1980 cover from remote Western Tibet and other mysteries

1980 cover from Purang, Tibet via Shiquanhe, Tibet to Shenyang

A beautiful usage of a classic modern stamp on an Illustrated envelope with two parrots on a perch, addressed to postcode 110024 (a district in the city of Shenyang, in Liaoning), from postcode 859500 of Bangre, 邦热 in Burang County, Ngari Prefecture, Tibet.

Franked with 4f Peonies, a painting by Qi Baishi, stamp 16-1 from the sought after set T44, cancelled by Chinese/Tibetan bilingual cancel of Burang Town (Purang, Pǔlán, 普兰, སྤུ་ཧྲེང་རྫོང་), Burang County, Ngari Prefecture, Tibet, dated 2nd July 1980:

I have not been able to locate Bangre on any maps, although the postcode.info web site places it near the southern coast of Lake Manasarovar. Burang is the administrative centre of Ngari Prefecture. It is the last (only) town on the road to the Nepalese border. The border with India is also nearby. Burang is 79km by road from the Xinkiang-Tibet Highway.

Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash are important pilgrimage sites for the Buddhist, Jain, Hindu and Bon religions.

Although Burang is the administrative centre, the largest town in Ngari Prefecture is Shiquanhe, 狮泉河 / ནག་ཆུ་གྲོང་རྡལ།, in Gar County. Shiquanhe is (confusingly) often called Ngari on western maps. (Shiquanhe is also sometimes confused with the nearby village of Gar or Gartok, which used to have an important market). It is 348 km by road from Burang to Shiquanhe.

Remarkably this cover had another 4f stamp, this time from the R18 definitive set, added on the back and cancelled 6 days later at Shiquanhe.

Possibly the 4f stamp was put on the back in Purang, but missed being cancelled there and was cancelled later in Shiquanhe?

Another possibility is that the sender addressed it (in the blue pen) to someone in Shiquanhe, who then wrote the Shenyang address in black ink and added the 4f stamp? The rate for local mail was 4f but long distance was 8f, so the first 4f stamp could have covered the local part of the journey?

Did all mail from Purang go to the main town of the prefecture, Shiquanhe, to be distributed from there?

Reverse with transit Tibetan / Chinese cancel of Shiguanhe tying the 4f R18 definitive & branch 24 receiver.

The receiver cancel is rather unclear, but has at the base 24 (支 = branch) which is probably:

Gongrencun Post Branch Bureau, South 11th West Road, Tiexi, Shenyang, Liaoning, China, 110024.

Or possibly:

Zangong Street Post Office, Zangong Street, Tiexi, Shenyang, Liaoning, China, 110024.

The magenta handstamp "35" is probably a postman's chop.

Proof dots on 3 candereen

Extra proof dots on cliche 24 of 3ca Large Dragon

When I can get the insert image button working, I will post the scan of the proof dots!

A late print Large Dragon

Late print, thicker paper, with some anomalous features

by Andy Macdonald - see my WestNab Stamps web site

This copy of the 3 candareens large dragon, is on thicker paper with rough perforations; one of the later printings. It does not conform to the standard ideals of stamp beauty, but it has proved a very interesting item.

The postmark is an indistinct seal cancel in blue-black in the top right quarter of the stamp, more of a smudge than a postmark really. The condition is fresh looking but with a diagonal light crease across the stamp.

Perforations are worse than the standard 'rough'! The margins are cut into at either side, but this is probably evidence of poor perforating and I believe the cuts were done at the post office to separate it from the sheet rather than after use.

Printing

The copy is (mostly) heavily inked in a bright shade of red (pinkish-vermilion) and from a worn cliche - much detail is lost, especially on the dragon's body.

One can appreciate, from this stamp, why the large dragons were soon discontinued, it appears almost a caricature of well printed examples. (The comments in Ireland at the end of the section on the settings of the large dragon, p.93, are pertinent here.)

The bottom left corner and lower frameline appears under inked and weak. This may possibly be due to scuffing in use rather than poor printing, but there is no evidence of damage under the microscope.

Features which identify the cliche as 24

• The lower serifs of H in CHINA are broken, and also the toe of the yin character broken, both prominent features of cliche 24; see Ireland p72.
  
• The lower serif of I is broken (this only appears in the opaque paper issue of cliche 24); Ireland p72.
  
• Prominent break in top inner frame line below 'ching' character, again a feature of cliche 24; Ireland p66.
  

Contradictory feature - extra proof dot

There are two clear proof dots - I make them at 1.5 x 4.75 mm and 2.25 x 3.75mm. (Measurements are in mm from the framelines, horizontal distance first). They are just visible on the scan (see following article - it seems I can only get one image in this blog!). This doesn't exactly correspond to any on Ireland's list, although the second exactly corresponds to the one proof dot he lists for cliche 24.

Contradictory feature - lower fin

The lower line of the middle fin is just a dot - according to Ireland a feature of cliches 1, 5 and 14; he reckons cliche 24 should show no lower line at all.

Details of proof dots

The proof dot at 2.25 x 3.75 appears under magnification as a short uneven line about 0.2 mm long rather than a dot. It is angled at about 15º to the the east of vertical. It is almost an upside down exclamation mark on this copy, with only a very thin line of colour joining the line to the dot.

The 'new' proof dot is small but with an irregular shape, almost star like, under 50x magnification.

Heavier inking on right

The right hand outer frame line seems more heavily inked, suggesting a stamp from the right margin of a sheet (Purves theory, related by Ireland p.60), which may be useful evidence in plating one of the later settings, about which little is known at present.

Worn cliche explains new features?

I believe that this is a copy of cliche 24 and that the explanation for the extra proof dot and the dot for the lower line of the middle fin is that the wear on the cliche combined with the heavy inking has exposed these projections that did not print on earlier impressions. The alternative is that these two marks were formed by foreign matter trapped temporarily in the cliche, which seems far fetched, especially to get such a mark to correspond with the lower fin.

If my theory is correct we must be careful in using some of the tried and tested identification techniques when examining copies of the large dragons from the later printings.

First Published in 'China Philately' Copyright Andy Macdonald

see my WestNab Stamps web site