The Transporters

Something exciting is brewing at the Zhuhai - Macau border.

Indigenous ladies, in their 40s to 50s, are lugging trolley loads of boxed food items from Macau to Zhuhai China. Items such as Kellogg’s cornflakes, Red Bull and Quaker Oats are popular picks. It looks as if they had just raided a convenience store in Macau and are making their way back to the mainland.

After much probing, I found out that these transporters are Macanese ladies who are largely homemakers with time on their hands. Besides playing Mahjong, they earn spare cash by buying and selling goods between the two regions.

A transporter starts her day at a convenience shop at the Macau border. She purchases the items to be brought across. The goods now belong to her. She then exits Macau with the goods.

Just before crossing the Zhuhai customs, the transporters unpack the goods from the cartons and repack them into generic nameless boxes, thereby avoiding the duty taxes. Once they enter Zhuhai, they repack the goods into their original cartons and off they go.

The transporters then find their way to a local market 400m from the border and sell the items at a higher price to the convenience shops in the market. I was told that some of these shops in the market are operated by the same owners than run the convenience shop in Macau.

If bought from the proper channel of distributors in Zhuhai, the goods could cost as a much as twenty percent more as compared to if they were bought in Macau, even with the commission paid to the transporters.

A typical transporter starts her day at 8am and reaches home in Macau at 10pm. With the fluctuating crowd at the border crossing, she makes an average of five return trips per day.

One transporter revealed “I earn 10RMB per carton. That works out to 20 – 50 RMB per trip.” “Its hard work, especially with the sun on our backs”, commented another transporter, “but we do it to earn some cash. Moreover, it’s a better form of exercise compared to playing Mahjong all day”.