WTH US customs??? Where is my Erhu???

May has not been a good month for my erhus going overseas to USA. I had been sending erhus to USA for years and most I got are broken erhu necks. Never before had my Erhus been seized by the USA customs.

And in May I had 3 cases of my erhus being seized by Erhu customs. They took the erhu away and in some instances just delivered the bow to my customer. We subsequently received the below letter from them.



I was a little puzzled as we included the proper CITES certification below. I later realized that in addition to getting the CITES certificate, we have to get the box 15 endorsed by our AVA officers (the one that issued the certificate). It is as easy as bringing an erhu along while I collect the CITES certificate but, well, I wasn't told I need to do that.



It was clearly stated in box number 5 though but I guess I didn't notice since I had not been endorsing since 2 years ago and none of my erhus were seized.

Perhaps my luck ran out or perhaps the custom officers have taken a special interest in erhus lately. In any case, now we know what needs to be done. For those erhus that were seized we have sent replacement erhus at our own cost.

So for those living in USA who are buying erhus from overseas, please make sure the seller has the proper CITES documentations.

Well, if you buy from us (http://www.eason.com.sg/products/products_erhu.jsp) there will definitely be no problems because we have gone through a baptism of fire.

I appreciate the initiative of one of the custom officers to send one erhu back to us instead of seizing it. At least we still have the erhu. But we incurred some returned 'fright' charges, I suppose for scaring the shit out of him with the horribly scalely python skin on the Erhu.....ooooooh......


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Anyway, here's installment 3 of Simple tunes for Erhu - Isle of Capri.

Enjoy!