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Photo Features You've got mail Photo and text by Vivian Li, Miranda Shek, Iris Chu and Jennie Tsang Spotting an old woman walked in with a stick, a postal officer promptly greeted her as "Mrs Hsieh" and pointed to a parcel sitting on the shelf behind the counters. Hsieh Lin-mei, 64, moved to the queue, looking anxiously at her parcel that came from her two daughters, who emigrated Australia in the late 1990s. The 64-year-old widow said she received a parcel from Brisbane every month and it was often fully packed with confectionery and drawings from her grandchildren. "I meet the postal officers here every month. They help flagging a taxi for me when I have a big parcel," she said. Most officers know her as she comes to the post office regularly. Chuffed by the drawings of her four-year-old granddaughter, Hsieh smiled and said: "I remember back then in the 60s, I sent parcels crammed with food supplies including rice, lard and sugar to my relatives in Changsha (of Hunan province in mainland China). It is now my turn ‘getting relief ' from my daughters in Australia." Despite the development of advanced communication systems such as e-mail and online chat rooms, many people still rely on the postal services to keep in touch with families and friends as well as doing business. Felicity Pask, a foreigner living in Hong Kong, posts mail and parcels to her family and friends in London and New Zealand once a week. "I use e-mails to send them brief and urgent messages," she said. "But for deeper and more personal messages, I always prefer mail." E-mails or messages on the internet can never be compared to a letter in hand, which can cheer a person up at once, said Rosemary Ma Wing-sze, one of the only two postwomen in Hong Kong. Sitting before racks of pigeonholes with labels of names of estate blocks that she is responsible for mail delivery in the Tseung Kwan O Post Office, Ma said: "Every letter represents its own story." Dressed in green uniform, the 32-yearold postwoman said she was proud of her job although it was ordinary and physically demanding. |
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