My work day (or rather my nights) as an assistant supervisor for sort operations at the Shanghai hub are busy. Chinese New Year is the start of the Spring Festival holiday and our team is working around the clock to keep packages moving.

[Beijing Time, 17:00]

The 40,000-square-meter operation site of the Shanghai hub is clear and quiet. We start our work here everyday.

[Beijing Time, 17:35]

My colleagues have arrived at their designated positions and have started unloading the first truck. The first carton of cargo is already on the assembly line. About 10 minutes later, the cargo will be accurately packaged into flight cases for shipment. Trucks continue to arrive at the hub; the number of assembly lines at work also increases. Even though there has been a noticeable increase in the amount of cargo we process compared with just a few months ago, we are happy to be busy.

A colleague at the first work station holds an inbound scan machine, scanning every parcel that passes through. The portable scanner terminal sends out a “tick” sound after every successful scan. Then the parcels are delivered to the dimensional weight scanner in the assembly line. When the parcel passes through, the screen next to me shows its volume and weight. The numbers on the screen change quickly as the parcels continue passing through. Parcels of all different sizes keep filling the assembly lines and an increasing amount of cargo needs to be loaded and unloaded within a required time period. For us, the challenges are increasing everyday.

[Beijing Time 00:00]

After the peak operation hours, I return to my office and start to check my emails. A subject that has recently come up in a lot of my emails has been the work schedule for the Chinese New Year holiday, which are known here and throughout Asia as the Spring Festival.

In fact, the cargo quantity of the Shanghai hub has kept increasing over the last few months. We are very happy about this change. Even though we occasionally need to work overtime to handle the busy loading and unloading business, none of my colleagues complain about anything. The current flight information and cargo quantity forecast shows that our operation site will continue to be just as busy during the seven-day Spring Festival.

When I pass by a nearby restaurant, I see my colleagues having a dinner meeting, where they are most likely discussing the work assignment for the holiday. The air operation team is busy discussing specific operational arrangements with the ground handling team; the colleagues responsible for import and export are discussing how to ensure the smooth operation with Customs and CIQ staff. Each of us has a lot of work to do in order to prepare for the holiday, and every department is making meticulous plans for maintaining normal operations.

[Beijing Time 02:30]

After handing over the shift to our colleagues just arriving at the office, we get ready to go home. For the 24-hour-service Shanghai hub, the end of our day coincides with the start of another shift. The operation center looks peaceful and quiet in the moonlight, but will shortly resume its busy operations.