Mail to China (2022 temporary suspension)

[elikoa]

Ehm… if I understand correctly, the problem is mail TO China, not FROM China, so reporting that something was received from China is not very helpful.

I don’t see anywhere that Paulo said they will bring China back when 60% is arriving. They made the example of Ukraine when they reinstated it because 60% was going through. It was an example, a benchmark. Not a promise. I believe it is difficult fot the Postcrossing team to make a promise now because they need to evaluate how the situation develops.

I believe it is also difficult to be in this situation for the PC team - Chinese postcrossers are complaining and I understand their frustration, but then other people will complain that their cards don’t get to China and start asking how do they skip China (or just break the rules and don’t send).

I agree with whoever said that, if the announcement wasn’t made, Chinese postcrossers wouldn’t have realised China was suspended: cards are not arriving either way, what difference does it make?
And of course if a Chinese keeps sending, once the situation improves they will get all the cards they are due! Asking that implies not understanding how this works and just blindly playing the victim.

@JunboHuang

When we can received postcard.Do you have a some standard？
@Bille

When your postal service starts delivering them…
Also, you have 15 sent and 21 received - you are not due any postcards until your sent are more than received (= 22 sent, 21 received - this could take weeks, by the time you are due postcards, things might be a lot better).

[Huas]

For users in China, it came all of a sudden. Everyone’s living normaily so the decision pushed out without asking people who are the most affected could be confusing, disappointing and even damaging to the trust between the platform and users.

There are similarities between Chinese and Ukrainian postal services when in a bad period, and differences exist as well. There are countless users from China who could be willing to be asked if he/she want his postcrossing suspended due to possible postal delays in SOME areas in China, possibly not the place he/she is living in. Why such an influential policy could be made in such a method? I don’t think as one of the important parts in this community, users in China are properly, and justly treated. Even with a forevoting about the coming policy could this decision be a lot more accepted.

[Mona_Berlin]

How about- in general - setting the “expired date” from 60 to 80 days and making it possible to register postcards even if they arrive more than a year later without any problem. I would suggest the possibility of registration at least 18 months after the sending date.

What do you think?

[Cassisia]

@Mona_Berlin

How about- in general - setting the “expired date” from 60 to 80 days

How would this be fair regarding the senders? 60 days are already a long time to wait until you get a free slot to send a card again. It’s not the fault of the Chinese members that the cards don’t arrive, but it isn’t the fault of the senders either!

And the measure’s goal is to prevent the amount of “pending” cards with destination China to increase further. It is a temporary measure. The problem may solve itself in some time.

If you start making exceptions from established rules once, then people will come up with expectations for further exceptions when there’s the next issue.

[rhuqesmail]

Increasing expiry time would mean that the sender will have to wait 20 more days to send new cards.

This might not be a problem for countries like Germany with efficient postal system and users within nearby countries. Most of your cards reach within 30 days. But for countries like India, it is a problem. I already have 3 expired cards with only 34 sent.

Also, increasing registration period to 18 months, means increased storage costs for PC. Fast majority of such cards are the ones that users didn’t send it the first place. Increasing the limit by 6 months only to give chance to miniscule quantity of cards is not very practical.

[varn]

On the possibility of suspension/reopening thresholds, I opened a poll here

Postal Monitor & Postcard Stats

Suggestions for features to be added to the main site regarding the postal monitor and statistics of postcards. Edits are made from time to time to include new suggestions emerging from discussion. Incoming/Outgoing postal routes Since Postal Monitor is not exactly equivalent to Postcrossing’s mail routes, wouldn’t it be better to have two up-to-date tables on the main site (if one can still call that)? Where A can send to Where A can receive from I think it’s quite reasonable to expect th…

[geosmin_petrichor]

I have been following this thread since its beginning …
There are two things I hate most: ungratefulness and entitlement mentality. I have seen a lot of both in this thread already.

Postcrossing started back in 2005!!! Paulo, Ana and their team of volunteers gained A. LOT. of experience during this long time. Postcrossing is free, no one charges you for money. It’s a lot of work, and yet thre majority here takes it for granted. You can even check postal monitor (the news about the backlog in China has been put on the postal monitor site, btw. So people will know immediately!). When I started, it took a while to discover everything but that is your job after all: Information is there, you just have to look through the postcrossing site, or do you expect someone is taking you by the hand?

There is a lot of consolidated information in one space. You do not have to google all postal services that are outside there–good luck trying, btw.

1. And now you come across not trusting their data.
Wow. Just wow! Congratulations, this is the most Dunning-Kruger effect thing I have ever encountered in this forum so far! Reminds me of the Covidiots in my country. Just ebcause they know not of any relatives and friends who suffered from Covid, doesn’t mean the pandemic and virus don’t exist. I really wonder what happens with people nowadays. Reading something here, watching a video there on the internet, and boom! they call themselves experts. Who said that it was political motivated? No one! Where did you read that? No where. Why are people smelling conspiracy theory, or insult everywhere when there is no evidence?
There is also no proof that other countries’ postal services are to “blame”. In Germany we can purchase stmaps with QR codes one can scan with the corresponding app to track them. My mail leaves Germany whithin one or two days after I dropped it into the mailbox. And when my mail left the country, it’s no longer a problem of my country’s postal service. Chineses postal services cannot be blamed either, because it’s not about blaming someone after all!
Your government decided to protect its people from another mass-breakout of the virus. And that is completely understandable. I wish no one to ever suffer from long/post Covid. Due to the meassures it takes longer. Give your postal services a chance to get rid of the huge backlog first.

2. At the same time you come with personal experience which is not only contradictory but also more prone to emotions than mere data and numbers.
Some of you might have received batches of mail recently but do so have other Chinese postcrossers? According to the data collected from the official postcrossing site, no. And that is what the decision is based upon. Data, not emotions, etc. you falsely accuse the admins of.

Paulo has clearly stated in a very understandable and reasonable manner, why the decision was made. Many are unhappy with it but so are the admins. This is all to HELP your local postal services get control over the backlog again, instead of piling it up any further!

And yet, many of you decide to be sulky, severly rude and impolite, even insult the admins like 12 year old teenagers.
This is not only shameful but also very embarassing to witness. In Germany we use the term “fremdschämen” which lacks an appropriate English term, I’m afraid.

Some of you even compared it to the Holocaust. SERIOUSLY? Abominable!!! Shame on you.
Don’t abuse this term when you don’t understand the impact it had upon the world. There is a clear difference between knowing (like reading something in a book or on the internet) and really understanding (grasping the meaning of) something.

The issues has been going on for a while and maybe when the admins decided for the temporary mail suspension, the situation started to improve slightly. However, no one has a crystal ball and as long as the majority postcards aren’t registered, the postal services in your country have got their hand full. If this annoys you that much, feel free to volunteer at your next local postal service to help.

One of the postcards I received was from China, I was the lucky one to register the card as their first sent of, or first sent postcard that was received. And it was an expired one! The postcard is really dear to me, not just because of the cute motif but also because of the kind message. In my hooray message I wanted to give back the hug I had received from their postcard. I felt also obliged, because I was afraid they might leave postcrossing for good because they hadn’t recieved any postcard, and their sent one took ages to arrive.

One of my current travelling postcards is to China–my first to China. Hooray. I knew it would take a bit longer, even though I had printed out the Chinese version of the address. But the certainty that my postcard will be not on time for the postcrosser’s birthday because of the backlog, makes me really sad. I wanted to surprise them. I don’t know if I spoil the surprise and write them a birthday message or not.

And concerning equal treatment. This has been proved already. And as another example, look at Ecuador! Postcrossers from Ecuador cannot really participate because their postal service does not send mail anywhere outside the country. This started at the beginning of the pandemic (just for the record, in any case one can, or will not remember: this was at the beginning of 2020), and now we are in the middle of 2022!!! What do you say about this? That is really sad, imho.

As to the postal services in Ukraine: Recently there was a brief documentary about the mail carriers there and what their day-to-day life looks like during the war. Unlike most postal services, the mail carriers do not just deliver the mail but also the rent (in cash) to the elderly people in rural areas, food, water and hygienic articles. All things which especially the rural population has a chance to purchase to survive. I’m sure that also medics are devilered. Frankly speaking, during this difficult time in Ukraine, delivery mail becomes a mere byproduct and the mail carriers are risking their lives.

[littlesthobo]

I agree with the others @Mona_Berlin who say that increasing the expiry time is unfair. Just because there is a problem with one single country’s mail system doesn’t mean that everyone else should be punished. Besides, 80 days still wouldn’t be long enough if you look at the average time mail is traveling to and from China currently. I just received mail from China that the user sent to me in February!

[Xute]

@geosmin_petrichor @littlesthobo guys, I understand, that some reactions from couple of Chinese users were unjustified, and myself consider Paulo’s message very thorough and caring about community and Chinese users in particular. But don’t you think that repeating over and over again messages protecting admins (whom we all support and many Chinese users expressed their support for admin decision too, you know) is a bit unproductive? Is the goal of it to make Chinese users to be scared and never express their emotions and opinions again?

You seem to base your opinions on replies of couple users (whose comments are deleted long ago and these users are probably banned so nobody replies), and keep then generalizing it on many users (calling them childish, claiming that many users are insulting and being sulky). People are just hurt - it’s so easy - it’s emotional reaction. What’s needed is to say - we still love you, we still worry about you instead of logically explaining the same thing over and over…

I apologize if my message sounds harsh, but it’s need to be said too.

[JunboHuang]

@littlesthobo l will said to you again.Only the mail received in China had problems.The mail from China wasn’t had any problems.Your country post system might have problems.

[geosmin_petrichor]

I know that the postcrossers here in this thread do not represent all Chinese postcrossers, and I am glad about that. It’s not my aim to punish them. As I said, I have been following this thread since its beginning and knew many of the replies. I only saw after my post that the majority had been deleted. But I keep my ground, most replies were childish and inappropriate.

[Xute]

Because most replies are from school kids and young adults! It’s a youngsters thing to be flammable and inappropriate (and riot against authority - just remembering how silly I was at that age )

It’s totally okay to call someone on rude messages though, we are shaping the community for civil discussions like that. But also I think since the average Chinese postcrosser is younger than average European/US/Russian postcrosser, we can show strictness and love in the same message, like adult people can do

[EricWong2020]

I agree with you!
In fact, Chinese users are angry because this incident is too sudden and there is no discussion. Most people just want a standard, advance discussion, notification and a better way to deal with it.

I am also not qualified to say how young people are（I noticed that most active Chinese users who are active on this thing thing , ther age are usually between 12 and 27）, because I am a student myself .

I’ll add one more thing: there is also a huge difference between Eastern and Western ideologies (not political)

[satinification]

And if I understand the system correctly, when a card to user X is expired after 60 days, another user gets the address of user X. The situation repeats itself and thus user X after a few months has more cards traveling to them than sent. The suspension is temporary to allow these postcards to arrive.

[Bille]

@satinification

The suspension is temporary to allow these postcards to arrive.

[Cassisia]

@EricWong2020

Most people just want a standard, advance discussion, notification and a better way to deal with it.

What would have changed if the admins had announced their decision, say two days in advance before executing it? Nothing. The anger and incomprehension would have been the same, because of the substance of the decision. As Paulo pointed out, an issue like that isn’t up for a vote. So why announce it and loose more time while the community discusses a problem which isn’t up for discussion?

And what would have been “a better way” to deal with it? It’s easy to postulate that there would have been “a better way”, but I can’t come up with one, because the issue is out of the hands of the responsible persons. The issue lies with the Chinese postal service. Postcrossing tries to fence the problem before the mass of pending postcards keeps growing even more.

(And as others pointed out, it isn’t the first time to suspend sending to a certain country because their postal system has issues. I don’t remember having a vote back then.)

I’m sorry, but I think the expectations of some Chinese members are too big and not appropriate. The issue isn’t suitable for a vote, the decision had to be made nevertheless what the forum community thinks of it. And the admins explained the background, as usual with a maximum of transparency and patience. That’s more than you find with other projects!

[sonataca]

Stay strong, fellow Chinese Postcrossers. This suspension is very much temporary and you will receive all your due postcards. You guys are a major part of the Postcrossing community. I did a little calculation for the top 10 active countries in Postcrossing using a received divided by sent formula:

1. Germany: 11,161,410 received divided by 11,177,796 sent = 1.00 (rounded)

2. Russia: 7,873,914 received divided by 8,030,471 sent = 0.98

3. USA: 7,793,828 received divided by 7,833,920 sent = 0.99

4. Netherlands: 4,991,387 received divided by 4,929,911 sent = 1.01

5. Finland: 3,998,963 received divided by 3,969,663 sent = 1.01 (rounded)

6. China: 2,665,926 received divided by 2,800,179 sent = 0.95

7. Taiwan: 2,727,708 received divided by 2,780,211 sent = 0.98

8. Belarus: 2,602,046 received divided by 2,575,834 sent = 1.01

9. Czech Republic: 1,793,386 received divided by 1,763,915 sent = 1.01 (rounded)

10. Japan: 1,606,079 received divided by 1,593,953 sent = 1.01 (rounded)

I got these stats from each country’s page on the main website. You may also do the calculations. Now, if you look at the percentage points, unfortunately, China’s percentage is the lowest in that list and when only 5% of that 0.05 is arriving, it can get frustrating, right? Plus, you’d get an ugly warning for not registering postcards since there are postcards already traveling to you before this little suspension.

And please don’t worry that your address won’t be given out to others currently. As I have said, you will continue receiving the postcards stuck at your regional and local postal facilities! Just keep a little faith.

I hope you guys successfully ward off COVID and things get back to normal across the entire country.

[EricWong2020]

I agree with most of your points, but I have a slightly different opinion on the “better way”.

In my own opinion, the result of the solution in this case must be the same, but the solution process can be different. (Like mandatory turning on inactive mode? Because many Chinese members turned on this option at the beginning) “Better way” can only refer to the method that can accept the result faster. It’s just based on the degree of acceptance and not what kind of voting, because the result is definitely not to invent postcards in China. It’s a must!

[Cassisia]

Concerning expectations I wanted to add something, but couldn’t edit my post due to slow mode.

We all have to reconsider our expectations when we have recieved further information about a problem and are able to better understand the decision. It simply doesn’t help to stubbornly stick with our first expectations just because we don’t like the solution. We have to rethink our expectations when we can see the bigger picture, that’s what adults do. Sometimes we have to admit to ourselves, and to the parties involved in the discussion, that our expectations weren’t appropriate.

There’s a saying : “Wenn das die Lösung ist, will ich mein Problem zurück!” / "If this is the solution, I want my problem back! " Sometimes a solution sucks, but has to be made nevertheless because it’s the rational, responsible thing to do.

@EricWong2020

Like mandatory turning on inactive mode?

I’m absolutely sure that the admins have thought about solutions with lesser impact. But they had to find a responsible solution regarding the senders too - in my opinion, you can’t rely only on the receivers when the issue is so big and pressing.

[littlesthobo]

I tried to make it pretty clear that I was only responding to the few vocal Chinese users. I do believe I said that exactly and followed it by thanking the majority of users from China for being reasonable in the way they expressed themselves.

I am not just bringing things up at random over and over again as you have accused. I am responding DIRECTLY to new comments being made and have been careful to hit reply and quote so others could see exactly what I am taking issue with.

I am sorry that you take issue with my approach. We are all different on how we choose to handle things. But I assure you, I have nothing against Chinese users. I have issues with some of the things that were said by specific Postcrossers, and many of the people I have replied to were not from China.

I have said a few times now that I feel badly for everyone affected by the backlog and hope everything is restored quickly. Of course, anyone is allowed to express their feelings and I hope no one heard me say that they shouldn’t.