I had a transit a Beijing Capital (PEK). I made the fatal mistake of leaving my ebook reader on the plane. At this point, getting it back seems impossible (short of going back for it in person). I tried quite a lot.

I lost my item on the way there and on the way back I already asked the airport information desk if there’s a lost-and-found and whether they found any item like mine on my flight’s day. Amusingly the information person at an international (transit) airport spoke absolutely zero English. After a short machine-translated exchange I was given a negative answer. But I didn’t give up.

I wasn’t sure that information person understood half of my intent. Once I got home, first I searched the airport’s lost-and-found database, and since I have a basic understanding of written Chinese, I was able to locate my item. It’s only available in Chinese and many parts of the page are loaded dynamically, so browsers’ translation features might not work as well as you’d hope.

I then contacted them at the bcatlfzx@163.com email address listed on the lost-and-found page. It was an amusing exchange again since they kept responding (polite) Chinese to my English emails. At this point I just assumed that refusing to use English is policy. I was told that they indeed have my item, but (unlike the airport in Korea where I had a similar ordeal a year earlier) they offer no “delivery.” If I wanted it, I’d need to organize collection and delivery myself.

Except of course it’s not that simple. AI tools may recommend Deliverback, but while they’ll happily take your money, they actually only pick up and deliver from Greece. Postalfly never even responded. SF Express is hopeless with my level of Chinese. The best option is likely Zerrand, but with the courier pickup and then shipping fees, the costs add up to almost as much as my item costed new (about 750RMB at the time of this writing).

At this point, I’ve given up. Maybe if this winter I happen to transit in Beijing, I can pick up my item. If not, I’ll just get a new one, because once a year passes the item is removed from the online database and I’d have to call the airport lost-and-found (presumably in Chinese).