What are the differences between Chinese postman problem and travelling salesman problem?

Answer 1

Imagine an island with a road network joining several towns. You want to visit each town before returning to your start point. Finding the best solution to this is the travelling salesman problem.

now imagine you want to resurface every road on the network. To do this in the shortest distance is the Chinese postman problem.

Essentially for the travelling salesman problem you have to visit every vertex. For the Chinese postman problem every edge must be visited.