While walking back from work in the frigid cold of Xinjiang’s winter today my wife and I received a phone call informing us that we had mail we needed to come pick it up. Three packages and 6 letters were waiting for us, most of them exciting Christmas leftovers, with the exception of two simple letters mailed from our home in Texas.  The letters were nothing special save two minor – yet surprising – details: 1) they used only one 42 cent stamp each instead of the necessary 90 cent stamps and 2) somehow we sent them to ourselves.

Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time this has happened. I’ve sent myself mail here a couple of times at half the price, each time unintentionally, of course.  You see, every Christmas it is a tradition in my family and circle of friends to send out a “Christmas Letter” giving a short summary of the year and update on our lives.  Because this mass mailing would be insanely expensive if sent from our homes here in Xinjiang, my mom back at home graciously prints off our typed letter and sends them for us from Texas to the addresses we provide her.  This process has worked beautifully over the past three Christmases and would continue to do so were it not for one minor flaw – people move and don’t think to inform us over here in China.

As part of the wonderful job my mom does sending these letters off, she even does us the courtesy of putting our Chinese return address on the envelopes sent.  I’m sure you can see where this is going.  The post office tries unsuccessfully to deliver these letters to my friend Robert and my wife’s Aunt Mary, both of whom (unknown to us) have moved.  As is customary, these letters get sent back with a “Return to Sender” notice on the envelope, which if they looked closely they would see that it was stamped from Texas but instead just glance at the return address and promptly fly it off to Xinjiang, China.  Two weeks later I receive my own letter in the mail having paid only 42 cents.

I doubt this would work the same for a package seeing as it would require all those customs forms, but small white envelopes slip by very easily.  I appreciate the diligence of both China’s and US’s post offices to make sure this letter doesn’t get lost in the Pacific Ocean but I don’t put anything in international mail without insurance that I’m not prepared to lose, so next time just save yourselves the time and trash the letter.

Oh, and if you’re reading this Robert or Aunt Mary, rest assured we haven’t forgotten you.  We would, however, appreciate a change of address notice in the future.  An e-mail would suffice.  Thanks.