Land & resources work, stamp collecting and the museum --- what is the connection between the three? It may all sound too clueless. However, a philatelic exhibition held in the Yanqing County Museum, Beijing has perfectly blended the three together. The exhibition, with a land & resources-related theme of Beautiful China on Stamps, was kicked off as the launching ceremony of the well-acclaimed 2010 My Yanqing, My Home Spring Festival Cultural Activity Series in Yanqing, a picturesque county of Beijing. The exhibition showcased personal collections of many years by Meng Xianli, a worker in the Yanqing Office of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Land and Resources. All the collections, making up 53 glass frames in 16 albums were meticulously grouped into 7 categories, including picture & postcard class, single frame class, open class and first day cover class. Combining land & resources knowledge with philatelic knowledge from different perspectives, the exhibition well publicized land and resources work through diversified and colorful stamps, and presented a grand land & resources cultural feast to the public.
Condensing the Land and Resources Cause
As would be fit for a land and resources philatelic exhibition, the land and resources theme made the greatest highlight of the exhibition. Entering the hall, you will first see a maximum philatelic album entitled Land and Resources Workers Are in Action to Promote the Yan'an Spirit. Yan'an, is the well-known sacred place of the Chinese revolution. From 1935 to 1948, the Chinese Communist Party and its chairman Mao Zedong led and commanded the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the Liberation War, laying the cornerstone for the founding of the People's Republic of China. Here, the Chinese communists wrote a glorious chapter of Chinese history. It was also in Yan'an that the great Yan'an Spirit was born. This spirit, a precious cultural wealth of the Party and the Chinese nation, has played an inspirational role in advancing China's revolutionary and construction causes. It has also produced a tremendous and far-reaching impact on China's course of historical development. At the exhibition, "Wholeheartedly serving the people", Self-reliance and hard work", "Continuous pioneering and innovation" and "creative pragmatism", all hallmarks of the Yan'an Spirit were in vivid exhibition through the various postcards, stamps and postmarks relating to Yan'an.
Moreover, the philatelic exhibition wonderfully weaved the Yan'an Spirit into the current land and resources management cause. Through six carefully-designed chapters, the exhibition presented a systematic introduction to the full spectrum of land and resources management work as well as comprehensive knowledge about land and resources protection. "Plan Scientifically for the Benefits of the People", "Establish an Open and Transparent Land Market", "Rationally Develop and Utilize Land and Resources", "Stimulate Domestic Demand, Ensure Economic Growth and Use Land Rationally", "Protect the Red Line, Carry out Strict Patrolling Inspections and Prohibit Unlawful Arable Land Use" and "Rationally Use Reserve Land Resources". A maximum philatelic collection is a collection of purely maximum cards and is not allowed to contain other philatelic items, be it stamp, entire cover or postage cover. Also, all the maximum postcards are required to bear a valid stamp with a similar picture pattern affixed to their own picture side as well as a postmark of the place where the stamp picture originates. This is an extremely difficult form of philately. There is no doubt that it is even more difficult to prepare a maximum philatelic collection with a land and resources theme. While not every postcard, stamp or postmark of the maximum philatelic collection in Yanqing was especially designed for land and resources work, the compiler nevertheless managed to skillfully combine the two together from all angles and all levels of land and resources work. Each maximum postcard constituted a separate chapter of land and resources work. Accompanied with concise explanatory notes, these postcards turned abstruse land and resources knowledge into vivid artwork and made it easier for the audience to understand. In the chapter on "Protect the Red Line, Carry out Strict Patrolling Inspections and Prohibit Unlawful Arable Land Use", the complier divided the "Patrolling Inspections" section into "Mountain Land Inspection", "Rivers and Lakes", "Vegetation Protection Zones" and "Special Land Uses". In the "Mountain Land Inspection" subsection, postcards and stamps of Mt Danxia Natural Scenic Spot in Renhua, Guangdong Province were used. Accompanying explanatory notes read: "This is a rare landform in the world, and the scenery is fantastic. No illegal construction work will be allowed here whatsoever". Into these all too familiar scenic pictures, the complier carefully weaved land and resources information so that every visitor can experience the ubiquity of land and resources work.
It is understood that many workers at the Yanqing Office of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Land and Resources, one of the exhibition organizers, are philately fans. While shouldering important administrative responsibilities for land and resources in the region, they see stamp collecting as a wonderful hobby. This is the second philatelic exhibition which they have staged to closely link colorful maximum cards with land and resources knowledge to promote the land and resources cause. This novel exhibition made it possible for the land and resources cause and culture to affect society imperceptibly.
Telling Old Stories About the Great Wall
The Great Wall is a cultural heritage which every Chinese can feel proud of. The Badaling Section in Yanqing County has to some extent become a symbol of the Great Wall. As an important pass of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall, Badaling boasts steep terrain and a commanding position, and forms an important protective barrier to Beijing. An old saying puts it, "The strategic position of the JuYong Gate lies in Badaling but not the barrier fortress". The Great Wall at Badaling features towering mountains and luxurious vegetation. "Yu Guan Tian Qian" is one of the eight scenic spots in the Great Wall at Juyongguan. However, years of turmoil, especially wars of the past century, has turned Badaling beyond recognition. Books and old photos are the only source for information about its former outlook. At the Yangqing philatelic exhibition, the compiler put on display various historical materials relating to the Badaling Great Wall. These included revenue stamps bearing Great Wall pictures issued by the Northern Warlords Government during the Republic of China period, Great Wall stamps, admission tickets for the Great Wall scenic spot, old photos, commemorative coins and first day covers. But, the most notable exhibit was a set of Great Wall postcards.
This set of postcards is precious, because 70% of them were issued in various countries 100 years ago, with the earliest dating back to 1898. For everything relating to the Great Wall at Badaling of 100 years ago: Barrier Fortress, walls, defense facilities, platforms, towers, Guangou, Zhantianyou, and Jingzhang Railway, you can find their traces in these old postcards. The postcards, already turning yellow with age, tell the great vicissitudes of history, and have also become the best carrier for us to touch history today.
One example is Wengcheng, a kind of enclosure for defence outside a city gate. In ancient times, Wengcheng was an important part of the Great Wall. It was usually built on traffic arteries of steep relief. Wengheng at Badaling is no exception. Built on a mountain ridge, it naturally follows the local relief, narrow and low on the east side and high and wide on the west, and only covers an area of 5,000m2. With crenel walls on both sides, Wencheng can resist the enemy on all sides. If the enemy breaks through, it will be surrounded and annihilated by the defending soldiers. In Wengcheng, there used to be a Residence of Chayuan, to lodge the emperor and officials when they were on inspection here. The two gates of Wengcheng are 63.9m apart. Above the western gate, there is an inscription "Key to the Northern Gate", while the inscription above the eastern gate reads as "Outer Town of Juyong", which was built in 1540. On the tower of the barrier fortress of the Outer Town of Juyong, there used to be a stone tablet erected after 1573 during the Ming Dynasty. The inscription recorded that this section of the Great Wall took more than 80 years to build. It also listed he construction dates, length of wall, and names of the commanders and foremen in charge as an explicit identification of their respective responsibilities. Wencheng was destroyed during wars. From one foreign postcard issued in the late Qing Dynasty, we can clearly see that Wencheng then already became a heap of ruins. But, the walls and building relics are still visible. We can also see from the postcards issued by China Cultural Relics Publishing House in 1959 that China had once tried to restore Wengcheng at Badaling and its four towers in the early 1950s. However, economic constraints meant that only the gates and walls of Wengcheng were rebuilt and 3 houses were erected on the northern side, leaving the rest unrestored.
Reviving Old Food Memories
On October 1, 1949, the People's Republic of China was founded. The new government took over a battered country after decades of war. Agriculture was weak, and agricultural production was almost on the brink of collapse. To address the dire economic situation, the central government adopted a planned economy and implemented a unified grain purchase and sales policy to restore grain supply stability in the market.
New China's food coupon system emerged in this historical context. Many of the elder generation in China can still remember that food coupons were an essential purchase certificate in people's everyday life from the later 1950s to 1980s and 1990s. Rice, flour and cooking oil could only be bought with food coupons, and so much as that some even called it a "passport to eat". At the time, eligibility for food coupons and commodity grain supply was not just a matter of livelihood but also a symbol of social status. Food coupons were also known as the "Second Currency". Because of this, food coupons have become an important source of information for studying China's political, economic and cultural histories and thus carry great collection values.
In the 2010 Yanqing Philatelic Exhibition, there was a section on 60 Years of New China - the stories of grain and food coupons. It took the audience to relive their memories of New China and the grain experience. The exhibition compiler linked food coupons with the grain policies and agricultural production in New China over the past 60 years and took us back to our grain-related memories. These were broken into distinctive periods: "free grain trade stage", "unified grain purchase and sales stage", "grain supply in rural regions", "grain supply in urban regions", "grain supply during special periods", "food coupons leave the stage of history" and "food coupons become collectibles". In addition to the familiar food coupons, the exhibition also put on display grain-related government documents, food receipts and millet-for-pay vouchers from the early days of liberation in China. The exhibition was designed to remind people that agriculture is the very lifeline of the national economy and China's fundamental problems will not be properly solved if issues of agriculture, farmers and rural regions are not properly addressed.
While food coupons have left the stage of history today, they are not yet totally buried into the depth of dust. Instead, they have flowed into the collection industry and become a new favorite coveted by collectors. Various localities around China have set up food coupon collection associations, and special collection publications such as China Grain and Food Coupons are published, though at non-fixed dates. Today, children no long have any idea about what a food coupon is, let alone the poverty in China in those days. Food coupons therefore form a bridge for them to learn this period of history and a good teaching material to inculcate them to cherish grain and not waste food. The exhibition compiler especially wrote the following lines besides the exhibited food coupons: "It is hoped that every family can put their old food coupons into a mirror frame and hang it in a most conspicuous place in their home to both warn themselves and educate future generations".
As would be fit for an exhibition held in a museum, the compiler also used maximum postcards to make a maximum album. Featuring the best cultural relics of what a mini museum can offer, the 8-frame album consisted of "Pottery and Porcelain in China", "Paintings from Ancient China", Grottoes and Stone Carvings in China", "Bronzes from Ancient China" and "Miscellaneous Collections". From the exhibition, the audience could learn philatelic knowledge and the role of museums. A series of wonderful thematic collections were also put on show at the exhibition. These included the Commemorative Postmarks of Olympic Torch Relays in 113 cities, landscape datemarks issued in China before 1989, stamp booklets in New China and Kanasi Lake Scientific Expedition stamps. All the small stamps presented a panoramic view of the broad and profound Chinese culture and reflected the rich spiritual world of the land resources workers in China.
Reprinted from Issue No. 10 of China Land and Resources News: Connoisseur Weekly
