Expanded delivery service reaches remote regions

Thanks to the expansion of the parcel delivery network in rural areas, residents from remote regions were able to better enjoy China's largest annual online sales promotion this month.

At a parcel station in Pingba village, in the mountains of Guizhou province, packages were piled on shelves ahead of Nov 11's Singles Day event.

Villager Wen Ying picked up a package at the station, which is just meters from his home, on Wednesday.

He said it is convenient to shop online now because it is easier to pick up the purchases.

Before the station was set up in the village last year, villagers had to pick up their online purchases in a town about 5 kilometers away.

Wen Jie, a courier at parcel delivery company ZTO Express who is responsible for the area, saw more parcels delivered to the station this month.

His workload doubled during the Singles Day season. He and colleagues at the village delivered about 1,000 parcels a day. At other times, they usually handle about 500 a day.

The extra parcels stemmed from the Singles Day online shopping spree. The State Post Bureau said 4.78 billion parcels were handled nationwide from Nov 1 to Thursday, a year-on-year increase of more than 20 percent.

On Thursday, Singles Day, the network handled 696 million parcels, a single-day record.

Online retailers usually offer large numbers of coupons on Singles Day to boost sales.

This year's event started early, with many retailers beginning promotions on Nov 1.

In Heilongjiang province, recent heavy snowstorms have kept most people and vehicles off the street in Xianfeng village, but piles of parcels stacked on the shelves at its parcel station showed it isn't a ghost town.

"Most parcels from the Singles Day shopping spree are still on the highways because of recent heavy snows," said Zhang Junming, who is in charge of local business for YTO Express, one of China's major parcel delivery companies.

In the Tibet autonomous region's Parga township, close to China's borders with Nepal and India, villager Pema Norbu likes shopping online and usually buys clothes, shoes and small commodities.

"He is a frequent client," said courier Pasang Phuntsok from China Post, who has been working in Parga for four years. As the only postal worker and courier handling mail and parcels in the town, he makes deliveries to two villages, five temples and three barracks.

The one-way journey to make the deliveries is 181 kilometers.

"We do not have as many parcels as other places, but as long as I am here, I will make sure to make deliveries to everyone in need," Pasang Phuntsok said.