I have to say, these cards are snail mails! Slow and expire and lost is normal. This is probably not for you if you can’t accept these. Especially right now.
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If one looks at things in a longer view and does not focus on one’s temporary frustration about one’s postcards not arriving within two weeks, one will remember that at various times in the last, say, fifteen years, there were countries from/to which mail was slowed down or totally disrupted for various lengths of time. This may have been due to postal workers’ strikes, other sectors’ strikes, wars, disturbances in some countries or plain bad functioning of a country’s postal system.
Since the pandemic began, I have noticed that some postcards were taking longer, sometimes much longer than earlier (up to six months between Canada and China all through 2021). In all countries of the world, the postal system was under a big stress, with many employees sick or locked down, some countries stopping altogether to keep international mail going on. In the past year or so, it has become even worse and please, do not think that the problem is totally linked with China.The lockdowns of the past months in China have surely been disruptive and a backlog of undelivered mail has accumulated, BUT not only in China, also in foreign airports and sorting centres when the mail could not be forwarded towards China due to the lack of sufficient flights (a problem that still exists). Then in some countries the postal system is not back to normal yet and quite a few of my correspondents in the USA, the Netherlands and the UK have mentioned to me that there WERE local problems.
Now they seem everywhere to have started to work on all that neglected mail. Lately I have received letters and postcards that had been travelling for between 18 to two months.
I surely love it when the postcards travel in a timely way, but considering all the current world’s problems, one should understand that we are in a difficult time for communicating via snail mail. If we ARE motivated enough and try to be patient, normalcy will definitely return slowly. Let us try to learn that one cannot always get what one wishes INSTANTLY…
I feel that the decision taken by postcrossing admin. to start again with giving addresses in China slowly and see what happens was the wisest possible. The situation was and is exceptional, and one must experiment with ways to solve it that cause the least disruptions to the general system. Several members have done a lot of thinking and suggested more or less (un)practical solutions, I appreciated their efforts to contribute, but I say unpractical because they were suggesting some discriminations based on not so solid reasons
Which leads me to say how shocked I was reading that some members did not want to send cards to China (or to Russia, for different but equally inacceptable reasons) and to thus introduce a distinction between the “quality” of countries. It is bad enough that these distinctions are rampant in the world of politics and sometimes in the wider world, but I feel we should strive to keep postcrossing as a space of willingness to understand whom and what is different from us, a space where one can meet fellow human beings whoever they are without aggressivity… That involves growing up from petty hatreds and a tendency to throw up tantrums whenever things do not go as we would wish them to go…
Sorry I have been once again very long-winded.
I will only add that I have gone inactive for a while (though I will continue to send cards) due to a possibility of having to move suddenly, which, considering the current travelling times would cause a lot of cards to get lost, but this will also prevent persons unwilling to send cards to slow countries to get stressed (chuckle, I have no angry feelings towards. these). Just a bad sense of humour…
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Both the suspension and the current throttle are essentially the same: distinction based on the quality of countries. So a second category of extra slots is no different in that sense, but of course, a euphemism may be needed. One may also feel differently about each of these measures too. Suppose Country B’s registration rate is 10%. If one suggests Country B should be banned altogether, it’d sound ridiculous; however, once it’s official, all of a sudden it becomes the wisest solution.
I just hope to see the action taken upon low registration rates is for something better on fairness and equity grounds. Whether it is practical or not is a different matter and we can talk about both. Or, we can also pretend the suspension never happened.
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Don’t take yourself as the world. What you think is fair may not be fair to others, but how is it fair?
Don’t do unfair things in the name of fairness.
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Just FYI: I am in the US, repeated countries turned on, and I got a Chinese address this morning.
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It’s okay. I’m saving some money by sending less! 
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I got a China address to send to today … I’m in US
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Those are awesome words! Thank you! I completely agree with you!
That’s great 
I’m not worried about the slow receipt of cards, I’m more worried about abandoned profiles, unfortunately there were a lot of them last year and a lot of cards are missing 
I am so relieved to see that my postcard to China arrived after traveling for 200 days! 
It was sent on 8 March 2022 and received on 24 September 2022. 
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I like to receive and sent from to China again, practising characters in address!
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As a newcomer to this website, I sent three postcards last week, the remaining two will be sent next week, hoping that my postcards will reach each other’s mailboxes safely, and I can also receive postcards from different regions, which is why I am here, thank you very much to all of you who are willing to send postcards to Chinese addresses.
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Don’t worry, it will take time, but you will get your first card
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It might have been very lucky, but I had sent a non official card to china on the 4th of September and the person in question received it today on the 27th. So that’s 23 days.
Let’s hope this wasn’t luck, but it’s the new normal.
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A letter I sent to China 3 weeks ago arrived today, too. It’s going well
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At this point, it seems more about how much effort China Post is putting in to address the backlog that they refused to consider fir several months.
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I recently did a privat swap with China. Her card to me arrived after 4 weeks and today she recieved my card from Norway which had taken approx 5 weeks. So things seem to be improving 
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The two cards I sent in March (via tag) arrived this week. Things are moving forward.
I am still waiting for the cards from mid-August to be received, but that is within the normal timeframe.
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