How to Write a Chinese Address for Your First Delivery in Mainland China

The short answer

For a food-delivery order, the Shanghai municipal guide asks for three things: the contact person's name, a phone number, and a detailed address that includes the road, the building, and the floor or flat number (Shanghai Municipal People's Government, "How to use food delivery apps"). A courier pickup order asks for the same category of detail on both sides of the transaction: in the guide's SF Express example, placing a pickup order requires a name, a local phone number and a local China address for sender and recipient (Shanghai Municipal People's Government, "A guide to using delivery services").

So the practical target is a reachable phone number, a clear recipient name, and a complete address written the way the receiving location writes it. Everything below is about achieving that without inventing the parts you do not have.

Get the address from the receiving location, in Chinese characters

This is a practical suggestion, not an official rule. Ask your landlord, hotel, university or host for the address in Chinese characters and copy it exactly.

The reason is mundane and decisive: a Chinese-character address from the receiving location is easier to verify with the people there than your own transliteration. Ask the landlord, reception or institution for its preferred wording. Preserve that wording — including characters for the compound, tower, unit or floor — rather than reformatting it into a shape that looks tidier to you.

If you are staying somewhere temporary, ask for the address at reception before you need it, not at the moment you are placing an order.

What the parts mean, and when they do not apply

A practical checklist might look like this, filled in only where it genuinely exists:

• province or municipality
• city and district
• street or road
• building (and tower or block number, if the site has several)
• unit or entrance, where applicable
• room, floor or flat number

Treat this as a checklist, not a fixed template. The ordering above is a convenience for reading, not a nationwide mandatory sequence, and not every field applies to every location: a standalone house, a campus dormitory and a 40-storey residential tower generate quite different detail. What the Shanghai food-delivery guide actually specifies for a delivery order is narrower — road, building, and floor or flat number — and that is the detail its example asks the user to enter (Shanghai Municipal People's Government, "How to use food delivery apps").

The rider note is an aid, not a repair

The same Shanghai guide describes a delivery-rider note as an optional ordering aid. It does not replace the address field ("How to use food delivery apps"). That distinction matters in practice: a note saying "call me when you arrive" does not help a rider who has been sent to the wrong tower.

Use the note for the things an address field cannot carry — a gate that is easier to reach than another, a lobby where you will meet the rider, a landmark inside a large compound. Fix the address fields first.

Reception desks have their own rules

A hotel or a residential reception desk may have its own instructions for accepting deliveries, and those instructions are the building's, not the platform's. Check before you promise anything to a courier: ask whether parcels are held at the front desk, whether riders may come to the room, and how the desk wants items labelled. This is another practical suggestion. Nothing in the sources lets us guarantee that any given building will accept a delivery on your behalf.

Sending a parcel: pickup order versus post office counter

Two routes appear in the evidence, and they behave differently.

Courier app pickup. The Shanghai guide's SF Express example requires name, local phone number and local China address for both sender and recipient when placing a pickup order, and it describes parcel tracking, pickup order entry, and in-person real-name verification of the sender when the parcel is collected ("A guide to using delivery services"). Plan on being present with identification at collection.

Post office counter. For a China Post parcel sent from a local post office, the same guide says to bring a passport or other valid ID, have the goods inspected before sealing, provide recipient and sender details, and pay postage ( "A guide to using delivery services").

China Post's own explainer sets out why the details are checked at all: dispatch information should accurately state sender and recipient names, addresses and telephone numbers, and the nature and quantity of the goods; the recipient address should be clear and specific; and the sender should cooperate with identity verification for real-name dispatch (China Post Group, "Sender's duty to provide accurate parcel information").

A practical reading of those three requirements: write the contents in plain terms ("used books, two"), keep the recipient address specific enough to be acted on, and expect to show ID.

Domestic courier, food delivery and international post are not the same product

Keep them separate in your head, because the detail each one demands differs. Food delivery is the narrowest: a name, a phone number, and a road/building/floor-or-flat address, with an optional rider note. Domestic courier adds a sender side and real-name verification. Sending something across a border is a different matter again: an international item may require customs information, and the sources here do not specify what any particular operator wants. Ask the operator at the counter or in the app before you commit the parcel — that is the competent authority for the contents declaration, not this guide.

A delivery address does not prove accommodation registration

A parcel-delivery form records where to send an item. Do not treat that form as proof that any separate accommodation-registration obligation has been satisfied. If you need to verify such an obligation, ask your host and the competent local authority; the delivery sources cited here do not establish its procedure.

What we could not verify from these sources

Stated plainly, so you know where to ask rather than assume:

• Whether every platform accepts a foreign phone number. The Shanghai guides describe providing a phone number, and the courier example specifies a local phone number; they do not state a general rule about non-mainland numbers across all apps. Ask the platform.
• Postcode requirements. The sources do not set out postcode fields per app or service, so we are not going to give you one.
• English or romanised addresses. The evidence does not support a blanket statement that English or romanised addresses are banned, nor that they are reliably accepted. This is why the Chinese-character version from your host is the practical anchor.
• Fees, delivery times and outcome guarantees. None of these appear in the supplied evidence, and we will not estimate them.

Sources and verification

• Shanghai Municipal People's Government — "How to use food delivery apps" — updated 2026-07-24; opened 2026-09-28. Basis for the name, phone number and road/building/floor-or-flat requirements, and for the rider note being optional.
• Shanghai Municipal People's Government — "A guide to using delivery services" — updated 2026-07-22; opened 2026-09-28. Basis for the SF Express pickup-order fields, tracking, in-person sender verification, and the China Post counter procedure.
• China Post Group — "Sender's duty to provide accurate parcel information" — 2023-02-24; opened 2026-09-28. Basis for accurate sender/recipient names, addresses, telephone numbers and goods information, and for cooperation with real-name identity verification.

Rules and app interfaces change. Confirm current requirements with the platform you are using, the post office counter, or the reception desk of the building you are sending to.