Last week my friend Karen sent me a postcard from Shanghai. It was her first trip to China, and while she saw a Shanghai and Beijing quite different from what I visited 15-20 years ago, she encountered one thing that hasn’t changed.
It’s damn difficult to find a postcard in China.
I had the same experience, whether it was in 1995 Shanghai:
Or 1991 Beijing:
And especially 1988 Nanjing:
Has anyone else found this to be the case, too? That for everything China produces and prints to be shipped overseas, they just haven’t mastered the domestic postcard business?
If I’d known how hard it would be to find postcards in China, I might not have said “Bu yao!” so many times to those vendors at the Wild Wall at Simatai back in ’99. In 2010, they were still scarce, though I always run across them sooner or later in Hong Kong. Even if they aren’t great, I don’t wait for something prettier to come along. It probably won’t.
Thanks, Cara! I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks China hasn’t reached the 21st, not to mention 20th century, when it comes to postcards. The only place I found t-shirts in China years ago was at the wall, but they were paper thin. But like you say, beggars can’t be choosers. Can someone please tell the Ministry of Tourism that laowai will pay anything for tourist trash?!