Chinese Address Formats | Western Addresses
For some reason we ended up discussing the difference in address formats between China and the West.
In Chinese you write an address on an enveloppe in the following format
Country
Province,
City, Postal code
Street name
Name of Recipient
In the West (actually in almost any other country) you write an address like this
Name of Recipient
Street name
Postal code, City (In the US this a reversed)
Country
Collectivism versus Individualism?
Posted
Sunday, November 6th, 2005 at 2:54 am,
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November 6th, 2005 08:56
Come on! Collectivism versus Individualism? Ever seen Chinese people get on a bus? Or buy the last bit of pork in the market? What is Collective about the Chinese people?
The Chinese way of addressing a letter is perfectly logical. The postman needs to know first the country, then the city, then the street…
July 8th, 2009 09:01
@Liuzhou Laowai: so, i guess, each postman in china is delivering only one letter a day if they first need to know the country? “O, it’s japan today, so let’s hurry to deliver this letter to japan.”… postmen are wizards in china, right? … perfectly logical
July 27th, 2010 18:50
C’mon Dennis,
As the piece of mail goes deeper into the country you move further down the list until it gets to name of the person it was intended for. Similar to packets sent over the internet.
In any case, using online systems from USPS, UPS and Fed Ex give you boxes to enter infomation step by step. Here’s a more complex example for one of my vendors:
China
Nanshan
Shenzhen, 518054
Nan Hai Ave
Peng Du Bldg
Unit A
Room 2503
AsterGem & Jewelry
August 18th, 2010 22:55
@liuzhou laowai:
Oh my gosh, you just made my day! That’s totally what I was thinking!
And yes, the chinese way of addressing letters makes perfect sense to me~
October 6th, 2010 02:41
Republic of China (ROC) refers specifically to Taiwan. Mainland China should be the PRC - People’s Republic of China.
October 26th, 2010 17:19
I am an American recently married to a Chinese lady. We are filling out the forms to get her a visa to go to America. On the form they want her mother’s address in China.
She tells me it is as follows:
Yabuli Forestry Bureau in Heilonjiang Province.
Shangzhi six groups of the sixth committee of the 10 the residents.
Will an address like that actually get delivered?????
April 7th, 2011 12:29
I know it’s years old, but this post made me LOL. Collectivism vs individualism?
As Freud said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…”
August 17th, 2020 00:32
I live in Beijing and I have never seen the street name written on anything. I am trying to get my stuff together to vote, and they require me to put down the street name as the address but all we have is the complex name and we get on average 5 packages a week using that format. Has anyone else run into this?