How To Write An Address?

[Jessica Steele]

I was given an address from my Chinese friend so I could send her something. I don't know how to write it on an envelope though. Here it is:

Xin ke yuan xi qu 8-2-602 he bei han dan shi gao ka qu china

Any help? Also, should I write in Chinese or English or both?

[abcdefg]

Write "China" on it for the sake of your home country's English-speaking postal employees The rest needs to be in Chinese. See this thread for format: http://www.chinese-f...address-format/

[imron]

Write "China" on it for the sake of your home country's English-speaking postal employees

Even better, write P.R. China on it so it doesn't get sent to the Republic of China (aka Taiwan) by mistake.

[yialanliu]

Just to clarify, Chinese addresses do not have to be written in Chinese character script.

Pinyin is perfectly fine and that's how my company gets all of our mail form the abroad. It's safer too since you're more like to miswrite the chinese characters rather than pinyin since pinyin uses the alphabet. Now if you want to write it in chinese, feel free too, but since you were given it in pinyin, stick with pinyin. you might miswrite the character when you convert the pinyin.

[icebear]

If your friend sent it to you via email, print off the Chinese characters and tape them to whatever you are sending (with PR China at the bottom). That's how my family handled it while I was in China and never had any problems.

[roddy]

Has anyone ever had a letter go to Taiwan after being addressed 'China'? I'll wager no, but then again who'd know. Perhaps after reunification there'll be a flood of previously lost Amazon parcels.

Pinyin's fine, if you can print off the Chinese characters as well that might help.

I'll point out that you don't have a zip code though - I'd get that if possible. Some kind soul might look it up for you based on what you've posted, and perhaps even type up the Chinese.

[Lu]

Has anyone ever had a letter go to Taiwan after being addressed 'China'? I'll wager no, but then again who'd know. Perhaps after reunification there'll be a flood of previously lost Amazon parcels.

I think it would be more common for a letter saying 'Republic of China' to end up on the Mainland.

OP, best is as someone suggested to print the characters. If you only have pinyin, I'd parse it a little differently:

Xinkeyuan xi qu 8-2-602

Gaoka Qu

Handan City

Hebei Province

PR China

[jbradfor]

Anyone else think that's a very weird address format?

I was trying to pull out the city and province. I assume Hebei is the province, and Handan is the city. [Yeah,I know, the "shi" gives it away, you're not impressed.] And there is, in fact, a Handan city in Hebei! [Who knew? I sure didn't.]

So order seems to be a mismash of Chinese and Western ordering. Given that, I would urge you to get the Chinese characters in Chinese order.

EDIT: Lu beat me to it....

[anonymoose]

中国河北省邯郸市高开区新科园西区8-2-602

(Name of person)

P. R. China

[Jessica Steele]

Wow, thanks everybody! You're all so helpful. About the zip code, I didn't realize the numbers in it weren't the zip code.. I guess that's her street address then. I looked it up and, if I'm right, her zip code would be 056000. Thanks again everybody!!

[drencrom]

Yeah, some addresses are simply untranslatable. Or untransliterable, if you want to be pedant. Here's my address, written in unaccented Pinyin. Let's pretend you're the guy at the post office who gets this letter. How you going to write this in Chinese, considering that you're overworked, have a huge pile of work in front of you, you don't really care if anything gets delivered or not, and there is no metric to measure your success. You're not an expert who spends his free time hanging out at chinese-forums.com.

nan tang zhu zhai qu a di kuai 5 zu tuan 9 zhuang 304 shi.

Oh, and by the way, the landlord never put a number on the door because he said everyone here already knows which apartment is 304.

[roddy]

He's going to look at it, think 'ah, nantang, that'll be 南塘 or whatever' (using his local knowledge) and then it's just a matter of filling in the blanks. He'll scribble 南塘 A / 5 / 9 / 304 on it, and it'll get there. They might not be experts, but they can read pinyin and they know their area.

056000 looks like a city code, the last three digits should probably be . . . well, not all zeros.

[yialanliu]

That's a fine zip code. Last 3 being zeros means it's the zip code for the city level of designation. Last 2 being 0s is at the clarity of the county/district level of designation. You don't need to be more accruate than the last 3 being 0s.

[abcdefg]

#10, As mentioned in the earlier linked thread, put the recipient's phone number on the envelope if you can. That way the postal employees in your friend's China city can call if they have questions about where he or she actually lives.

[Taibei]

Has anyone ever had a letter go to Taiwan after being addressed 'China'? I'll wager no, but then again who'd know.

I once had a package go to China before being delivered to me in Taiwan. Most annoying.

[li3wei1]

Many people in Hong Kong got things sent from the US (and possibly other countries) addressed to 'Hong Kong, Japan'. Somehow they still found their way to HK.

[Caidanbi]

When I sent a gift to my friend in China a few years back I just wrote her address in Chinese characters, and then in pinyin. It got to her within a week (I'm in the USA). As long as you specify "China" in English along with that, it should get there ^-^