Does anyone have any experience with sending gifts to China? Do I have to translate the address to English. If I order online (say from Amazon) and just have them send it directly -- how does a Chinese address work into their forms, since they follow a different order (or is it maybe better to use the Chinese localized site to order on such ocassions).

Using pinyin transliteration and some basic English should be generally accepted. I would be careful about entering Chinese characters into forms on Amazon etc., their databases may not be able to process the characters correctly.

It always depends on the area. Post offices in big cities have the necessary know-how to translate English addresses etc., rural areas can be quite problematic.

穆 is right. I put characters on a package from amazon and when i got it, they were just a scramble of letters. As long you put on your postcode, city and street in pinyin you should be ok, the order is not really important. I have sent 3 or 4 things from amazon to china like this and they all got there.