Many importers have no clue about the factory location. All they know is the general area, when they purchase in FOB terms, because they know the port of shipment (for example, if they purchase “FOB Shenzhen”, the assembling factory is in the South).

Buyers often get to know the factory address in Chinese, especially when they need to send an inspector there. How to read it and visualize its location at the same time? Google Maps is an excellent tool for that.

Now there is one small difficulty for non-Chinese speakers. If you paste an entire address such as this one, it won’t work:

广东省广州市海珠区琶洲大道东1号保利国际广场南塔1305室

You need to decompose the address. It is actually easy because the same characters are always used to designate the province, the city, and the city district.

Here are a few things to know:

• The Chinese start with the general and go to the particular. So they write the country, then the province, then the city, then the district of the city (if applicable), then the street address and/or the name of the building, and finally the block and the office number (if applicable).
• If they give you their address in China, they will generally start with the province or even the city (and omit the country, which is obvious).
• 省 indicates the province, so 广东省 is the province.
• 市 indicates the city, so 广州市 is the city.
• 区 (or 區 in traditional Chinese) indicates the city district, so 海珠区 is the city district.
• Whatever is after 区 is seldom found by Google Maps, so you can cut it off (except if you need the precise address). In our example, if you search “广东省广州市海珠区”, you’ll get a result. And you see that this address is right in the center of a major city (Guangzhou), so you know it can’t be a factory address.
• If you see an office/apartment number, such as “1305室” in the above address, chances are that you were given an office address rather than a factory address. It might mean that you work with an intermediary.

So let’s start again with another example:

南昌市青山湖区羅家鎮

This time the province is not mentioned. There is probably only 1 city with this name in China. If you cut off what comes after 区, you search 南昌市青山湖区 and you see it is in Nanchang city, Jiangxi province.

Any other tips?