Snail mail's last stand

China Post is trying a new approach: post offices with themes

With the global slide in paper mail, China Post, the country's postal backbone, is increasingly diversifying its business to stay relevant.

Among the state company's new marketing ploys is the "theme" post office that seeks to both reflect changes across China's technology-driven societies and enhance the operation's commercial prospects. Nearly 300 post offices on the Chinese mainland have been recently refashioned from a total of more than 53,000, toward that end.

The special post offices are dressed in concepts ranging from sports to space and children's animation to Chinese culture.

"The theme post office is more associated with different local cultures, but not as a large-scale operation," Bian Zuodong, director, Division of Universal Service Guarantee, State Post Bureau, a central government organization that oversees China Post, says. "It is in response to the penetration of the Internet."

Making money is not the main motivation, Bian says.

China Post is also developing a Web-based technology that will allow people to design postcards and write letters online before physically dispatching them to the intended recipients. Young Chinese and business executives are expected to become its main users, Bian says.

"People will have more flexibility to personalize their messages ... they will be able to choose from different kinds of paper for letters (to be printed on) and upload photos."

Modernizing postal services is also aimed at helping bridge communication gaps as a result of inequalities in income and education levels.

International data now suggests electronic communication is spreading in China more rapidly than in many other countries.

But historically, letters exchanged per capita have been lower here as compared with developed countries, linked to literacy rates.

Although China Post continues to deliver newspapers, commercial communication, money orders and handwritten letters to Chinese at home and abroad, it has witnessed a significant rise in its courier services including for parcels and express mail in the past decade, says Bian and other officials.

A major role in the transformation is the country's e-commerce boom that has led many Chinese, even from rural areas, to make virtual purchases and expect the goods to arrive at their doorstep. China Post has seized on the opportunity, vigorously marketing its small-package delivery system.

People can send up to 2 kilograms of items through this service nationwide and at prices lower than express mail, the postal officials say.

Overall, Chinese companies made about 14 billion courier deliveries, topping global figures for the sector last year. In 2006, it was roughly 1 billion in China, Bian says.

The Universal Postal Union, a United Nations agency, based in Berne, Switzerland, says 6.4 billion parcels alone were sent worldwide in 2013.

The world's Internet community hovered at 3 billion last year. Of which, 649 million were Chinese, the government-run China Internet Network Information Center says.

Across the road from the North Gate of Worker's Stadium in downtown Beijing is located a sports-themed China Post branch office, where the main public draw since November has been an in-house shop selling memorabilia, the bulk of which is inspired by the city's favorite soccer club, Guo'an.

Glimpses of the club's history of more than six decades appear in envelopes and other stationery, easily blending China Post's official dark green and yellow colors with the bright yellow and light green Guo'an. A postcard costs 40 yuan; an unrelated tai chi mug 50 yuan.

A replica of the World Cup trophy serves as a mailbox.

Other than soccer, the post shop also celebrates China's Olympic winners over the years, and has rows of commemorative merchandise on sale from the 2008 Games in Beijing. Hutong collectables, impressions of the city's famous olden-day alleyways, occupy some shelf space.

In addition, political events such as the two main annual Communist Party of China and legislative sessions feature on stamps.

Adjacent to the shop is a postal exhibition hall and next to it a mailroom - the heart of a traditional post office. In this relatively small space, the old world collides with the new as sacks and cardboard boxes filled with mail are stacked in corners, and uniformed officials make entries in their computers.

Trucks meant to carry the mail wait outside in the parking lot as customers look on. But it remains unclear how much of the freight consists of handwritten letters.

Li Guankun, a China Post employee in her 20s, describes the location opposite the stadium as ideal for sports fans.

It is among six other post offices with themes in Chaoyang, which is Beijing's largest district by both area and population, and has 11 major China Post branches. The smaller ones are in the dozens. At least two to three of the district's post offices may follow in the same path each year, in the coming years, Li Hongyan, a China Post official in the district, says.

At some distance from downtown to the city's northwestern side is another post office that was remodeled in 2011 after China successfully launched its first space station, Tiangong-1. Yang Liwei, the country's first astronaut in space, made an appearance at the opening ceremony of this new-look post office.

It has witnessed much activity since, owing to an acceleration of China's space program.

The 2012-13 Shenzhou missions, for instance, resulted in a "blessings from space" campaign, an instant hit among Chinese whose letters and messages on postcards were e-mailed to astronauts. The writers could then collect printed copies of their "space-returned" mail at the post office for just 30 yuan a piece and 3.5 yuan for an accompanying envelope.

The space-themed post office's earnings at the time were higher than the monthly average of 10,000-20,000 yuan, says Min Zenglu, director of China Post's Xibeiwang branch.

"People are generally more excited by manned missions," he says of the postal campaign's popularity during Shenzhou's spaceflights.

Last year, China's lunar rover Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, which toured the moon's surface, found itself hundreds of thousands of followers on Chinese micro blog Weibo, where it still has a dedicated account. And offline, the Chang'e lunar series, under which Yutu was launched, inspired the production of a whole set of postal stationery.

On an average, this post office in Haidian district, handles 20 parcels and a small number of letter mail daily, says Min, the official in charge.

"Traditional business has gone down, but this is a way to move forward," says Hu Baifeng, a publicity official from China Post's Haidian branch.

(China Daily European Weekly 05/15/2015 page25)