John, best I can say is from the US to China, use USPS, they have the best rates. Especially for odd size boxes, but of course if you can fit the items into a flat rate box it's even better. I'm sending a couple boxes tomorrow and they are both going Express (7-10 day) and it's a little over 200 for both boxes. I can't fit the stuff into two flat rate boxes or it would be more like 150 for both.
Depending on what your lady does, the common request for clothes can be a money maker for her. My Yuan wants CK, AF and a couple others as long as they come off a clearance rack here and she is selling them to friends. So I make sure there more than one of her size in the box and then I mix and match the sizes depending on the style and what size Chinese woman would want to wear such items. (some of those ck dresses are right in that short length Chinese girls love)
If you want relatively fast shipping, or in other words if you use USPS, UPS or Fed-ex, it's going by air, it just varies on which airport and how they send it to the airport.
ost important, because we all know China Post suc#s b@lls, make sure you put her phone number on the mailing label, or adopt my new strategy, a separate label to the side with her name, addy and phone number in Chinese. It seems to speed it up a little, in the fact they will refer to that, or simply verify you put the correct addy in Chinese instead of worrying about putting a Chinese label on it next to the USPS labeling. The phone number helps them to get off their butts and give her a call and notify her of the package being at the Post office/bank... Yes, that still trips me up, post office and bank in one, guess they aren't worried about how much they charge for stamps?
Lloyd
