Philatelic enthusiast Luo Siwei shows the New Year's Day bye-day actual envelope. Photo by Wang Bing
(New Year to the grassroots) Shenyang philatelic enthusiasts make nongyin tiger year bye-year actual mail to send envelopes to all over the world
Shenyang, February 1 (Wang Bing) On February 1, the first day of the Lunar New Year, the staff of the Hushitai Post Office in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, arrived at the post nearly an hour in advance, and just after opening the door, they welcomed a group of philatelic enthusiasts, who rushed to make and mail the "Nongyin Tiger Year Greeting Seal" at the first time of the post office, in this way to commemorate the arrival of the Chinese Lunar Year of the Tiger and express New Year wishes to friends at home and abroad.
Wang Shugui, who has a history of more than 50 years of philately collecting, deliberately drove to the post office early in the morning, and this post office related to the tiger is the most suitable place for him to do this year's New Year's Greeting. After greeting the postmen who were familiar with him, he immediately took out a souvenir cover and a postcard, and began to write and postage stamps with everyone. From time to time, people come to ask about the location of the stamp and the way to paste the stamp, and he uses his many years of experience to interpret it for the inquirer. In his stamp collection, there are many Zodiac stamps from previous years, and by the time of this year's issuance of the traditional Chinese Zodiac Tiger Stamps, he has collected four rounds of Zodiac stamps alone, including scarce printed variants.
Luo Siwei, a philatelic enthusiast, mailed the most actual envelopes on the same day, and the value was also very high, many of which were sent to Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and Australia, Japan and other parts of the world, and the recipients were both overseas Chinese and Chinese, as well as international philatelic enthusiasts who were interested in Traditional Chinese culture. He pointed to a real envelope and told reporters that this was made and mailed by a Shanghai postman, and every year this friend would send a new year's greeting envelope to his sister who was far away in the Matsuyama area of Japan through Luo Siwei on the first day of the New Year to express his thoughts and wishes for his relatives, and this habit has been maintained for nearly a decade.
Homemade New Year's eve postcards by philatelic enthusiasts. Photo by Wang Bing
One of the young men in the crowd who shuttled back and forth to help was Liu Weiyuan, who had just started his freshman year this year and was not only a philatelic volunteer, but also a member of the postcrossing program. This year, he and his friends produced a batch of gilded craft postcards for the Year of the Tiger, which will be mailed to many countries and regions. Xiao Liu said he and his community members recorded their lives, made friends and interacted with the world by letting postcards wander the world. Some of the members of the community are proficient in design, so they come to make and create postcards, and some people are responsible for international communication and exchanges with excellent English, and everyone performs their duties and contributes together, and also enjoys the joy of every harvest of philatelic products.
Whether it is the early philatelic habits developed for the convenience of communication, or the current social way of young people, the significance of stamp collecting has long exceeded the value of stamps themselves. A small stamp continues to help people broaden the boundaries of knowledge, communicate with world culture, and convey true emotions to every "recipient". (End)