It does skip the hard parts of writing Chinese, including understanding the order the strokes are supposed to be made.
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Applauding the dedication! It looks super neat but I do think itās quite funny that the first step is to literally print the address, haha. (But hey, tracing letters/characters is SO satisfying!)
I lost my Chinese skills over the years (grew up speaking, little writing/reading) but Postcrossing has been very motivating to get me back into it! My 2nd card was already an opportunity to write in Chinese and oh boy did it show I hadnāt practised in years 
Seeing you use the ruler sent me into nostalgic moments of learning the order of operations when it comes to writing Chinese, but I can imagine that doing it this way would be easier than to learn Chinese handwriting from scratch 
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Thatās pretty impressive. Iām afraid Iām too lazy to do it that way. Iād rather risk having the recipient make fun of my handwriting.
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Just the idea of this is hilarious to me. But if it makes it legible for the mail carriers, AND it can give the recipient a good laugh, then I donāt mind writing like a computer! 
You have to really want to do it. I tried this process once with Russian addresses andā¦it was much easier just to write them freehand, even if some of the letters were a bitā¦eccentric-looking.
@theoyan I am pleased to report that so far, all of my cards have made the journey! 
And maybe they puzzled the mail carriers along the way! 
@saintursula I hope the order is āall horizontals first,ā because thatās what happens here! 
Efficiency was never an option!
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It certainly looks great but I agree with others that Iād just be too lazy to do all that and I donāt have a lot of the tools required (knife? Well I guess I have kitchen onesā¦ Double sided tape? I recently felt the urgency to buy some to try and make home made cards, but havenāt done it yet).
Most of all, I donāt have a printer. And to me, once the address is printed, it could be stuck to the card and off it goes
I have never heard of that type of penā¦ Is it waterproof? I live in fear of rain damaging addresses so if I get a new pen and Iām not sure, I write on a piece of scrap paper and throw water on it to test it!
I was too scared of copying Chinese addresses by hand for the longest time. Now Iāve done it a couple of times and at least the first attempt made it thereā¦
(I learnt Cyrillic when I learnt Russian so I have no problems with that one).
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I think this seems like a really great idea! 
Coming from someone who speaks Chinese, I myself get tired of writing Chinese addresses at times especially when the characters are more complicated, so I just opt for the English version anyway.
Anyway, to help with the splitting of the address into lines, this might help. This is a list of common terms in the address (for Chinese addresses) which I observed, and you can split the line right after these words if you run out of space:
- äøå½ (China)
- ē (province)
- åø (city)
- åŗ (district)
- č” (street) / č·Æ (road) - but usually itās good to keep the number and å· (number) in the same line as street / road, e.g. xxč”2å· (xx Street No. 2)
Hope this helps 
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Is this really important, or does it make difference in understanding? Already as a child I was told I made some letters āwrongā/in wrong order in Finnish, and probably still do. But, the letters look the same, so I wonder this. This was one of the reasons I feared trying to write Chinese.
Nowadays I write all addresses by hand.
I try to imagine there is stave in the card, which makes it a little easier to write.
And as Iāve noticed some terms appear often, Iāve made my own names to them, like:
province is āopen beehiveā
city is āmerry-go-round horseā
and one looks like stick man in a sledge
so these become little easier, when Iāve done them several times.
And, for some reason I find it very relaxing to write in Chinese. Although it doesnāt look very pretty.
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The short answer is no, but just like writing every other language, knowing how to write Chinese characters correctly will make writing more efficient and legible. Itās a very old language, and I would assume that after all these years, people have already figured out the best order to write all those characters.
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@elikoa, you MUST treat yourself to a Micron! 
(I am not personally affiliated with the manufacturer; Iām just a fan!) The company states: āThis permanent, fade resistant, chemically stable, pigment-based ink will not bleed or run if liquids are spilled on or applied to the document after the ink has dried.ā I have not tested how waterproof it is, but it does dry fairly quickly and once itās on, itās on for good.
@whitefroststreetboi, this is super helpfulāthank you! 
Iāll save this for future reference! The line-splitting is obviously already done for me in Postcrossing addresses, but I needed to find a public address to use as an example for thisāand I struggled finding one on an untranslated website.
@S_Tuulia, I often make up mnemonic devices like this, too! 
The funnier they are, the easier they are to remember!
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Just like with Roman letters, writing them from the wrong starting point looks weird/a little disorienting when theyāre written slowly. When you start writing faster/less carefully it becomes harder and harder to read. (Top two written slowly, bottom two quickly)
So for slowly copying characters, it probably doesnāt matter that much except that I donāt know that one can effectively see on a computer screen all of a character to reproduce it when it has 18 or 20 strokes to it.
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I donāt speak or read Chinese but I do read and write Japanese, and the characters are similar enough that I feel pretty confident that my Hanzi addresses are legible. I do sometimes blow up the font super large to make sure that I am seeing all the strokes for those very complex characters.
I donāt speak/read Russian either but after other Postcrossers encouraged me, I wrote some addresses in Cyrillic by hand. The cards arrived so it seems to have worked!
I donāt have a printer and printing at the library costs 10 cents a page so to save money I hand write all the addresses. Itās either try my hand at various scripts, or write in English only.
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Ok, thank you 
So, I think when my use is only the postcard addresses, it doesnāt matter so much, and I can write in what order itās easiest for me. (How I love when I write like this, and a couple of years later the situation is very different 
)
In school (art) we used a special brush and ink, so the direction was visible, and the movement and all, but I use a fine point pen, so the lines are equally thick.
I was also told, that if I miss a line, itās completely different meaning, but I think itās like that in all languages. Like in Finnish, is you miss a line in R, it becomes P, and if you ārakastatā = love someone, you āpakastatā = freeze someone instead.
I look the address from my phone, so I can enlarge it, although some are more challenging!
Sometimes, if the line is very long, I start writing from the end.
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As a person who knows Chinese, this is so funny to me. The process looks so tiring, kudos to you for doing this. It literally looks like you just printed it out instead of handwriting lmaoo
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@PinkNoodle that is a very interesting way of doing this. If I had a printer, and the other materials, Iād give it a try.
So far, when I received addresses in both latin letters and non-latin letters, I always opt for the non-latin one, hoping it will make my card arrive faster. The Chinese ones really take a while to write. I just try to copy it as good as I can. Luckily, the cards have always arrived and sometimes the recipients even praise me for my Chinese writing and claim that I have the talent for learning Chinese (which Iām not sure about. I think they were just being friendly ) but I have to say, I really like writing the Chinese addresses, it is as calming for me as, for example, coloring a mandala.
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Not gonna try 
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I would never ever try it. 
Way too complicated and requires so many tools I donāt have. I always write Chinese (and Cyrillic) addresses by hand, as I donāt have a printer and I want to save money and trees.
I took a course in Chinese around the time I joined postcrossing, and sure we learned to write characters and about the correct stroke order, but itās so long ago. I try to apply what I learned then when I write Chinese addresses (from left to right, from up to down), but it doesnāt always help. But around 85 % of my cards to China have arrived in this way and some have commented that my handwriting is neat and looks like a child is trying to learn to write. I also like to challenge myself with Chinese characters. 
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Your process is amazing!
When sending a postcard to China do you put the address in English too?
My first postcard to China never arrived 
so now I print out the Chinese address and tape it on there along with the English version. 
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I have handwritten addresses in Chinese and Cyrillic in the past and they have always arrived. I did get comments saying it looks childish and weird but the postal system has been fine with it.
You donāt need to do both. Address in local script and country name in English is enough.
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Oh thatās a good idea, will try it next time.
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Wow, what a dedication ā¦
ā¦ that I will never develop in this life, as I am far too disorganized, too impatient, too clumsy to bring myself to such a level - and also too uninterested in this grade of neatness.
So I guess Iāll stick to my attidude of āif a billion Chinese folks can write legible, my five minutes of hand-copying will do tooā
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