Deputy earns his stripes with postal bar codes

Chai Shanshan, a new deputy to the National People's Congress and the youngest from the Shanghai delegation, said he never imagined an average postal worker like him would ever assume such an honor and responsibility.

He said he is one of the millions of workers who toil silently in the service industry in Shanghai on a daily basis, even without the notice of most citizens. "Our core mission is to guarantee that the letters and parcels reach recipients' hands safely and promptly," said Chai, 32, who works at a crucial postal transfer center near Shanghai Railway Station.

He was being too modest, though. He leads a team responsible for sorting all letters and parcels that arrive at the transfer center. Some of the items are transferred to other provinces and some remain in Shanghai.

"The position is key to the overall success of the postal system's mission in Shanghai and other regions," Chai said. "Our job is to arrange routes for the letters and parcels and to make daily plans to send them off. The staff at the other locations will all cooperate to eventual ly deliver the letter or package."

Chai, a native of Hubei province, began working for the postal service in Shanghai in 2004. He said to be competent in the job means that he needs to memorize 2,600 place names nationwide, as well as the map of train routes that the postal service uses and the timetable of each route.

Chai earned his transfer to such an important position due to his perseverance and hard work. In his first eight years of postal work, he was tasked with doing heavy labor such as shouldering large boxes of parcels and letters on and off trains, no matter whether it was in the scorching summer or the freezing winter.

Through the years, Chai said, he has witnessed the transformation of the traditional postal service, partly thanks to the fast-rising express delivery industry that has created higher expectations among customers.

One of the changes is that new technologies are being used more than ever before, he said.

Most post offices have been equipped with smart sorting machines, which scan the bar codes on each letter or parcel and send them into different boxes bound for different destinations, he said.

"It means we deal with four times the number of letters and parcels every day as we did in the past," Chai said.

As a national legislator for five years, he said he would pay attention to issues regarding improvements to the quality of life of young migrant workers and their opportunities to learn new skills, thus making it easier for them to survive in big cities.