Buying gifts in Shanghai: choosing, boxing, and getting them home

Most visitors plan the first half of a gift purchase and not the second. The first half is where to buy and what to buy, which is shopping. The second half is how to wrap it, how to pack it, and how to get it through customs, which is logistics, and logistics is harder.

This piece deals only with what comes after the choosing. What to buy, and how to tell tea and silk, are covered elsewhere on this site and are not repeated here.

What actually travels, and what does not

By category, the difference is large.

• Sealed, packaged tea. Light, flat, and untroubled by being pressed; boxed sets are the exception, where the bulk is the box.
• Dried food. The safest is sealed, with an ingredient list and a clear date; the main cost is weight.
• Paper goods. Postcards, notebooks, xuan paper, seals; they dislike folding and water, not pressure.
• Small ceramics. They travel, but only if packed; the shop wraps them more solidly than you expect, so add one soft layer of your own and keep them in your hand luggage, because checked bags get thrown.
• Textiles. Silk, cotton, scarves, bedding; they hardly break, and they take up space rather than weight.

What does not travel: freshly made pastries with a few days of shelf life, cooked food that needs refrigeration, liquids in glass bottles, large fragile pieces, cut flowers and live plants. These are not mistakes of choice. They are things that need a fridge, a flat surface and luggage that is not thrown, none of which exists in transit. Cooked food with meat, egg or dairy in it adds a second problem: it is a storage question and a customs question at once.

Packaging is the default here: ask for the box, not the bag

Gift wrapping is a default service here, not a special request.

Buy cakes, sweets, tea, or even a single pen, and the assistant will often ask whether it is a present and then produce a box. Most shops do this free, some charge a little for materials, and either way it is less trouble than buying wrapping paper and finding somewhere to wrap it yourself.

So ask for the box, and do not accept the plastic bag: a bag protects nothing on an aircraft, a box does, and the box is part of the gift anyway.

The box is often grander than the contents. Stiff card, a lining, foil stamping, ribbon, a carrier bag: most of the cost sits there, which is why the boxed price and the loose price for the same product sit so far apart.

Conversely, something cheap in a beautiful box is a normal and acceptable present here. A well-boxed pastry reads more like a gift than an expensive thing handed over bare, and there is no need to buy something dearer to be worthy of the box.

What the box costs you, and getting it into the case

The box is not free.

It wants three things. Weight: the card, the lining and the carrier bag all count against your allowance. Space: three boxed items in the case can be one shirt fewer. And the third is the one most often forgotten: packaging is what a customs officer opens first, and what gets opened is the box, not your suitcase. Over-packaging slows the inspection down and is hard to put back together afterwards.

Packing: valuables, small fragile things and anything you may have to show go in the cabin; heavy and bulky things get checked. The rule is that what you would mourn losing travels with you.

Liquids and pastes cause the most common accident: sauces, vinegar, honey, ink, small jars of cream. Cabin pressure makes bottle necks seep, the case presses them, and pale clothes and paper in the same case pay for it. If you take one, seal it twice, tape the neck and bag it, and put it in the middle of the case; better still, swap it for a dried or solid version.

Keep the gifts in one or two bags, so that an inspection is a single unpacking.

Customs: the rules are the destination’s, and you have to check them

No figures in this section: the rules change, they differ by country, and any quantity or value written down may be out of date by the time you travel.

The categories that get restricted follow a pattern. Food comes first, and within food the things containing meat, egg or dairy are stopped most often: meat products, pastries with meat in them, dairy, eggs. Plant material comes second: seeds, fresh fruit, dried flowers, wood and bamboo goods, and tea and dried plants, which usually fall under plant quarantine. Loose food without its original packaging attracts more questions than sealed packs. Chinese herbal medicine and patent medicines count as medicines rather than food in a good many countries.

A few principles are worth more than a number.

• The rules belong to the destination country. Whether it may come in is decided by the country you are going to.
• The rules change, especially after a disease outbreak; check your own country’s official guidance from customs, the agriculture ministry or the border inspection agency.
• A gift for a friend is not an exemption. Being a present does not change the rules, and personal use or a small quantity is not an exception either.
• Check the specific thing. Do not ask whether food may be carried; check the tea, the pastries, the dried goods and the medicine, each of which can be treated differently.
• Keep the original packaging, the ingredient list, the date and the receipt. Declare what needs declaring, and note that declaring is not confiscation.

The most useful line of all: do not buy much of anything you are unsure about.

What makes a good gift in a Chinese context

This section is cultural information, not a rule you have to follow. Your friend may not care in the least; the recipient looks first at the thought and only then at any of this.

Food and tea are the safest. They can be shared round a table, they raise no question of size, style or taste, and they do not require the recipient to perform delight.

Quantity is often even. Pastries, fruit and liquor are more often given in pairs, and an odd number can carry the wrong association on some occasions.

A clock and a knife are the classic things not to give: a clock sounds like the end of life, a knife suggests cutting a relationship, and an umbrella sounds like parting. These are folk sayings, not law. Buy them for yourself without a second thought, and simply go round them when the gift is for someone else.

Wrapping takes part in the meaning. Something handed over bare reads more like an afterthought, while a box and a carrier bag carry the sense that this was got ready for you.

And the more practical layer: a gift’s value is not in what it cost but in whether the recipient can use it. Food and tea pass that test; ornaments and crafts often do not.

Who this is for, and the three gifts that always work

It suits anyone taking a batch of things back for colleagues, family, a landlord or a host; anyone with limited luggage space and a connection to make; anyone whose purchases include food, tea or a glass bottle.

It matters less for anyone buying one small thing to carry by hand; anyone who already has a packing routine of their own; and anyone looking for a “Shanghai souvenir”, which is a different category altogether.

Three gifts that always work:

1. Sealed, packaged tea. Simply packed, with grade and origin printed on it: light, flat, keeps, and easy to explain.
2. Individually wrapped pastries or sweets. A long enough shelf life, and enough to go round a table.
3. Paper goods: postcards, notebooks, a seal. Light, flat, unbreakable, and a seal is one of a kind.

One to avoid: anything liquid in a glass bottle. A single leak costs more than the gift was worth, and what it usually ruins is your other luggage and the things you meant to give away.

An honest last line: whether the gift arrives home matters more to the outcome than what it was. However well chosen it is, one bottle leaking in the case makes the whole exercise not worth it.