Sunday 18 May 2014

West Chamber - Lovesickness



A card from China which arrived in an envelope shows part of the Story of the Western Wing. also known as the Romance of the West Chamber.  This is a very well known and ancient Chinese tale based on a version dating from the 7th century. The scene shown is called "Lovesickness".

The reason the card was in an envelope because inside was this wonderful stamp book:



I couldn't show it all in once because it's longer than my scanner.  It appears to be the story of travelling tadpoles, searching for their mother.  After visiting a shrimp, a goldfish, a crab and a tortoise, they find their mother in the final step.

In my search for information about the stamps, I found a site that may be useful for identifying Chinese stamps because you can search for them by category (architecture, flowers etc.) as well as by date of issue.



This is a post for Sunday Stamps, now hosted by Violet Sky at "See it on a Postcard!"

15 comments:

  1. a story in stamp form - wonderful!

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  2. I was just watching a pool full of tadpoles last week, what a delightful series of images on the stamps, Hope my little English tadpoles have as interesting a journey.

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  3. You are absolutely right in say that it's a wonderful stamp booklet! How do you know so much about Chinese culture?

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  4. The card is good but the stamps are superb.

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  5. Lovely set of stamps. It reminds me of a Dr. Suess-like book we have, called "are you my mother?"
    I hope you are feeling better this week.

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  6. That is an interesting stamp booklet--better for saving than using.

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  7. A nice stamp story, and beautiful illustrations!

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  8. wonderful, pre-finding-nemo story :) very cute

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  9. Lovely stamps... are you going to share the information about this site? ;)

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Welcome to my postcard collection! I love hearing what you think of the cards - but spam WILL be deleted.

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