What's Inside
by Pieter · 18 June 2026 · Biography & Memoir
Pieter sees containers every day and wonders what's inside. 2019, a huge one from Qingdao — automotive parts. But for twenty minutes he thinks: something that had never been moved before. Most things are, eventually.
The largest container I ever saw processed through Rotterdam came in from Qingdao in 2019. Twenty-four metres, a standard configuration but stacked in a way I hadn't seen before. I watched it come off the crane from about fifty metres and thought: what's in there.
I think this every day. It's an occupational condition. A container is a sealed premise — you move it from one place to another and what's inside is somebody else's business. But the mind doesn't respect that. The mind says: electronics? Furniture? Three thousand identical plastic chairs? Something that needed refrigeration and didn't get it?
The 2019 container was declared as automotive parts, which I had no reason to doubt and which is one of the less interesting answers. But for about twenty minutes while it was being positioned I thought it contained something that had never been moved before. I don't mean anything dramatic. Just: something that had stayed in one place for a very long time and was now going somewhere else. Most things are, eventually.
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