Desert post office serves tree adopters from around the world
A post office in the heart of the Tengger Desert, China’s fourth-largest desert, has sent more than 20,000 postcards around the world in the past two years.
Since it opened to the public at the end of 2021, staff members at the desert post office in Alshaa League, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, have also planted around 10,000 oleaster trees, with more than 7,000 having been adopted by people from across the country, carrying countless heartwarming stories of their adopters.
The manager of the post office, a woman surnamed Gao, said that the post office is a “store that relieves worries”. It is a lonely yet warm place in the vast and uninhabited desert, a “tree hole” that absorbs various emotions and a station for sending blessings and hopes.
Years ago, she learned from an elderly herder that there used to be a post office in the area, but it had been abandoned for over 30 years.
In 2021, with the support of China Post, she and her team rebuilt it. The main building, small, sand-colored and made of wood, with a roof painted “postal green”, stands out prominently from the surrounding sand dunes, along with its three mailboxes.
Gao said the post office started offering letter mailing services at the end of 2021. Using an online service, customers can write a letter and staff members can write out the content on paper on their behalf.
Customers can choose to send letters immediately or at any time in the next 10 years.
Each letter is stamped with the exclusive scenery stamp of the post office and includes a small bottle of sand from the Tengger Desert. Countless blessings have left the post office, bound for all corners of the world. The tree adoption project began in April 2022. After customers pay for adoptions, the team plants the trees and attaches tags that record the names of the adopters and the adoption dates.
In the next 10 years, adopters will receive annual photo updates of the trees’ progress and can also check the growth of their adopted trees in real-time through a mini-program. They are also welcome to visit the area to see their adopted trees.
“In this fast-paced era, I hope time can slow down a bit. I want to write blessings in the form of letters and send them to my friends from the desolate desert,” Wang Ruoyun, a young traveler who visited the post office in May last year, told Red Star News.
Gao said that she had not expected her post office to plant so many trees for others. She said people from all over the country have adopted trees for a variety of reasons: to commemorate a youthful love, to remember a deceased best friend or for a mother with cancer who wants the tree for her child.
In November, a young woman surnamed Sun adopted a tree as a birthday gift for a friend studying abroad. She said that after graduating, she found a job in China, while her friend went to study in Germany. On her friend’s birthday, Sun adopted a tree that symbolized their friendship. The postmark on a postcard recording the adoption was her friend’s birthday.
Through the mini-program, Sun’s friend has followed the tree’s growth.
In May 2022, another woman, surnamed Song, adopted a tree as a birthday gift for her boyfriend. She has received two photos of the small tree and hopes it will grow along with their relationship. They plan to visit the tree together when they have the opportunity.
Song adopted another tree last year as a gift for a friend who died from an illness at the age of 24. She said she hopes the tree can accompany her friend for a longer time. “Perhaps one day, none of us will be here, but this tree exists for her,” she said. Song said the small tree is a spiritual symbol of the fact that growth often comes with pain. “To some extent, we resonate subtly with a small tree growing in the desert. Even if the environment is not ideal, we firmly want to take root,” she said.
Gao’s post office is one of nearly 700 post offices with special themes established by China Post around the country.
Unlike traditional post offices that handle daily mail, savings and express delivery services, the special post offices revolve around a specific theme that is reflected in the decoration and souvenirs they offer. Examples include the Panda Post Office in Chengdu, Sichuan province, the Cherry Blossom Post Office at Wuhan University, in Wuhan, Hubei province, and the Tian’anmen Square Post Office in Beijing.