Getting the bike home

Jiazizhen

When I checked in at the hotel on Saturday, a young man who turned out to be in charge of building maintenance wanted me to pose for a photo, a common request (not from him personally, but from many Chinese in small towns and rural areas) and one I rarely mind.  He then helped me carry my gear, including my bicycle, to my room. When we got there, I asked if he could help me find a box in which I could ship the bike. At this point he lost interest in me and begged off knowing anyone who could help.

I called the courier company at their national call center and informed them I needed a box suitable for a bicycle.  The local agent called back suggesting I get a carpenter to build a crate.  Thank you very much.

One of the girls at the front desk pointed me to a bicycle shop.  She dropped a pin on the map app and I walked there in about 15 minutes.  Except that there was no bicycle shop in that location.  In fact I still don't know if the town has a bicycle shop. I wasn't going to waste more time searching because I had devised a new strategy.

My bicycle box was still in storage with the courier company, to be delivered to my hotel in Guangzhou after my arrival there.  I called the courier company and asked that it be redirected here.  Easy enough, I thought. Not so. 

It turns out that the hotel in Xiamen was the shipper of record and to change the destination required an order from the shipper.  It took a number of calls back and forth to the hotel and the courier to sort things out.  Or at least I thought they had been sorted when I called the following morning to check on delivery status only to find there had been zero progress. This resulted in more phone calls back and forth and finally late in the morning notification that the package was being picked up in Gunagzhou for delivery here. The online web tracker showed delivery by noon Jan 01, but has since been updated and the box is now in the local warehouse so I should get it today.  

The plan is to pack up the bike, send it back to Suzhou, and then proceed to Guangzhou by bus (there is no train here) for a couple of days before catching my 06 Jan flight home.  

In the meantime, I'm stuck in a town that I'm sure not even Chinese tourists visit.  

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