Scott No: 620-628
Serial number: C94, C94m
Values in set: 8
Date of issue: August 8, 1962
Denomination: 152 fen
Designer: Wu Jiankun
Size of stamps:
26.5*36mm for Value 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;
36*26.5mm for Value 6, 7, 8
Perforation:
11.5*11 for Value 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;
11*11.5 for Value 6, 7, 8
Sheet composition:
50(10*5) for Value 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;
50(5*10) for Value 6, 7, 8
Size of S/S: 108*146mm
Stamp of S/S: 52*62 mm
Perforation of S/S: 11.5
Printing process: Photogravure
Printing House: Beijing Postage Stamp Printing Works

C94 "Mei Lanfang's Stage Art" commemorative stamps were issued by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications to commemorate the first anniversary of Mr. Mei Lanfang's death. 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 stamps were issued in two batches: the first 4 (Portrait of Mei Lanfang, Resisting the Jin Army, Wandering in the Garden and Waking from a Dream, The Hegemon King Bids Farewell to His Concubine) on August 8, 1962; the latter 4 (Mu Guiying Takes Command, Heavenly Maiden Scatters Flowers, Life and Death Regret, The Cosmos Sword) on September 1, 1962. An imperforate complete set of 8 with the same designs was issued simultaneously—New China's first officially issued imperforate stamps; the imperforate stamps were not sold publicly and were supplied only to philatelists at a premium through China Stamp Company. The uniform stamp size is 30 mm × 40 mm, perforation gauge 11.5 × 11, 50 stamps per sheet, layout 10 × 5. There is also one souvenir sheet, designed by Wu Jiankun, issued on September 15, 1962.

Face values and circulations of the perforated stamps: Portrait of Mei Lanfang 4 fen, 4 million copies; Resisting the Jin Army 8 fen, 8 million copies; Wandering in the Garden and Waking from a Dream 8 fen, 8 million copies; The Hegemon King Bids Farewell to His Concubine 10 fen, 4 million copies; Mu Guiying Takes Command 20 fen, 3 million copies; Heavenly Maiden Scatters Flowers 22 fen, 1.5 million copies; Life and Death Regret 30 fen, 1.5 million copies; The Cosmos Sword 50 fen, 1.5 million copies. The imperforate complete set has a circulation of about 10,000 sets; the souvenir sheet has a face value of 3 yuan and a circulation of only 20,000 copies.

Stamp Designs and Historical Background

Portrait of Mei Lanfang

The design is a color-ink half-length portrait of Mei Lanfang, wearing a dark Zhongshan suit, with a warm, calm face and a peaceful gaze; on the right side of the picture is printed Mei Lanfang's own signature. Mei Lanfang was the founder of the Mei school of Peking Opera, completing systematic innovations in vocal style, body movement, costumes, makeup, and stage accompaniment, and integrating the performance of qingyi, huadan, and daomadan to establish a graceful, elegant, upright, and mellow paradigm of female-role performance. In times of national crisis he grew a mustache and made clear his resolve, refusing to go on stage for the enemy and the puppet regime, and is known throughout the world for the integrity of an artist. This stamp is placed first in the set; breaking away from stage makeup, it pays tribute to the artist himself in his true appearance, laying the solemn commemorative keynote for the whole set.

Resisting the Jin Army

The design presents the classic pose of Liang Hongyu beating the drum and fighting at Jinshan from Resisting the Jin Army. Liang Hongyu wears heavy armor with back banners inserted, long pheasant tail feathers, and stands on the hilltop beating the drum, with a martial posture and her gaze fixed on the river battlefield. After the September 18 Incident, with the situation in turmoil, Mei Lanfang and friends expanded and adapted this play on the basis of traditional old operas, using the story of Liang Hongyu and Han Shizhong resisting the Jin in the Southern Song to express the resolve to resist the enemy and defend the country; after its performance it aroused a strong response in society, and it is one of Mr. Mei's most important patriotic plays. The play places equal emphasis on song, speech, acting, and acrobatic fighting, with drumming, fighting, and elaborate body movements; it is also a representative work of the Mei school's daomadan roles.

Wandering in the Garden and Waking from a Dream

Taken from the Kunqu opera The Peony Pavilion, this is the scene of Du Liniang wandering in the garden. The figure wears a pale pink embroidered robe, holds a round fan, with gentle steps and subtle, graceful brows and eyes, freezing the delicate mood of a young girl wandering in the spring garden, her feelings faint and subtle, suddenly falling into a dream. Mei Lanfang devoted his life to the transmission of Kunqu; he believed Kunqu was the foundation of Peking Opera performance and studied and performed Kunqu publicly all year round. This scene is a peak passage of Kunqu; Mr. Mei polished the vocal style, stage steps, and water sleeves one by one, expressing the subtle, restrained poetic beauty of a classical boudoir woman to the utmost. It is also a play he often performed abroad, introducing classical Chinese opera to overseas audiences.

The Hegemon King Bids Farewell to His Concubine

The classic scene of Consort Yu dancing with a sword at Gaixia. Consort Yu wears plain-colored opera clothes and dances with a sword, her water sleeves flying, her expression sorrowful yet unconfused. In the Chu-Han contention, Xiang Yu is defeated at Gaixia and hears Chu songs on all sides; Consort Yu dances with a sword to relieve the Hegemon King's sorrow and to take leave of her soulmate. This play is the most household-known representative work of the Mei school; over long performances Mr. Mei continuously perfected the sword dance routine, with exquisite coordination of fast and slow, motion and stillness, firm and gentle, integrating tragedy, poignant beauty, and composure—a benchmark of Peking Opera stage aesthetics.

Mu Guiying Takes Command

Mu Guiying holds the seal and appears, in full armor, with a deep and vigorous bearing. This was Mei Lanfang's last newly compiled major play in his later years; to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic, it was adapted from the Henan opera of the same name and premiered in 1959. At this time Mr. Mei was already sixty-five; he no longer pursued the sharpness of a young general but instead shaped a middle-aged and older female commander who had been through the battlefield and had retired, yet resolutely sacrificed herself for the country when the nation was in danger. The passage of holding the seal is the core of the whole play, with inner feelings advancing layer by layer—from hesitation and being moved to the determination to go to war—with restrained and weighty performance, regarded as the culmination of the Mei school's later-years art.

Heavenly Maiden Scatters Flowers

The heavenly maiden rides the wind, her long silk spreading in the air, her garments fluttering as if walking on clouds. The play is drawn from a Buddhist sutra story and is a mythological song-and-dance play created by Mei Lanfang in his early years; its core attraction is the two several-zhang-long colored silks. Mr. Mei created a unique silk-ribbon dance, relying on the coordination of wrists, arms, and waist to make the long silk whirl, fly, and roll, simulating the heavenly wind and flowing clouds, with an immortal quality between motion and stillness. This play was also one of the first he took on tour to Japan and the United States, and it is a representative work that showed the charm of Peking Opera dance to the world at the time.

Life and Death Regret

Han Yuniang sits before a spinning wheel, wearing patched "wealth-and-honor" clothes, with a sorrowful, lonely expression. The play is adapted from the chuanqi The Story of the Easy Shoe, using the chaos of war in the Song dynasty and the Jin invasion and the story of a couple separated and suffering displacement to indict the suffering war brings to ordinary people. The script was written in the 1930s, using the past to criticize the present, carrying sympathy for the suffering people in the occupied areas; at its premiere it caused a sensation in Shanghai, with tickets hard to obtain, and it was later made into China's first color opera film. In the spinning-wheel scene, the vocal style is plaintive and profound, with restrained emotion that moves people to tears.

The Cosmos Sword

The stage image of Zhao Yanrong feigning madness and denouncing the traitor. Zhao Gao wants to present his daughter to Qin Er Shi; Zhao Yanrong is unwilling to submit, so she pretends to be insane and denounces the traitors in the court. This is the peak of the Mei school's acting plays, extremely difficult to perform: outwardly mad, inwardly lucid, grasping the measure between seeming madness and not madness, with extremely subtle layers. Mei Lanfang polished this play repeatedly throughout his life, and it is recognized by the opera world as a "hard play" that tests a female role's inner characterization skills.

Souvenir Sheet: The Drunken Beauty

The souvenir sheet's design is The Drunken Beauty, selected from a color stage photograph of Mei Lanfang's 1956 performance tour in Japan. Yang Guifei is in gorgeous dress, with phoenix crown and cloud cape, her water sleeves spreading out, expressing to the fullest the complex emotions of the palace consort waiting in vain for the emperor—from expectation and loneliness to melancholy and intoxication. The outer frame has a calm blue background dotted with traditional round-flower and auspicious-cloud patterns, antique and elegant. The souvenir sheet measures 108 mm × 146 mm, with an inner stamp of 52 mm × 62 mm. Because the circulation is extremely low and most copies were used for external exchange and stamp company allocation at the time, few complete mint copies survive, and it has long ranked among New China's top rare treasures.

Artistic Design Features

The set uniformly adopts a vertical composition, with the picture backgrounds extremely simplified, without piling up elaborate stage sets, leaving the entire visual focus to the figures' expressions, postures, headdresses, and opera costumes. All pictures are color-ink paintings, not direct reproductions of stage photographs; Sun Chuanzhe balanced the brush-and-ink charm of Chinese painting with the realism of stage portraiture, with restrained, elegant colors, each stamp's tone fitting the mood of its play: Wandering in the Garden and Waking from a Dream clear and soft, Resisting the Jin Army intense and vigorous, Life and Death Regret gloomy and desolate, Mu Guiying Takes Command dignified and steady.

The photogravure printing has delicate layers and can finely restore the embroidery patterns of the opera costumes, the luster of the pheasant feathers, and the light texture of the flying ribbons, freezing the fleeting performance moments of the stage within the square inch. The selection of the eight plays is highly ingenious, with rich subjects covering women resisting the enemy, immortal mythological figures, boudoir feelings, the sorrow of troubled times, and court figures, completely covering the Mei school's broad character-shaping ability, while also hiding a spiritual thread: both the aesthetic classical poetry of opera and a running thread of national righteousness and national integrity.

This set is also the most highly evaluated artistically among the old Ji-te stamps and was voted the Best Commemorative Stamp in the national Best Stamps of the 30th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic of China selection. The perforated stamps, imperforate stamps, and souvenir sheet together form a complete collection system; because the imperforate stamps were sold at a premium at the time and many were torn apart for postage, complete sets are rarely preserved; the souvenir sheet is scarce on the market and has long been the most renowned and influential classic in the history of Chinese philately.