box

It’s been quite a saga, but on Friday of last week we finally took possession of a box that our dear nephew sent us over 2 months ago.  It took all of 4 days to get it from Des Moines to Shanghai, but that’s when the problems started.  The custom officials decided to have a little fun with us.  First they wanted a list of everything in the box.  Woops, forgot to make a list, so I had to use emails and recreate what we thought was in there. Next they required it all be translated into Mandarin.  I enlisted one of the front office staff and she was gracious enough to do it.  Next came a big obstacle.  They demanded a letter with our school seal that verified that I in fact was NOT opening a small store to sell all the food goods in the box, but actually planned on consuming them. [I don’t know why they thought 20 bars of chocolate, 120 bags of instant oatmeal, 6 bags of coffee beans, or 12 bags of assorted notes was a lot for us to consume, but they did.]   At first the school said they couldn’t get into the practice or writing letters on their seal because they know the Chinese bureaucracy and they constantly push back on new demands, because the bureaucracy is already burdensome, and once you establish it as a step, it’s always demanded in the future.  Anyway, I tried sending a variety of non-sealed letters, but the DHL rep kept sending back the same demand.  After about 4 weeks the school came up with something they thought was acceptable and sent it.  Just when I thought perhaps I would be having oatmeal for breakfast, they sent a letter demanding a doctor’s prescription for the large bottle of ibuprofen in the box. I explained it was over the counter, but they didn’t care.  I told them to throw it away, because I had no such document and I just wanted to end the nightmare.  Ok, they said, but now it will take time to go through another layer of bureaucracy if they must discard an item.  I had to verify that I allowed the discarding…It was getting pretty ridiculous, but I wanted my food. One of the women in the front office kept suggested I just tell them to send it back, but she didn't know what she was asking of me to deny that I wanted my food snacks. 

Finally they decided they couldn’t allow the almond butter to come into the country because it was obviously a dairy product, which isn’t allowed to be imported.  I had to write a letter explaining even though butter was in the name, it was just a joke; there wasn’t butter in the ingredients.  I said it was like peanut butter in that respect.  After I sent the email I remembered I also had 2 jars of peanut butter in the box and thought I had set myself up for more deletions, but they didn’t catch it.

Yummy Treats worth the trouble

Finally I got an email that said they were ready to give me what was left of my box but that I had to pay a fee of 766 RMB, about 120 bucks or so.  When I asked for an itemization I was more than a little irked to see about 500 of it was a “storage charge” by DHL for storing my box.  I was on the phone very quickly to DHL and my heroines in the front office got enraged for me and took the phone and let the guy have it.  They’d been helping me through the weeks of demands and they were tired of this box business, too.  They, in fact, have told the DHL people they will never use their services again.  I'm never sending food into China again, but I may need DHL in the future, so couldn't burn that bridge.

The one small victory from all this was that DHL agreed to take off the 500 charge, and finally brought the box.  I had great fun remembering all the foods, and checking out the stash. Much to my surprise the items they had disallowed were also in the box.  Go figure.