Scott No: 639-646
Serial number: C92
Values in set: 8
Date of issue: December 1, 1962
Denomination: 84 fen
Designer: Sun Chuanzhe
Size of stamps: 26.5*36mm
Perforation: 11.5*11
Sheet composition: 50(10*5)
Printing process: Photogravure
Printing House: Beijing Postage Stamp Printing Works

C92 "Ancient Chinese Scientists (Series II)" commemorative stamps were issued by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications on December 1, 1962. The set consists of 8 stamps, designed by Sun Chuanzhe, printed by the Beijing Stamp Factory by photogravure, with gum applied to the back of the entire set. The uniform stamp size is 30 mm × 40 mm, perforation gauge 11.5 × 11, 50 stamps per sheet, layout 10 × 5. The total face value of the set is 0.84 yuan. Circulations: Portrait of Cai Lun 4 fen, 3 million copies; Papermaking 4 fen, 3 million copies; Portrait of Sun Simiao 8 fen, 6 million copies; Medicine 8 fen, 6 million copies; Portrait of Shen Kuo 10 fen, 2.5 million copies; Geology 10 fen, 2.5 million copies; Portrait of Guo Shoujing 20 fen, 1.5 million copies; Astronomy 20 fen, 1.5 million copies.

This set is the sequel to Ji 33 "Ancient Chinese Scientists (Series I)," likewise using the paired design model of "portrait + labor/research scene." The four scientists span the Han, Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties, covering the four major fields of papermaking, medicine, geoscience, and astronomy. Among them, the first stamp, Portrait of Cai Lun, has a famous error variant: the original draft mistakenly wrote "BC ?–121"; after discovery the plate was urgently corrected, but one stamp in a fixed position on each plate was missed in the correction, retaining the character "Qian" (BC)—the well-known "Cai Lun BC error stamp" in philatelic circles, of which few survive and which is the most famous variant treasure among the old Ji-te stamps.

Stamp Designs and Historical Background

Portrait of Cai Lun

The design is a half-length portrait of Cai Lun in court dress, wearing a Han dynasty liang crown, with a warm, steady face, and his birth and death dates and dynasty marked at the side of the stamp. Cai Lun was a native of Guiyang in the Eastern Han and served as Shangfang Ling under Emperor He of Han, in charge of making palace implements. He systematically summarized the experience of hemp papermaking since the Western Han, innovated the craft, and used cheap raw materials such as tree bark, rags, hemp ends, and old fishing nets to make paper, greatly reducing the cost of papermaking and producing the high-quality "Marquis Cai paper," promoting the replacement of bamboo slips and silk by paper and having a profound influence on the spread of civilization. Because there is no clear historical record of his birth year, the stamp marks it with a question mark—and precisely this point caused the famous textual error.

Papermaking

The design restores the production scene of a Han dynasty papermaking workshop. Several artisans divide the work and cooperate: some soak and pound materials, some lift the paper, some dry it; pottery cauldrons, paper screens, and drying wooden racks are all presented, completely restoring the early papermaking process. Papermaking is one of China's Four Great Inventions; this picture intends to show that this invention was not created out of thin air by one person but was a technological innovation completed on the basis of artisans' practice, turning an abstract invention into a visible picture of ancient handicraft industry.

Portrait of Sun Simiao

A half-length standing portrait of Sun Simiao, wearing a Tang dynasty soft headscarf, with a long beard hanging over his chest and a kindly, wise expression. Sun Simiao was a great Tang dynasty physician and pharmacologist, honored by later generations as the "King of Medicine." He lived in seclusion in the mountains all his life, practicing medicine and gathering herbs, without seeking official career, and collected the medical prescriptions of earlier generations, combining them with his own clinical experience to write Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold and Supplement to the Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold, containing more than ten thousand prescriptions and systematically organizing theories of women's and children's medicine, acupuncture, diet therapy, and health preservation, laying an important foundation for later generations of traditional Chinese medicine clinical practice.

Medicine

The design paints Sun Simiao among the rocks of a courtyard, studying medical books, with medicine baskets, medicine pots, an alchemy furnace, and various herbs placed beside him. Sun Simiao attached great importance to gathering herbs in the field and identifying materia medica; he went deep into the mountains year after year to investigate the nature and flavor of medicinal materials, and advocated that physicians should be thoroughly versed in materia medica and personally verify the properties of medicines. This picture does not render the mysteries of alchemy but focuses on expressing his daily routine of gathering herbs, writing books, and devoting himself to medical research, embodying the pragmatic scholarly tradition of traditional pharmacology.

Portrait of Shen Kuo

Shen Kuo wears Song dynasty official dress and a spreading-feet futou, refined and calm. Shen Kuo was an encyclopedic scholar of the Northern Song; he participated in Wang Anshi's reforms, went on missions to the Liao, and presided over water conservancy, armaments, and astronomical institutions. In his later years he lived in seclusion at Mengxi Garden in Runzhou and wrote Dream Pool Essays, which records a large number of frontier observations such as magnetic declination, movable type printing, petroleum, geological stratification, and music theory and mathematics, and is called a milestone work in the history of ancient Chinese science.

Geology

The design depicts Shen Kuo traveling in the mountains and examining strata beneath a cliff, with an attendant leading a horse following him and layered rock walls clearly visible. This is taken from Shen Kuo's famous investigation when, on a mission to Hebei, he saw snail and clam shells and pebbles among the cliffs of the Taihang Mountains and inferred that this place had been a seashore in remote antiquity and that land and sea had changed. This is an early scientific inference about sedimentary strata and ancient geographical change in the world, and the most classic record of ancient Chinese geological observation.

Portrait of Guo Shoujing

A half-length portrait of Guo Shoujing, in Yuan dynasty scholar's dress, with a focused, profound expression. Guo Shoujing was a top astronomer and water conservancy engineering expert of the Yuan dynasty; summoned by the Yuan court, he presided over astronomical observation across the country, created a batch of new astronomical instruments, and presided over the compilation of the Shoushi Calendar, whose calculation of the tropical year was basically close to the modern Gregorian calendar, leading the world by hundreds of years; at the same time he built water conservancy works for Dadu and connected the canal, solving the capital's grain transport problem.

Astronomy

The main subject of the design is the simplified instrument created by Guo Shoujing, with a grand and exquisite instrument framework and two attendants standing beside it. The simplified instrument was simplified and transformed from the traditional armillary sphere, eliminating redundant rings and reducing obstruction, greatly improving observation accuracy; it was the most advanced celestial measurement instrument in the world at the time. This picture freezes the scene of Guo Shoujing observing the stars with the instrument, representing the peak achievements of ancient Chinese astronomical instrument manufacturing and observational astronomy.

Artistic Design Features

The set uniformly adopts a vertical format, with the eight pictures paired two by two, one person and one achievement, with a neat and orderly narrative. The portrait parts are mainly line drawing with flat color; the clothing and headdresses strictly distinguish the Han, Tang, Song, and Yuan forms according to the characteristics of the times, and the figures' temperaments fit their identities: Cai Lun honest and generous, Sun Simiao kind and gentle, Shen Kuo wise, Guo Shoujing steady and resolute. The scene paintings absorb the tone of traditional fine-brush heavy-color genre painting, with soft, elegant colors and simple scenery, focusing on highlighting the crafts, herb gathering, scientific investigation, and instruments themselves, without superfluous rendering.

The photogravure layers are warm and gentle, the lines clean, and the colors light, elegant, and restrained, balancing popular-science value with classical beauty. The selection and arrangement of the set are highly ingenious: rather than simply listing famous people, it chooses figures who were pioneering in the history of Chinese science and technology, left behind classics, or changed the course of civilization, presenting ancient scientific achievements in an accessible and intuitive way. As the concluding work of the old Ji-te scientists series, C92 has a very high artistic evaluation, and with the addition of the "Cai Lun BC" error variant, it has long been a key set of sustained attention in philatelic circles.