Well, I’ve already set my account to inactive because of the suspension of the delivery in my area. I did that to avoid the damage and loss of the lovely cards other members may send to me.
I love to receive cards, but it is selfish to keep my account active just to receive few cards. Other members chose a beautiful card, sent to me, and then the card disappeared. And then they got another address from China, and repeated the same process. It is more sad than my situation.
Maybe you who live in Shanghai or Beijing or other developed cities can still receive mails though they were delivered slowly. But to many other members living in small towns like me, the local post offices are more unprofessional and inefficiency. They even have to execute oral orders that STOP delivering the cards sent from other countries. We received no notice from the post office. We won’t know we should go to the post office to take our mails by ourselves unless everyone makes 15 phone calls to related departments to find out where my cards are. So the cards to them were LOST, weren’t them?
I agree with the suspension.
When will the suspension be canceled? After the stop of those excessive epidemic preventions like spaying alcohol on cards or stopping the delivery. I am afraid that I can’t blame the decision based on statistics made by postcrossing.
*It is not a political problem, so please don’t express your confusing words fabricated out of thin air.
I agree this “temporary" suspension. But the amins need to plan a mechanism to monitor China post and order when this suspension stop. Once the China post slowing situation stop.The suspension order need to be stop.Otherwise it is not fair to the Chinese people.And as I know of China post,they won’t post any announcement for it about when this slowing situation start or stop.So the postcrossing should make a plan for it.Not this once and for all like order.
Because China Post is responsible to the people, it will carefully disinfect the incoming letters, including standing, spraying disinfectant water, etc., which will be a little later than a few years ago before the epidemic, so is this the mistake of China Post and Chinese players? Directly choose to suspend shipping in China?
We Chinese protect ourselves from COVID-19, so we are band? How much did you do for preventing the infection? I don’t think there is any reason for you to stop us from exchanging.
No, they can still send to the rest of the world—and that might include postcards within China, I’m not sure, Paulo spoke of domestic routes being suspended within China, too. I can’t open the link and I’m not sure what it means but it doesn’t sound good… ):
I had no idea about the situation being so bad! Only 5% arriving within 2 months is indeed quite extreme.
I assume that there had to be put a stop to China’s incoming card because the algorithm can’t keep up.
THERE MUST ALREADY BE WAY MORE POSTCARDS ON THE WAY TO CHINA THAN THEY ARE DUE.
If they didn’t do anything, the cards would keep expiring and then more and more cards would be sent to China to replace these “lost” cards (only they aren’t lost and don’t have to be “resent”, they only take an extremely long time.) In smaller countries, this wouldn’t be so bad, but a rather big amount of postcrossers belong to the People’s Republic of China and so this has become a real problem for the algorithm.
That Chinese postcrossers won’t receive any postcards anymore, is nonsense.
It is only bad for new Chinese postcrossers who join in this time period, and for those who haven’t sent anything in the last months and decide to restart now.
Another solution to get the imbalance under control might be to let cards expire after a longer time. But what time frame would be enough, if it takes several months to arrive in China? Half a year? Doesn’t sound like a good solution either, because then everyone is stuck with travelling cards for half a year before they can request another address.
I assume that addresses to China are given out again when the imbalance isn’t so bad anymore.
The post officers told me they’ve sprayed alcohol on my cards for more than 10 times (to made me believe that they’ve dealt with those cards responsibly).
I have more soaked cards, but I am not sure if I can post those images (with some private text wrote by the senders) on the forum.
I believe they follow this situation.
At one point mail from Finland to Russia travelled slower than normal, and cards weren’t registered. Then we shortly didn’t get Russian addresses, until they saw that the cards already travelling started to arrive.
I feel so sorry for Chinese members - it’s awful to be excluded when it is totally not your fault.
I feel so sorry for admins - they have to read all these isnsults, although I’m sure they just wanted to make it better.
Sad times.
Let me just say that the community is not a community of one person, but shared by all. In many cases, individuals do not have the right to make decisions for the entire group. You can only represent yourself.
And there was no advance notice, inquiry or other means of investigation.
For example, I haven’t received any, but I enjoy the process. Not the end result.
In short, I am extremely dissatisfied and disappointed with this.
There should be better ways to improve, rather than simply ban.
What disappoints me more is your attitude. There is nothing you want to change. Directly sentenced users in China.
If you change your position, your country is suddenly banned without any notice. How would you feel.
Reading the thread without including politics sentiment in it, I understand why many Chinese postcrossers feel it’s unfair for them, because :
there’s no pre-discussion about the suspension (like what happened with Ukraine & Russia)
the information was released suddenly in the forum where not many postcrossers come and check it
And I agree with ↑( ideally I kinda hoped the team would’ve discussed it, but it can’t be helped now)
However I feel the suspension is rather practical than politcal and discrimination against Chinese postcrossers because of their postal service,since it’s based on statistics and how the system works. (I don’t know why some of us really have the need to include political statement in the thread which makes things worse). Pretty sure if the platform want to exclude Chinese postcrossers out of the service, they wouldn’t have included China here
There’s given data that high percentage of official cards to China is slow and many of the cards haven’t been registered (expired)
Imo, Postcrossing admin simply put the suspension because :
to avoid active Chinese postcrossers account getting suspended due to many travelling cards to them gone expired
Imagine if the system keeps giving out Chinese addresses under this circumstance based on statistics given in OP, I assume there will be more thread from Chinese postcrossers asking “Why is my account suspended and I can’t send cards?” – well that’s because many official cards traveling to you are expired. And the small team will have more works to deal with if it happens
The team also doesn’t notify when the suspension is going to be uplifted because they’re not sure too. It’s better than giving false hope. I believe as soon as travelling cards to China are being registered, the suspension will also be uplifted
I understand that it sucks that we don’t get cards we deserve after we successfully sent cards to other postcrossers. But I wish under this circumstances Chinese postcrossers would understand and make it feel like you’re on travel mode . You still can send cards actively, and later when the condition is better, you will get the cards that are supposedly yours. Somehow the system will always try to balance sent and received ratio, right
I request everyone to not include political statements in the discussion. The decision is based on data rather than a sort of discrimination.
But, I get why people will get upset with the decision. And, since expired doesn’t mean lost, I propose that the following thing can be done instead of a blanket ban.
Informing the Chinese users that mail to China is usually slow and there might be large delays in receiving mail. Also, suggest they opt for inactive mode for some time.
Give senders an option as to if they want to send cards to China or not. Many of us are happy to send cards to China even if they reach only after months. My mail to China reached after 3 months, so things aren’t that bad and I hope that others will reach out soon.
Many have asked when the particle ban will be lifted. I believe it could be done when 70-75% of the cards travelling to China get registered.
I checked and the average postcrosser from Europe can get to 200 sent cards in a year. For the Russian or Chinese postcrosser (and Australians too, I suspect) it takes two years or more to get to the same amount of cards. A whole YEAR of difference! Yet, we patiently wait to be in the game because we truly love postcrossing. That’s why it seems unfair. We wait for you but you don’t want to wait for us. Or so it seems.
This is the postcard I got this week. 70% of them are received within 2 months. Just give China Post a little more patience and the postcard will arrive. So suspending the entire country because of delays in some areas, is totally systemic discrimination.
I was also curious to note that the system did not stop assigning Ukrainian addresses even after the Russia-Ukraine conflict began. This is also an unpredictable deadline, isn’t it a double standard?
Thank you Paulo, but as a Chinese PCer, I am very sorry and puzzled by your decision. This decision will not only be a heavy setback for Chinese players, it is an unconscionable act of discrimination. If you created the Postcrossing to enhance communication between people, then the current moratorium is the opposite of that. Chinese PCers contribute 9.1% of the Postcrossing members and 4.9% of the postcards on Postcrossing. It would be very unfair to suspend the delivery of Chinese addresses just because it takes too long to receive them. PCers have fun not only when they open their mailboxes, but everyone has experienced long waits and even no messages. It should be a part of the postcard acts. So if you are still willing to let more people communicate and share their lives normally on Postcrossing in this gradually cut off society, then please don’t make the decision to suspension to China. Thank you and wish you all the best.
@paulo I want to ask you some question.Are you absolutely sure about your works.Do you know who intercept the postcard?You said because the China Post.But if other country’s post office intercept the postcard or if the user even didn’t send it. The postcrossing wants to connect the world.You doesn’t want broken it. If you can send me a registered mail and within 90 days I haven’t received it.You can do this important decision.( You should open the route for everybody）
So the cards to them were LOST, weren’t them?
