Mail to China (2022 temporary suspension)

Yes, I think this has an impact. The U.S. Postal Service is sometimes so slow, and getting a speedy card from here often feels like luck is required on both ends. A lot of the travel times on my U.S. to U.S. cards don’t look much different from my cards going anywhere else in the world, for example.

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Maybe don’t send anymore for awhile…wait and let the postal systems catch up to you

What is the latest update about mail to China. This looks to be almost a year old.

Most backlogged mail from Chine (e.g. for round robins) has arrived, tho there are a few stray cards. I’ve also started getting official cards as well as am drawing official cards to send. So, it seems China is back in my officials rotation.

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I did not mean that the suspension was wrong, to the contrary I did support it (see some older posts of mine). I meant that right now, let us say in the last three months when the situation has been almost completely normal in China so far as the postal service is concerned (at least for the mail going to/coming from big cities), the long delays (a month is long considering that now most international airlines have regular flights!) do look a bit weird.
I mail all my cards in Beijing and receive my mail at one of the most reliable addresses in Beijing, so as I cannot imagine that the Chinese postal service does not ship the outgoing mail within more than two days to abroad, I was only wondering what explains long delays in arrival to other countries… Especially considering that cards mailed to places in China do travel fast and the same to some countries like Japan. The travel times of cards sent TO China vary greatly according to the country they are sent from, and even depending on where in a same country they are sent from…So I guess I am excusable if I draw some (maybe hasty, I confess…) conclusions…
And I am in no way hinting that there should be suspensions in case the mail to/from a country is temporary very slow or almost never coming/going.
As for the cards that have been mailed to China last year or so when the local postal system was very disrupted, I guess they should no longer be taken into account NOW, and just considered lost… In 2020/2021, lots of cards also never made it to/from some countries due to the fall out of the pandemic there, I lost a lot of not only cards but also letters…

I do not understand how not sending cards for a while could help with the time they take to travel…

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Yes, this I meant too with mentioning the Postcrossing team will see, if the delays are only to China (or some other country).If mail to other countries goes normally (or what is normal now), it’s likely the “fault” is in China mail. If all other countries are slower too, it’s both countries fault. And they will also see if the service is almost completely normal, and react accordingly.

For my cards from China, month has been normal as long I’ve been here.
I wouldn’t see that time as a delay, just within the normal.

This I disagree. If the mail was unreliable still four months ago, I think it’s good that it’s tested like it’s now (the Chinese addresses are given, but not in full amount ?). It should be evidence of continuous arriving, not just a temporarily some cards arriving to some places.

Most of the cards sent last year (that didn’t arrive) are still showing as travelling cards, it would be silly to think these only as lost, and fully trust all mail from now on suddenly will arrive.

(But I agree both parts affect the speed, of course. If the mail arrived to Germany only in few days, of course it’s not fully because of the German post, but also the sender country has been quick :slight_smile: same with slowness, but then if only few some country is slow or not arriving, I would think something’s wrong with that end.)

I suppose they will now follow the arrival of what was sent few days ago.
I really hope they will arrive :slight_smile:

I don’t know the answers to your questions, nor do I want to try to guess.
I’m just glad that mail systems function so we can send and receive happy mail, no matter how long it might take.

I had a direct exchange of letters. I sent a letter from Ukraine to China two months ago. Today, finally, my letter was received. But I haven’t received a letter from China yet. I hope that the situation will improve in the future.

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I sent a trade to a Chinese member around March 12 and was notified it just arrived. 4-5 weeks is surprisingly fast so at least new mail is getting through…I hope postal employees can sort out the old mail which is probably in storage somewhere

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Mails from China to Ukraine is normal. It will eventually arrive. You will just need to wait.

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Almost a quarter of my slots are cards to China (5 out of 21). I’m a bit sad because those slots likely can’t be used for a month or longer. I wish the allotted slots were higher, but that’s a different discussion

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Might be a good news, but still kind of discouraging: I received some mails sent in 2021-2022. At least my local post office started to deal with the overstock.

The postcard is an official card sent in May 2022 according to the postmark. However, I was told that it traveled over a year when I tried to register it. After investigating, I am convinced that the post ID was drawn in Feb. 2022 and it didn’t start its travel until May due to some unknown reason. Maybe the sender delayed mailing it. Anyway, I couldn’t register it.

So I turned to the envelope. The official card inside is a Christmas card. But again, I failed to register it; then I re-examined it and found that it was sent in Nov. 2021… I should have noticed it as there is an eye-catching sticker of disinfection — the symbol of Lockdown Period on it. The sticker proves that it reached my city far earlier, but wasn’t delivered until today. (Remember? I took a journey to my post office in May 2022, and brought home many envelopes with that kind of stickers. This envelope should be a relic of that time.) A typical overstock…

I received other postcards of tags. They are mainly sent in 2022-2023 (Even one was sent in February). I hope there aren’t more postcards stuck in the post office. Besides, It’s really discouraging that I couldn’t register them anymore, and they won’t contribute to my stats…

Most importantly, please no lockdown anymore…

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Thank you for the update! You give me a bit of hope!

For the February-May discrepancy, could it be that the person sent it in February, and it expired, so he or she sent another after 90 days? Once in a while I send a second card, if I can see that the person logs in regularly and registers cards (not if they have not logged in for months.)

I guess we will never know!

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I hope you won’t feel too disappointed if your cards reach their destinations so late that they couldn’t be registered.:four_leaf_clover:

My guess

The card I mentioned is US-8221515. I did some research and noticed that in Feb. 2022 the sender (from the USA) also drew US-8221510 US-8221511 and US-8221519 (to Germany, the USA and the USA) . None of them arrived before late May, 2022; considering the normal speed of domestic mails delivered by USPS, I think that either the cards (those and mine) had been stuck in his mailbox in Seattle, or he put off to send them out due to some reasons. The combination of the short delay and my long delay resulted in a travel time of 430+ days. But I am not blaming him at all XD. Obviously even if the card was sent out on time on Feb 16, 2022, it won’t be delivered to me until yesterday.

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I will just feel happy they arrived!!!

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Traveled only 17 days! :tada:

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I’m in Australia and recently I keep drawing cards to China but am starting to get nervous that none seem to be arriving. I have some expired and some travelling, but no arrivals. (This is also the case for my direct/Instagram swap mail to China — it seems like started having major issues since November.) Is there a way to see if any cards are arriving from Australia to China?

My China-based recipients all have recent logins and I write the addresses very clearly in Chinese (which I speak) with the phone numbers when that’s included, so I am confident that the address is not the problem in my case.

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Yes, I have five cards traveling to China right now. Sadly one is at 157 days, and that recipient is logging in regularly but has not received a card since January :grimacing:. The next card on its way to China is at 52 days but that recipient has not logged on in over a month :woman_shrugging:t2:
The other three cards are more recent, so who knows how long they will take to arrive.

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The 157 day card is part of the backlog that they’re only slowly addressing. Some Chinese members have reported mail received every so often in batches, so 52 days is far from lost.

I feel sad for one Chinese person I sent a card to a few weeks ago; she’s fairly new with 7 sent and 0 received yet, enthusiastic profile.

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