I have not been to Beijing and Shanghai in a few years, so they might have improved since my visit. Yet even the two most well known cities in the country, flooded with tourists and postcard-worthy locations, were devoid of postcards. I had to take my own incredible pictures...or not. If I wanted to let a friend know the beauty or history I had just experienced, I would have to write a letter.

And out here in Southwest China. It is much worse. After looking for local postcards to no avail, I decided many years back to buy every postcard set I saw in our province. And the size of my collection? Three. Three sets of postcards. And that is really cheating, because one is from Shanghai. Another is a pitiful little set put out by the Liuzhou Postal Bureau, from which I could only send about half of the cards, because people would wonder what I was trying to say if I had sent them the other half of the photos (not exactly the postcard kind of photos).

Now, maybe if I lived in Guilin, which is much more tourist driven than the industrial Liuzhou, my collection would be more numerous. Though, our small town, close to Guilin, has quite a tourist industry going, and there are no postcards to be found. I can quite confidently say that much.

Maybe Chinese people do not like postcards. For some reason I doubt that explanation, but even if they did not, why are they not willing to make the money off the foreigners who do want to buy?

Though not so glorious, the postcard really is a "must" for tourism, if you ask me. Of course, you did not ask me, but I am stating it anyway. Having postcards available is one small move that would make such a big difference to the thousands of tourists that flow through Southwest China and towns like Sanjiang each year. We think of improving English, renovating historical sites, and such, but why not start out by printing some postcards?

So, what is the problem? I just want a postcard with a decent photo on the front. That is not so hard, is it?