China's Stamp Museum Provides Glimpse into History

Reporter Julianne Page recently visited the China National Post and Postage Stamp Museum in Beijing.

The stamp museum was first opened in 1985 and in 2007 it was expanded to include a postal museum. It now covers four floors and contains over 1,000,000 stamps. The museum has a main stamp gallery, a special stamp gallery, a primitive communications section, an ancient and modern postal service gallery, and a treasure gallery.

Page writes, "The other thing worth noting about stamps in China is the beautiful and varied way they are presented, particularly the more modern examples. Some come in different shapes and sizes, some are set within pictures and others are joined together by perforation to form mural scenes. Many stamps are presented as part of a book in which they serve to illustrate a wider story. "

Shown above, China's stamps which were issued in in 1878. The green issue was worth 1 fen, the red worth 3 and the yellow worth 5. These are symbolic colors in China; green was the color used by high ranking officials, red is the long standing symbolic color of China and yellow was the color reserved for the emperor.

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