How to write a Chinese address in English: structure comparison (China uses big-to-small order), copyable template from China Post/UPU official format, 6-digit postal codes, verifiable real examples, and courier tips.
To write a Chinese address in English, use Western order: recipient’s name first, then room and building, street number and road name, district, city with the 6-digit postal code, and CHINA in capitals on the last line. In Chinese, the same address runs the opposite way — province first, the person’s name last — which is why most formatting mistakes come from mixing the two systems. Get the district and postcode right, add the recipient’s phone number, and your parcel will almost always arrive.
In China, envelopes are actually written from the largest unit down to the smallest: province 省, city 市, district 区, road 路, building number 号, unit 单元, room 室, and the recipient’s name at the very end. It is the mirror image of a US or European address. The Universal Postal Union’s official China addressing sheet, published with China Post, states it plainly: an address written in Chinese starts with the biggest geographical component and ends with the smallest. The moment you write that same address in Latin letters, the order flips to Western small-to-large.
| Element | Chinese | Position in Chinese | Position in English |
|---|---|---|---|
| Country | 国 | 1st | Last line |
| Province | 省 | 2nd | 6th |
| City | 市 | 3rd | 5th (with postcode) |
| District | 区 | 4th | 4th |
| Road + number | 路 / 号 | 5th | 3rd |
| Building / unit / room | 楼 / 单元 / 室 | 6th | 2nd |
| Recipient name | 收件人 | Last | 1st |
This is the Latin-script format China Post itself publishes through the UPU:
[Full name, surname in CAPITALS] Room [x], Floor [x], Building [x], [compound/complex name] No. [x] [Road name] Road [District] District [City] [6-digit postcode] [Province — omit for Beijing/Shanghai/Tianjin/Chongqing] P.R. CHINA
And the UPU’s own worked example of a Beijing residential address:
Mr. ZHANG Jun Room 1001, Floor 10, Building 3, Taiyueyuan Residential Area No. 12 Zhichun Road Haidian District 100191 BEIJING P.R. CHINA
One detail people argue about: China Post’s official format puts the postcode before the city (“100191 BEIJING”), but in daily practice most people here write “Beijing 100191”. Both orders get delivered as long as the postcode is present. The postcode itself is the non-negotiable part.
These are public institutions, published on their own websites, so you can check them yourself:
That “Jia No. 3” in the China Post address is worth a note: 甲 (jiǎ) marks a sub-numbered building, roughly like “3A”. Keep oddities like this exactly as your recipient gives them — they exist for a reason.
Every Chinese postcode is exactly six digits, no letters. The structure: the first two digits identify the province or municipality, the third the postal zone within it, the fourth the prefecture or postal office, and the last two the specific delivery area.
Don’t guess from the city base code: 100000 is Beijing generally, but a Haidian address might be 100084 or 100191. Honest first-hand observation: for domestic parcels inside China, couriers barely look at postcodes anymore — the phone number and the Chinese-character address do all the work. International mail is a different story. Foreign carriers validate the postcode before your package ever reaches China, so ask your recipient for the exact code rather than approximating.
How easy is it to get this wrong? While researching this piece we found that a well-known address-verification vendor’s own China example places Haidian District in “Guangzhou City” with the postcode 856743 — Haidian is in Beijing, and 856743 is not a Guangzhou code. If companies selling address verification trip on this, it is no shame that your checkout form does too. Use the template above, confirm the postcode with your recipient, and add the phone number. That combination is what actually delivers.