Chinese New Year Stamps
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Chinese New Year Stamps are postage stamps issued to mark the Chinese New Year (or Lunar New Year). Typically appearing in January and February, issuing countries have included China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, United States, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and France.
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[edit] Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year or Spring Festival is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. It is sometimes called the Lunar New Year, especially by people outside China. The festival traditionally begins on the first day of the first lunar month in the Chinese calendar and ends on the 15th; this day is called Lantern Festival. Chinese New Year's Eve is known as Chúxī (除夕, abbr. for 年除夕 Niánchúxī, Chúxì in Taiwan). It literally means "Year-pass Eve".
Celebrated in areas with large populations of ethnic Chinese, Chinese New Year is considered a major holiday for the Chinese and has had influence on the new year celebrations of its geographic neighbours, as well as cultures with whom the Chinese have had extensive interaction.[citation needed] These include Aboriginal Taiwanese people, Koreans, Mongolians, Nepalese, Bhutanese, Vietnamese, and formerly the Japanese before 1873. In Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and other countries with significant Chinese populations, Chinese New Year is also celebrated, largely by overseas Chinese, and has, to varying degrees, become part of the traditional culture of these countries. In Canada, although Chinese New Year is not an official holiday, many ethnic Chinese hold large celebrations and Canada Post issues New Year's themed stamps in domestic and international rates.
Although the Chinese calendar traditionally did not use continuously numbered years, its years are now often numbered from the reign of Huangdi outside China. But at least three different years numbered 1 are now used by various writers, causing the year beginning in 2008 to be 4706, 4705, or 4645.[1]
[edit] Stamps
The stamps usually depict the animal sign of that year, consisting of the sequence: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, pig. The designs may be part of a set, or individually-designed; for instance, since 1992 the US has been issuing Chinese New Year stamps using a common design type based on colored paper cutouts of the animals. In succeeding years, the U.S. Postal Service issued additional stamps until all twelve animals associated with the Chinese lunar calendar were represented. The calligraphic characters on these stamps may be translated into English as "Happy New Year".
Hong Kong was one of the first countries to issue a commemorative stamp for the lunar new year since the 1960s, but other countries have followed:
- Republic of China (Taiwan) - since 1965
- People's Republic of China - since 1980
- Singapore - Zodiac series since 1996, Festival series on-off since 1971, biannually since 2000
- United States - since 1992
- Australia - since 1994
- Canada - since 1997
- France - since 2005
- Ireland - since 1994
[edit] Collecting
Most of these stamps consist of first day covers, commemorative sheets and multiple country brochures.
[edit] References
- ^ See Chinese calendar for details and references.
