Postcrossing Blog

I’m sure you’ve all heard about the 2019-nCoV (aka Coronavirus) outbreak in China, since it has been all over the news for the past month. A lot of you have been contacting us with questions about this situation, so we thought a quick post was in order to clarify a couple of points.

First of all, there is no risk of contagion via postcards or mail. Here’s an official response to the question from the World Health Organization:

Q: Is it safe to receive a letter or a package from China?

A: Yes, it is safe. People receiving packages from China are not at risk of contracting 2019-nCoV. From previous analysis, we know coronaviruses do not survive long on objects, such as letters or packages.

This situation has had a heavy impact in the postal world though, with many postal operators having stopped accepting mail to China due to cancelled flights and widespread delays. For this reason, Postcrossing has temporarily stopped giving out Chinese addresses. We will continue monitoring the situation, and when things return to normal, the algorithm will resume giving out Chinese addresses for everyone to send postcards to.

Doing this really saddens us, as we realize this is a difficult period in which Chinese postcrossers most need support. So we hope everyone will join us in the comments below, sending the Chinese Postcrossing community and their families some encouraging thoughts and good wishes. 中国加油!

So many meetings, so little time! We’re way overdue in telling you about all the cool Postcrossing meetups we’ve been hearing from, so here are three recent events that postcrossers have organized and written to us about. We hope they inspire you to join or organize your own local meetup!

Postcrossing Anniversary Meetups in Indonesia 🇮🇩

Last month, the Indonesian community celebrated Postcrossing’s 14th birthday by organizing meetings in 11 different cities around the country — isn’t that awesome?! Look at this cool mashup that they’ve made with photos of all the meetings:

There’s happy people, cake and balloons… looks like a real birthday party! Lots of postcrossers in the cities of Batam, Medan, Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Solo, Surabaya, Malang, Makassar and Tenggarong enjoyed spending time together, talking, snacking and writing postcards, of course! You can see more of their meeting photos on this page.

China Bullet Train Meetup Series 🇨🇳

The idea for this unusual series of meetups came from Bin Xu (aka bishopet) who is a super fan of trains and postcards! To combine the two, he contacted 8 postcrossers from 8 different cities along the China Bullet Train route, in Shenyang, Shandong, Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Dongguan and Hong Kong. Meetings were organized in all these cities throughout the month of June, each one with a different postcard featuring the bullet train.

Nizhny Novgorod Postcrossing Meeting 🇷🇺

About three weeks ago, 74 postcrossers from 29 Russian cities got together in Nizhny Novgorod to share their love of postcards with the world! Over the weekend, they wrote and sent almost 2000 postcards — but most importantly, they got the chance meet and get to know each other. Russia is a huge country and for many postcrossers, this was the first chance they got to meet some of the people that they had only previously known online or through postcards. They even had a special postmark made for the event, along with a little mobile post office by Russian Post that allowed everyone to mail their cards immediately. It looks like a lot of fun!

Deers are a symbol of the city of Nizhny Novgorod, and this cute one is the mascot of the local Postcrossing group. These photos are by Anna (aka AnnaRybakova_79), and you can see many more on this page.

That’s all for now! If you’ve been in a nice meetup recently, send us some photos and let us know how it went — we’d love to hear about it. 🙂 And if you’re thinking of joining or organizing a meetup, consider October 1st as a potential date, and join us in celebrating the 150th anniversary of the postcard!

Ever heard of Postcrossing Ambassadors? They’re members who go the extra mile to spread the word about the project to help it grow, writing articles on newspapers or magazines, giving interviews to TV stations or organizing events to popularize the hobby, among many other remarkable contributions.

Jifeng (aka shijifeng) from China, is one of our most enthusiastic ambassadors, and this summer he was involved in the organization of a huge art exhibition + event that is all about postcards and Postcrossing!

“Postrip — Post a word, mark the world” is the name of this fantastic exhibition that is currently being shown in Shanghai, celebrating postcards as a way of connecting the world, sharing memories and creating travel mementos. The exhibition features postcards, sketches, souvenirs and travel journals from five local postcrossers (arlynab, shijifeng, SuzyLiu, uranusreborn, wangjiayimike). Their items were beautifully put together in displays, which were then surrounded by their testimonials, as well as explanations on how Postcrossing works.

Have a look:

Isn’t it just stunning? The care and attention to detail on these walls and displays is awe-inspiring.

Pulling off something like this would be enough to make anyone proud… but Jifeng decided to push it a bit further, and used the occasion of the exhibition to organize also a meetup, postcard fair and set of talks about Postcrossing, in which the five postcrossers who participated in the exhibition were invited to tell the stories behind the postcards they chose to display.

As an added bonus, a special themed postcard was printed, and Shanghai Post even created a cancellation mark for the occasion so that postcrossers could send their commemorative cards with it. The event took place this past Saturday (July 15th), and judging by the photos, it was a huge success!

Hurray! 🎉 Though the event is now over, you can still visit the exhibition until September 24th, on Shanghai Mass Art Centre (125 Guyi Rd, Xuhui Qu, Shanghai). If you’re in the area, don’t miss it!

Our huge thank you to Jifeng for doing all of this — but also to arlynab, SuzyLiu, uranusreborn and wangjiayimike for their collaboration both in the event and the exhibition. It sounds like a brilliant team effort, and we hope it will inspire other postcrossers to follow their lead! 😊

All Postcrossing meetups are special — but sometimes, postcrossers really go the extra mile to do something a little different on their own gatherings. We love hearing all about meetups taking place in trains or deserted islands… and now, a meetup that happened in two countries simultaneously!

This special meeting happened on January 15th, and was organized by Shiyun (aka Sybones) from Singapore and Jifeng (aka shijifeng) from Wuxi, in China. Distances are relative in the internet era, so despite being 3770km apart, Chinese and Singaporeans postcrossers were able to chat as if being in the same room via their mobile devices.

Shijifeng’s friend Arlyna (aka arlynab) designed a special postcard featuring elements from both countries to commemorate the event, which were distributed among the two groups.

Both groups held mini-presentations, wrote postcards and then talked to each other on Facetime. Despite some internet and language hiccups, a great time was had by all!

That sounds like a lot of fun! A big thank you to the organisers and all the attendants for putting such a special meeting together. We challenge you to outdo them on your next meetup — and tell us all about it! :)

As some of you can probably tell by his username, Eels (aka Qi) is a music fan. He also likes Wes Anderson's movies… and surprisingly, we share a favourite book from a Portuguese author, which he first learned about through Postcrossing! Come discover which, on his spotlight interview!

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

I used to send postcards to my close friends and even myself during my travels, and I happened to know Postcrossing when I was browsing the website Douban many years ago. There’s a Postcrossing group there and I was fascinated by the amazing project after I read its brief introduction, so I immediately opened an account to start my Postcrossing journey. :)

Since then, I’ve been active also in the forum and ‘met’ lots of nice friends these years. The most amazing thing is I have a penpal who used to be a postcrosser. Though she is no longer active in Postcrossing due to her busy work, we still keep in touch and send postcards and letters to each other from time to time. Without Postcrossing, I wouldn’t have such a important far-away friend, even though I never saw her.

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

It’s really hard to choose only one favorite card from my received cards…

I am a big fan of James Dean and I really love all his movies, so I started to collect postcards of him. Till now I have over 100 James Dean postcards.

I also love Japanese Gotochi cards and started to collect them… though collecting them all seems like an impossible task. A few weeks ago I received my favorite Gotochi featuring Momotaro — what a lovely card!

And here’s a card with Fernando Pessoa, a famous Portuguese poet. I got to know him through a Postcrossing friend’s introduction, and I’ve enjoyed discovering his work. I have finished reading the Chinese version of 'The book of disquiet’ and I’m reading the English version now.

Finally a postcard of the Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk, a UNESCO site in Czech Republic with beautiful architecture. I want to visit it if I have the chance!

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

To read each postcrossers’ profile, choose the perfect card (at least I think), choose stamps, decorate and write on it. Also upload the picture before I send out the card. All these processes are interesting and I enjoy them.

I love receiving surprises as well, not just the postcard but also the message on the back side. The magic charm of Postcrossing is you never know what will arrive to you everyday, and I love sending and receiving surprises. :)

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

This is my local post office…

… and the postbox from which my cards are usually sent:

Here is my mailbox, where postcards arrive:

After registering, they get put in a box, waiting to be sorted…

… and this is the shelf where they end up, after being sorted and stored.

Have you met any other members in real life?

Yes! I attended a small Postcrossing meetup in Shanghai two years ago:

That’s me on the front right side, and my wife Yaya on the front left!

Had I joined Postcrossing earlier, I might have had the chance to see Paulo and Ana, as they were in a meetup in Shanghai in 2008.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I really love listening music in my daily life, and started to collect vinyl records about a year ago. I am enthusiastic about watching movies — my favorite director is Wes Anderson. I also love jogging and want to finish a marathon one day in the future. Besides that, I started to learn yoga few months ago, a quite interesting exercise which makes me feel peaceful and relaxed.

Postcrossing widened my eyes, there are sooooo many wonderful places/countries I want to visit! My wife and I have visited several European countries: France, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands or Spain. And Iceland is the place I most want to visit in the future.