How Chinese addresses and delivery work

How an address reads

The order is the reverse of what you are used to: province → city → district → street and number → name of the estate → building → entrance → floor and flat. Largest first, you last.

The key characters: 省 province, 市 city, 区 district, 路 or 街 street, 号 street number, 小区 residential estate.

Then comes the part people trip over: 楼 (lóu) is the building, 单元 (dānyuán) the entrance, 室 (shì) the flat. Something like “5号楼2单元1802室” means building 5, entrance 2, flat 1802.

The flat number usually encodes the floor: 1802 means the eighteenth floor, second flat on the landing.

What a delivery address must contain

1. 1

   The full address in Chinese characters

   Copy it from your lease or ask the hotel desk to write it out. Do not type it from a transliteration: one wrong character puts you in a different district.

2. 2

   Building, entrance, floor, flat

   All four of them — even when it seems obvious without. This is the most common reason a parcel goes back.

3. 3

   A Chinese phone number

   The courier calls before delivering. A foreign number will not connect, and the parcel goes to a pickup point or straight back.

4. 4

   A note if the entrance is not obvious

   “Leave it at reception”, “call me and I’ll come down”, “the south gate” — one line saves both you and the courier twenty minutes.

Where the parcel actually ends up

The courier does not always bring it to your door. There are three usual options: a parcel locker in the courtyard, a pickup point such as a Cainiao station on the estate, and the security desk or reception.

The code or the notification arrives by SMS and in the delivery app. A locker only holds a parcel for a limited time before it moves to a pickup point.

In an office building parcels are almost always left at reception. Put the company name and the floor in the address.

If a parcel is not collected for several days it goes back to the seller — you get your money back, but you have lost the time.