That’s not unusual at all for China - I’d give it at least 10-12 weeks before I’d say that - the Delta variant is clearly starting to affect the mail everywhere, including North America & Europe.
1 Like
That’s a good point. I think I’m just impatient XD
1 Like
Even mail to Germany is slow now (17 &18 days) & I have one US card that is 35 days so far! So yeah, I’m a bit impatient too, but it’s not as slow as it was last winter yet! Here’s hoping it doesn’t get to that, but we’ll see.
1 Like
I have not been successful in sending any cards to China since May, either they get auto registered or simply expire.
Actually my cards sent to China and Taiwan in late July and early August are registered. That’s normal travel time.
I have just sent a postcard to China. I think that if the address is written in English it takes longer to process in China due to language problems. If written in Chinese delivery is much quicker.
The card I sent to Taiwan was recieved today after 30 days. One to China is on 17 days so far.
From reading the forum for a while, it appears to me that China is notoriously slow when it comes to sending postcards there (or, looking at it from the other way, Chinese recipients are slow at receiving postcards). Does anyone know exactly why this is?
As a former postal worker with quite some first hand experience of the ins and outs of mail delivery and all the reasons (legitimate and not) that could cause slow delivery, I would be very interested in knowing what is actually going on inside the Chinese postal service.
When I compare with my postcards sent to Germany, the record is reaching the recipient in less than 48 hours and most of them seem to take a handful of day, meaning that (A) I send the postcards in a timely fashion, (B) the Swedish postal service hands it over to its German counterpart in a timely fashion, (C) the German postman delivers it quickly and (D) the recipient registers it quickly. So why is this not happening when you send to China? I assume that Chinese postcrossers are no worse than others when registering cards, so I rule out (D). Sure, China is farther away from Sweden than Germany, but everyone seems to have long traveling times to China. Could the problem be (B) and that the whole world’s postal services are slow at handing over mail to China? Or is the problem (C), that postcards take long time once they are in China?
My personal guess is that the long traveling times is due to something that is (not) happening once the cards are in China. If so, does anyone know exactly what this is? Perhaps some Chinese postal worker on the forum who could shed some light?
PS. I know that other countries than China are mentioned when this topic comes up. Russia and Taiwan, for example.
1 Like
Let’s not forget the fact that China is a huge country as well.
From my personal experience of a visit to China, I immediately noticed that a lot of Chinese,don’t speak other languages,but their native one. Of course that doesn’t apply to all people,neither to all areas. But once the postcards arrive in China, the time it takes to be delivered, depends on the area they travel to. For example,postcards to Shangai,reach their destination,fairly quickly. But postcards to regions close to Inner Mongolia (for example),it seems the time goes much more higher. Not all postal workers speak or read English,therefore, many postcards take a lot of time or even get lost.
2 Likes
I have received one from China but I’ve sent one and it’s been a month so far none yet.
I think next time I will try printing out the address (in Chinese) and sending it so it’s easier and see how that fares next time.
I recently sent a postcard to China that took 26 days. I hand-wrote the address in Chinese (by copying, I don’t read or write Chinese). I was actually surprised that it got there. And the recipient thanked me for writing the address in Chinese.
1 Like
I think it might both be the part of getting there and the re-sorting and delivery. My Chinese penpal got three cards from me all at once today, sent weeks apart. So I think that there’s still not so many planes flying over there. I also still notice this in the cards I receive, typically it’s lots of cards from one country in one day, cards from another country the other day…
And then everything has to be transcribed into Chinese once it enters China to be delivered. So it’s at least one step more and I don’t know how many people work in transcribing there. 
Up to now, a total of five postcards I sent have been registered. It has been 35 days since the first one was registered, but I still haven’t received any postcards. I even suspect that my address is wrong 
Thank you for answering me 
1 Like
From my country, BOnaire, to China, it takes about 52 days!
Thank you for answering!! I think I should waiting patiently
It depends. One card sent within 10 days, another took one month (forum swaps). But to receive a card from China I might have to wait for several months. I got one card from China that travelled 10 months.
Sadly Ruihan, 35 days isn’t very long for mail to China - generally mine has been from 4 to 12 weeks to Canada from China.
My only suggestion is to maybe do some swaps on here with folks in East Asia & see if that gets you some cards faster while you’re waiting for the official ones to arrive.
Postcrossing is definitely about learning patience plus I think the Delta waves are definitely slowing mail down everywhere - I’ve had a bunch of cards to the US & Germany expire and that’s never happened before now.
Hang in there, it’s worth it & it gets better!
5 Likes
Mail to china tends to take some time. My recent sent card to china was registered after 140 days. And before that 42 days. It seems quite random but mostly it takes more than a month in my experience. The exception was one that arrived after 19 days which i felt very fast for china. Fyi i send from south korea.
1 Like
My average travel time to China is 35 days. Which means it can take less, but also more!
If your address was too wrong, postcrossing wouldn’t accept it. If you write it in both English and Chinese, people can choose to print the Chinese (it might be more accurate) but I don’t believe it makes a lot of difference. If your city is not very big or very connected, it might take a long time to travel there.
1 Like
I’ve sent two so far to China.
The one I sent in June took 47 days to arrive, and the other one in August took 14 days to arrive.
I wrote the address on the postcard I sent in June in alphabetic characters, and on the postcard I sent in August in Chinese.
It may vary from region to region in the same country…It may be faster to arrive if you write the address in the local language.