498 - Shanghai – the Tea House, Nanking Road, c 1900

Card no 498 - Peng 

Shanghai – the Tea House, Nanking Road, c 1900 

Country Card Sent From: China 

Place that Card Sender Lives: Changsha 

Date Received: 16th April 2013 

Distance Travelled: 5,634 miles 

Time Taken: 1 day

 This post-card, a direct swap with Peng, is a reproduction of a post-card of around 1900 and shows the tea house in Nanking Road (Nanjing Lu), Shanghai.  The postcard closely resembles a black and white photo of 1899 in the Bristol University ánd the Chinese Imperial Post stamp con-firms that it is from that period. Tea houses were – and still are – a traditional meeting place for adults of all ages.

Shanghai is the largest city by population in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the largest city proper by population in the world.  It is one of the four province-level municipali-ties of the PRC, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010.  It is a global city, with influence in commerce, culture, finance, media, fashion, technology, and transport.  It is a ma-jor financial centre and the busiest container port in the world.

Peng lives in Changsha, the capital city of Hunan, in south-central China.

Some of the stamps tell a fascinating story.

1999 - Change of Centuries: Entering a New Millennium - Review of the 20th Century (a series of 8 stamps) This one represents the May 4th Movement of 1919

1999  Stone Carvings of Han Dynasty
Goddess Chang'e Flew to the Moon

1999 - 10th Anniversary of the Implementation of Project Hope

Project Hope, a public welfare undertaking initiated and sponsored by China Youth Devel-opment Foundation, was launched on October 30,1989 with the aim of helping school drop-outs in poverty-stricken regions resume schooling and improving te education conditions in villages. Over the past decade since its implementation, Project Hope has enlisted generous support and extensive participation of all walks of life from home and abroad. By June 30, 1999, Project Hope raised a total fund of 1.78 billion yuan, which was used to aid more than 2 million poor drop-outs to return to the school, provide financial support to building over 7,500 Hope Primary Schools, donate 10,000 Hope Mini-libraries to the Hope Primary Schools with more than 2,000 sets of Movie Collections. Project Hope has met with hearty and generous responses from millions of people. It not only brought about profound and positive changes to the lives of drop-outs but also gave new momentum to the development of primary education in China's rural areas.

199 - Beauty of Putuo Mountain(a series of 6 lovely stamps)
Fanyin Cave

 And my favourite stamp –
1999 - Lushan Mountain