The Colorful History of Chinese Stamps
By staff reporter HUO JIANYING Chinatoday 2008-11
IN August 1982, the First Congress of the All-China Philatelic Federation convened in Beijing, and the Chinese Ministry of Post and Telecommunications issued a stamp sheetlet in commemoration. The stamp motif depicts an ancient courier galloping on horseback, while in the background wild geese fly in graceful formation. Wild geese are migratory birds, and every autumn they can be counted on to set off on their thousand-kilometer migration southward to warmer climes. With no better means of communication, ancient Chinese who wished to send messages over great distances took advantage of the birds’ north-south odyssey by attaching tiny scrolls to their feet. The phrase, “hongyan chuan shu” (wild geese deliver messages), has survived the millennia to become one of the oldest idioms in the modern Chinese language.