Last Friday my Chinese film class watched Beijing Bicycle (十七岁的单车), a film in part about the struggles of a bike courier trying to make a living in Beijing. While the movie isn't really about planning the optimal path for making deliveries it does highlight the ubiquitous nature of couriers in China. In the US, if I want to send a letter I will probably send it through the US Postal Service. The Postal Service actually has a monopoly on most first class mail (letters and the like), unless you need to get a letter somewhere extremely quickly or with extra preconditions you will probably just use USPS. I am not sure if China Post has a similar legal monopoly to USPS, but what I do know is courier services are far more common in China than in the US. While most courier companies ship large packages and envelopes like FedEx and UPS do, they also ship letters for very affordably prices. Chinese couriers will even ship small letters in relatively small cities. My friend's husband works for a courier company in a small Hunanese town. American cities and towns of equivalent size probably don't have companies willing to sent your letter form one side to another within the day. Last semester in my Chinese Economic Impact class, we discussed how easy it is for online marketplace companies, like Alibaba or Amazon, to ship stuff since they can just assume that every city has in place already a large courier system. Since dealing with couriers is something you probably have done if you spent a good deal of time in China my Chinese class had a whole unit on mail.
1 Comment
Dad
3/28/2017 11:17:33 pm
However, the ultimate goal of Jeff Bezos is to have Amazon control the entire delivery of a package from warehouse to client using their own vehicles and employees. I am sure Jack Ma has the same idea. Could be trouble forFedEx, USPS as well as Chinese couriers
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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