I would like your help into a matter that bothers me. As the title says, has anyone sent any postcards to China lately? I mean, I have two addresses from China, where I have sent postcards to. One is travelling for 326+ days and the other, about 180+. None of them seems to have arrived… Is someone else experiencing this same situation? I have already sent a message to the users in China, but I got no reply…
It is really frustrating for postcards to get lost because of neverending delays. And since I have the “Interested in private swaps” option on, I get lots of messages for direct swaps from China. While I want to make swaps, I feel it is incorrect to accept these requests and my postcards never arrive. It just doesn’t feel right. I mean, I will get the postcard, while the other part won’t.
Any tips?
My 2 cards which i had sent as a direct swap reached china by 50 days from india.
As far as I know the postal services between India and china seem to be working fine , but i don’t know about other countries
I have sent cards throughout 2020 from Germany to mainland China and, while some of them needed several months, they all eventually arrived. Same for cards received from mainland China. Last example from Germany to mainland China: sent 21-Oct-2020, arrived 09-Nov-2020.
i have one expired card on the way to china, almost a year. and one is on 52 days now. i don’t think that’s because of china though. the last one has 9 cards sent and 0 received. also hasn’t been online in 3 weeks. but i also have expired cards to germany and one to russia. it happens sometimes, i don’t worry about it too much.
my cards to china normally arrive just fine though. mostly after 2 months, sometimes after 2 weeks.
i live in italy and here on postcrossing i have a 12 days travelling postcard and a 84 days expired postcard to china.
i have a postcard pal in beijing who received in a month +/-.
lately on another site , where sending to china is more frequent, my latest 4 official postcards arrived in china surprisingly soon in 15, 19, 21, 22 days.
in august another postcard needed only 13 days
at the end of february in full covid period, a postcard arrived after 180 days.
i think there is no rule: too many factors are involved.
my printer is out of order, i always write the address in latin alphabet, but some months ago i asked my mother’s chinese hairstylist to write it in chinese alphabet on some postcards and i didn’t notice any faster delivery
Out of 56 sent plus 10 traveling, my only expired card is to China and is currently at 100 days! Seems to be an active user so I assume it simply hasn’t arrived. User did not reply to a message I sent when it first expired, however.
Hey there. Postal service is doing well in China right now, so I think it is the problem of those users. Please don’t be upset. Wish those swaps will arrive soon.
Cards I’ve received from China have taken 5-9 weeks to arrive & I’m still waiting on some direct swap ones. Cards I’ve sent have taken 4-5 weeks or longer.
I think mail flights to & from China is part of the issue still - I know several items I ordered online from China in the last 5 months came via Turkey which is not the way mail normally comes from China to Canada so the rerouting of mail is taking a much longer & slower route.
I thought my cards’ record was 203 days, but checked and found RU-4852101 - wow! 271 days of travelling to China.
From my experience cards to China often get expired (Russian snail mail + I can’t write hieroglyphs), but usually they get registered. Almost all of my totally lost cards were to inactive members. So If your receivers are active, your cards may be registered soon. I’m not sure about that one travelling for almost a year though.
My most recent card to China (RR, address printed in Chinese) arrived in about a month. Others took sometimes up to two months but they did arrive eventually.
Lately, I have actually been pleasantly surprised by how quickly my cards are arriving to China: just under a month to the mainland, and as little as two weeks to Taiwan. Perhaps I have just had very good luck this year.
A question for you, @nikos8109: Are you writing/printing the address in Chinese characters? That seems to speed up the traveling process quite a bit. I just heard from a Postcrosser in China with whom I swapped cards; she expressed disappointment that cards with addresses written in English are being delayed, so the frustration seems to be on both the sending and receiving end!
I have same experiences (mainly with China - to not be misunderstood: there are a lot of nice postcrossers from this country and yes, the cards sometimes need a bit longer. And I don‘t care if the postcrosser is active)! I wondering why I‘m choosen to send a card to someone who wasn‘t online for more than 10 days (there‘s travel mode or inactive option). Postcrossing shouldn‘t sent an address from someone who wasn‘t online for more than 10 days.
Just as an information: my median travel time with :
24 days (sent) / 26 days (receiving)
And I wrote the address always in Chinese if available - unfortunately there are still a lot of members with an English written address only!
No real problems here, 15 cards sent & all arrived in the last year, the ones in Jan expired but both arrived after 216 / 75 days. The remainder are averaging about 20-30 days, and recently the last two in November arrived in 13 & 14 days. None travelling or expired at the moment.
@thstreit
Whilst I see your point about sending cards to inactive users, I’m guessing that there are others like me who only logon when sending or registering a card. I’m up to capacity for travelling cards again after sending to the address I received today, so I’d be unlikely to logon again for a while. It’s quite common for me to go 10 days without sending or receiving cards, but I am not inactive.
I have had mixed experiences…many expired but some got there in 14 days as well. From my understanding, Chinese post is doing their job very well but it is the destination where cards AND packages from China seems to get stuck for a really long time.
Wow, it’s interesting. This made me look up my recent history to China and I was surprised to discover that the last time a postcard I sent (from the US) was registered in China was October 2019.
But I only got another address in China twice since then, once in January 2020 and once in July, both now expired. Both were also drawn while I was in the US. I have received 2 cards from China in Turkey, but not drawn an address there yet.
I think the time needed to send a postcard to China is generally longer than that to elsewhere in the world. Many factors play a role in determining the delivery time of a postcard to China. Postal service in many Chinese cities is not quite efficient and the address you received from your swap friend may be also confusing (because lots of people don’t follow the addressing guideline of UPU, especially new postcrossers).
I think requesting addresses in Chinese is a good idea. You can also request phone numbers. Also, be patient - typically it takes 20-60 days for a postcard to travel from Europe to me, much longer than postcards traveling inside Europe.
I have one official PC postcard to China about to expire (58 days now), and a few sent through tags that still haven’t arrived, including two sent in September and four or five in October.
Regarding addresses, all of those sent in September and most of the October ones were in English, and the address of the official PC card and a few from October were in Chinese.
I don’t think it’s too bad from here. I sent one in September which arrived in 25 days and I have one currently travelling at 40 days, both with the address printed in Chinese. I suspect the latest one has actually arrived at a PO Box or similar and is just waiting for the postcrosser to collect, as they seem to send and receive in batches which probably coincide with trips to the post office. I’m confident it will be registered eventually.
- to not be misunderstood: there are a lot of nice postcrossers from this country and yes, the cards sometimes need a bit longer. And I don‘t care if the postcrosser is active)! I wondering why I‘m choosen to send a card to someone who wasn‘t online for more than 10 days (there‘s travel mode or inactive option). Postcrossing shouldn‘t sent an address from someone who wasn‘t online for more than 10 days.