Yard Sale?

Yard Sale?
This was my first thought as I walked passed an array of items spread out all over the ground. Do Chinese people have yard sales? It seems odd the thought that they would reuse things like that. I mean most of the times things aren't made for long use so having multiple owners seems a strange idea. They make it quick and fast for a short time, then can reproduce the whole cycle over again giving many more jobs for the millions of people in their country (literally millions).

But to my surprise and yet confirmation it wasn't a yard sale but rather package delivery. Forget UPS or Fedex - students come to these guys.

I talked to another teacher (because they spoke English) who said a few years ago it was only one guy with 5 or 6 packages. Now it's grown to 3 or 4 vans each having 50 or so packages. You can have packages delivered or send stuff out with these guys. You can order stuff off the TaoBao (Chinese Ebay) and they'll deliver it. Does it seem shady to me and my American ideal of having a well established clean cut business? Yes. Does it work? Yes. I used the "official" post office last year and it took nearly 2 months for my package to get home. My teammate used these guys with a student and made it there in 2 weeks. I know who I'm using this year.

I watched inquisitively as I walked past thinking students or someone would be more likely to just walk off with a package that wasn't their own, but it looked as if students were just casually checking the coat rack to see if anything was their size. They'd walk through skimming over the labels in a certain section and if nothing had their name on it, they just kind of shrugged off and went about their business - the same look American students have when looking through their mailboxes at school. Sometimes we seem like we're the same, and sometimes our post offices are in a building or on the street curb literally out of the back of a van. When in China...