Mail to China (2022 temporary suspension)

Yesterday a card to China arrived after 56 days. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Sorry but I don’t have any more time than you would to sift through and find the information you are looking for. My time is just as valuable.

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Thanks. I did sift through a bit, but didn’t find anything that answered my question. I am into postal history as a small hobby and am curious why some nations may have faster international mail than others.

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I haven’t read this thread but maybe you will find some info from it if you are interested in international mail in general. :blush:

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I would suggest to keep reading. I do believe very early on, some Chinese users described the added measures thar China Post is taking due to COVID. I was being sincere when I said that in my first response to you. That discussion has definitely been a huge part of this thread.

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Thank you for the link!

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The administrator’s current method is not useful. After the Chinese address is restored, postcards sent to China from other countries will still be delayed until COVID-19 is over. Because the current protection measures of China Post (including disinfection, storage…) .
The postcard is already on its way and will not speed up its arrival in China because of the administrator’s action. Many new postcards sent to China will still be delayed due to China Post’s protection measures after the administrator restores the address to China.
So the administrator’s measures are not helpful. And in the process – which can take three months or more from the day the suspension takes place to the time when the first postcard to China is registered – Chinese users and the site suffer
For Chinese users, we need to endure the pain of not receiving postcards for several months :persevere:.
For the site, such a move will inevitably lead some Chinese users to leave because they can’t enjoy the pleasure of receiving postcards and look elsewhere, which is not good for the site.
Of course, it’s not good to criticize without offering your own suggestions. So I have a proposal: increase the extension period from 60 days to 90 days. At the same time, when the postcard has not been registered for more than 60 days, you can draw a new postcard.

A reminder on expired postcards

Most sent postcards will arrive well before 60 days have passed; however, some postcards do take longer to reach their destination. Expired postcards can still be registered up to one year after you requested the address. After this period, they are deleted from Postcrossing and can no longer be registered.

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I’m sorry to tell you that this suggestion doesn’t work - you’re new to Postcrossing and probably didn’t grasp how the process goes.

If you draw an address, this card holds the status “traveling” for 60 days maximum. The slot is blocked, you can’t draw another address but have to wait until it gets registered after arrival. If it isn’t registered after 60 days, it’ll expire, and at this moment you’ll get a free slot back, can draw a new address and send another card.

My traveling cards:

So, your suggestion doesn’t fit into the way this site is working. Either a card is traveling, and the slot is blocked, or it is sent (meaning that it has arrived) or expired, then its slot gets free.

The suggestion of extending the traveling time, to give the cards more time to arrive, was already made, but this solution is unfair to the senders, because the slot for the traveling card will stay blocked for the extended period on top.

Please have a look here: :slightly_smiling_face:

I understand that you find the measure taken unfair, but it surely isn’t discriminatory, as you state in your profile.

The measure is the best way to handle this “traffic jam of postcards” which are stuck momentarily in China (I like this comparison made by @Pxn :wink:). Admittedly you’ve not chosen the best moment to join this project… But I keep my fingers crossed that the situation will be solved by China Post in time.

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I know what you mean. But IN my opinion, there is no contradiction between extending the expiration date of the postcard to 90 days and releasing a new address if the postcard has not been registered after 60 days of travel. There should be no technical difficulties.

And AGAIN, I want to reiterate my point. Postcards to China are out of date, mostly because of the slow speed of China post. It has nothing to do with Chinese users. For postcards that have been sent, travel will be slow or slow, and will not be faster because of the administrator’s actions. Therefore, the administrator’s measures are invalid. Better to pray to God that China post will be faster than doing things on websites that hurt the motivation of Chinese users. :sweat_smile:

That’s a very unfortunate situation.

Would it maybe be an option that we still sent cards to China, but they don’t count for our limit of postcards we can send?

Especially for newer people (like me) it’s sad that we necessarily will not be able to sent new cards for very long.

I’m very happy to have sent a card to China and really hope it will make it.
But it’s also a bit bothersome that I know my sending abilities are going to be limited for 45 more days due to that.

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If China Post delays, as you say, then what is the point in sending more cards, that will not be received as well?

And do you care for the senders - or is it only about receiving? (though postal service currently is not delivering, so there is not much receiving this way or that way)

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Thank you very much for many people who agree with my point of view, but you know, if more Chinese people can agree with my point of view, I will be more moved. And thank you for taking so much time and patience to explain some problems to those people

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So are you suggesting like this:
I send a card, and if it’s not registered after 60 days, I get new address.
Card doesn’t show as expired to me, but travelling.
After 90 days it shows expired.

What would be the benefit of this?

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I just like sending.not like receiving

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Thank you for your post. It is very well said!

I agree that many responses were made from a position of emotion, not fact. From reading the posts above, it appears China isn’t the only country that has been suspended at Postcrossing.

To accuse the admin of being guilty of anything inappropriate is showing one’s ignorance. As grateful participants of this amazing free resource to connect with the world through postcards, we must practice due diligence: study and learn the facts before making untrue accusations.

Thank you again for your positive and helpful comments.

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@Luoji You wrote that “there should be no technical difficulties” to change the system of traveling / sent / expired that I described above. Your profile says that you’ve studied history. Are you a programmer too? If no, I wonder how you feel entitled to state such a thing.

Please read the topic, especially the posts of the Admin. The goal is not to speed up China Post, the goal is to prevent more postcards being stuck in China, by not giving out Chinese addresses for some time!

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For the postcards assigned to China in April and May 2022 (right before the suspension), what is the current registration rate?

What if the majority of those postcards don’t make it by end June 2023 and get deleted from the database? Automatic reopening in this extreme case?

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Unfortunately there isn’t yet much progress to tell about, but I want to give an update on how things are going.

I have spent some time graphing the average travel times of mail to China, as well as the amount of postcards delivered. This is how things look at the moment (click for bigger):

The breakdown is per week. I’ve included the whole 2021 for comparison.

As is visible, the average travel times are going up considerably, and are at almost 4 months now — this is about twice the usual average travel times of postcards to China which usually are already very long. On the week we suspended Chinese addresses, the average travel times peaked at 124 days and last week the average was 110 days.

Right now, for postcards sent 60 days ago (from today), only 7.5% have been registered. For those sent 90 days ago, only 33% have arrived. And even looking as far as 120 days ago, only about half (53%) have been delivered — this means that the other half of those is still traveling and will arrive with even longer travel times than 120 days.

As the situation is not improving yet and tens of thousands of postcards are still waiting to be delivered, in the next few days we will put a notice on the website visible to members in China about this situation.

Lastly, for the curious, the spike on the number of postcards registered (blue line in the chart) is likely the period just after the Lunar New Year celebration.

We’ll continue to monitor the situation and we hope things will start to improve soon.


This topic had obviously a lot of attention from members in China, so I want to use the opportunity to leave a request to them: while this topic is about mail to China, we also have a problem regarding mail sent from China and you can help!

Until recently, China Post published the list of destinations they are unable to send mail to on this page which we have been using to update the Postal Monitor so that addresses in those destinations are not selected for postcrossers in China. However, recently that page was down for a while, and now that it is back up it only has the information about EMS which doesn’t apply to postcards. As it stands right now, we no longer have an official source for the list of destinations that can’t be mailed to from China, so we’ll soon have to remove all the existing outgoing suspensions for China from the Postal Monitor as they may no longer be correct and we no longer have a way to keep them up to date.

How can you help? Contact China Post and ask them to publish again the list of unavailable destinations for letter-post items (eg: postcards). Perhaps if enough people ask for it, they will publish the list again. The vast majority of postal operators from the most active countries in Postcrossing have such information public and that’s very useful to prevent postcards from going to destinations that can’t be reached.

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While I have still cards travelling from / to China sent in March and April, I recently got a card from China that travelled less than 10 days. I think that’s the fastest card ever I got from China.
I really wonder where all these cards (and all other postal items) are stored :woman_shrugging:

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