Mail to China (2022 temporary suspension)

If I can only send postcards but cannot receive postcards, I would rather not to send any postcard because of no feedback.
Or I would just quit and go to somewhere else, since Postcrossing is not the only postcard exchange platform.

The above is my personal idea, but I am sure there are some people think similarly because I have seen such speeches somewhere else.
The suspension could possibly lead to the quit of many Chinese users. But the community seems not to care. They only care about speed and efficiency. That’s why Chinese users are banned now.

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Good! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: I’m very glad to hear that!

I hope that it continues to bring you happiness, and I know that your participation will continue to bring happiness to others! :heart:

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These are quite bad news. I can understand it from one side, but on the other hand others are right, it is not a good sign to the chinese postcrossers. I am not for long here at PC and I cannot write a lot of cards. So my first card to China taking more and more time was blocking me from writing a new card until day 61 arrived. The recipiant seems to get post twice a month. But then he gets his mail, new postcards and can enjoy them. I do not like the thaught, that we take this nice moments from the chinese users, knowing that we all love these moments at the mailbox. I really hope, the admins will overthing this decision of find a solution to make it possible to send cards to this 73k postcrossers in China, maybe outside of the statistics of travel time.

Alexander

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Yes, we can send postcards. We have mail and all private deliveries running smoothly. Shanghai was recently closed, I don’t know if people could receive and send, my friend said she couldn’t send. But Shanghai has already been opened and I received a letter from there yesterday. Delivery took 4-5 days

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I don’t agree with such decision about China.
If you check stats of expired cards you will find one more country there. I won’t name it, you know it perfectly. Or can check my traveling cards as admin. I have zero expired cards to China, but five expired cards to this country and other seven about to expire soon. Why you not turning off this country too @paulo?

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I asked to better understand how these suspensions work. Are all routes being closed or only the international ones? In my case, I would be glad if I could still send cards, even if only to my countryman. Surely it cannot be for long. But I am still against it. Even if all my cards expired I would wait.

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I do believe the thought that COVID travels through paper was found to be a myth earlier on in the pandemic, no? But, regardless, that hasn’t much to do with this decision.

Can’t they just do this in the forum?

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Another important thing we must think about is turning off China will cause effect in future when China will be returned. Most of us will start drawing mostly China addresses to send all due cards to Chinese users and it may cause massive expiring. Nobody knows if members from China will stay after this pause, and even currently traveling cards will be registered. Better not to make current difficult situation worse in future.

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How do you want to unite via postcards, if the postcards do not arrive?

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I don’t think it’s a matter of speed. The fact is that many postcards are not arriving at all.

Chinese users have not been banned. This is histrionics.

Having read the entire thread, I want to say that a lot of people seem to be blaming admin for a problem that has been created by the Chinese Postal Service. It is certainly not anyone’s fault here, users or admin. If you want to be upset with someone, contact China Post. They are making it so that an entire nation has been essentially locked out of international mail.

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Difficult… Chinese users are not to blame for the problems with their mail system. But users from other countries are not to blame for the fact that postcards are massively overdue.

I hope the situation will change for the better soon. I have received one cool postcard from China so far and sent two. One arrived in 105 days. Second month on the road. I understand that it will not come soon. But I’m not annoyed by the long term, unlike the fact that I have a postcard to a newbie who has not appeared on the site for as long as my postcard travels. And this user is not from China.

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Yesterday I received a card from China that was sent in June 2020. So this decision did not surprise me.

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Oh, this is such a sad decision :frowning:
Is there really no other way to solve the problem? As for me, I am ready to patiently wait for my postcards to China…

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Having RE-read the orginal post by Paulo, I can understand the logic,

It is simply to allow China Post to catch-up, it must be like Christmas in some of their Mail Centres! Like many industries, including mine, there is ONE person doing the work of THREE People!

Come On Guys! we are still in a Pandemic, some parts of the world are still having it bad! Some of us are more fortunate than others. Postcards aren’t everyone’s priority.

*Off-topic
… but this is similar to the Airport/Airline situation that some UK & European airports are experiencing with a sudden demand in passengers but no work force to handle them.
For example KLM, the Dutch Airline flew empty planes back to Amsterdam recently, to help ease the flow of passengers through the overwhelmed airport.

Paulo is doing the same with China Post, reducing the number of postcards to not overwhelm the postal system, that seems to be struggling with the current number items of mail that need to sorted, sanitised, translated, etc.

Don’t worry once things pick up, we will have postcards travelling at happy speeds again.

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I don’t know what the correct decision is, but here’s my experience:

I’ve been Postcrossing for about a year and have no expired cards from there. I am seeing cards take more time both sending and receiving, but I figure that’s to be expected. (Also, I still have things move very slowly just US x US.)

The actual suspension was very frustrating for me as so many tags and RRs have Chinese participants, so I’m really glad to be able to send mail to China again.

On a side note, I had two cards from Russia arrive today, both mailed after the suspension, which I find encouraging. At least some things are getting through.

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I think you also bring up a great topic, which how about the tags and swap inside the forum.

I just have people who stop the swap because they heard that there’s a postal stop in China, I was so confused at first. Because I didn’t heard anything official about it, I just send out postcards this week with no problem.

Then I found this “announcements”, I do understand that slow speed is annoying, but I did have expired card from other countries as well. There’s time when I send to some countries, it took 100 days.Therefore I just don’t want to blame on specific country for this, and is sad to see others blame on our country as well.

This announcement also affect the swap and tag inside the forum didn’t ’ it? In my opinion, there’s possibility that people may refer to the statement as official announcement

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I think it may affect the forum members to postpone their direct swap, tag and RR with Chinese postcrossers. However what happens on the forum is based on individual action, not decided by the system like on official site.

I personally if I got tagged by Chinese postcrosser in offer tag or similar tag, will still send the card (because our post opens airmail service to China). I even took risk to send card to China from tags when there was no service open there :joy: by adding “via Singapore”. Seemed to work for some cards

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The first thing I thought after reading this topic is that.
“Wow, it’s too sad for postcrossers in China that thay can’t receive official postcards for a while!”
And then, I go to the tag games to find Chinese last taggers to tag them, because still I can send them tags’ cards.
What I saw is… no Chinese last taggers there, at the “Latest Games and Activities/Tags topics” for these 9 hours!!! (except offer tags)
I’m so glad that many other postcrossers outside of China might thought same things and have done that already :sparkles:

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Some time ago, the postcards sent to me by foreign netizens were disinfected with notes without any damage. One is wrapped in an envelope, stamped with the disinfected seal of China Post on the back of the envelope, and the separate postcard was not damaged at all. So you don’t have to worry about being affected at all.

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Not arriving means still in progress of travelling, but not meaning lost.
These postcards will still arrive, just taking some time. If you have no patience on time, then why bother exchanging postcards here?

However, now apparently Chinese users are punished and have become victims.
If some people have complaints about China Post, just contact China Post about the speed affairs. Not contacting China Post but just suspending Chinese address, only makes Chinese users annoyed and upset.

By the way, it is hard to say whether China Post is to blame. My postcards and packages from Japan to China arrived just fine this year. It could possibly be the faults of post systems in the sender’s country.

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