The Souvenir Sheet

On April 27, the first-day-of-issue ceremony of the special stamps Masterpieces of Chinese Classical Literature — Journey to the West (Series 5) was held in Kunming Dianchi International Convention and Exhibition Center, Kunming, Yunnan. The stamps include a set of four stamps and a souvenir sheet. The four designs are about the adventures in Shituo Mountain, the Kingdom of Biqiu, the Bottomless Cave and the Kingdom of Tianzhu respectively. The souvenir sheet is about the five sages achieving their goals. Leaders of China Post Group and the All-China Philatelic Federation unveiled the stamps.

As the fifth series of the Masterpieces of Chinese Classical Literature — Journey to the West since its first series issued in 2015, the stamps depict the five scenes from Chapter 74 to Chapter 100 of the novel, in which Sun Wukong subdued the demons and monsters, and went through hardships with the Buddhist monk Xuanzang while escorting him on his journey to the Western Heaven to fetch the scriptures, and they finally brought back the scriptures and attained divinity.

This set of stamps is designed by Li Yunzhong, a young painter and member of the Inner Mongolia Artists Association, and printed by Beijing Stamp Printing House Company Limited with photogravure technology. The denomination of the whole set is 11.10 yuan, with a planned circulation of 8.5 million sets, 990,000 sheets in layout two, and 5.98 million souvenir sheets. In addition, a folder containing block of four stamps is issued, with a planned circulation of 150,000 folders.  

These stamps will be available at designated postal outlets nationwide, online mall of China Philately (https://jiyou.11185.cn), the mobile app of China Post, the WeChat Mall for philatelic products in the official WeChat account and the WeChat mini program of China Post Group. To present more information about the stamps, China Post will release their digital contents through the WeChat mini program “Encyclopedia of China Philately and Stamps”, where philatelists can learn more about the stamps via its AR function.