Scott No: 1412-14
Serial number: T27
Values in set: 3
Date of issue: June 30, 1978
Denomination: 24 fen
Designer: Chen Chuanli
Size of stamps: 31*52mm
Perforation: 11.5
Sheet composition: 40(10*4)
Printing process: Photogravure
Printing House: Beijing Postage Stamp Printing Works

T27 "Learn from Dazhai in Animal Husbandry, Build New Pastoral Areas" special stamps were issued on June 30, 1978. The set consists of 3 stamps, printed by photogravure, designed by Cheng Chuanli, and printed by the Beijing Stamp Factory. Stamp size 31 mm × 52 mm, perforation gauge 11.5, 40 stamps per sheet (10 × 4), with a total face value of 0.24 yuan for the set and a circulation of 12 million copies for each stamp.

Theme of the Set

This set continues the era's thread of the "learn from Dazhai" theme, aimed at China's vast grassland pastoral areas, advocating that pastoral areas learn Dazhai's spirit of self-reliance and hard, practical work and transform the traditional nomadic production mode. China's grassland pastoral areas are distributed across vast regions such as Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet, where in the past people relied on natural grazing with extensive production methods. The stamps arrange their pictures in the order of grassland construction, improved breed selection, and mechanized production, presenting new measures in pastoral areas such as building enclosed pastures (caokulun), promoting scientific livestock raising, and popularizing animal husbandry machinery. They record the construction appearance of pastoral areas transforming from traditional nomadism to modern animal husbandry, promoting stable grassland production, raising livestock output, and improving the production and life of herdsmen.

Stamp Designs and Historical Background

Vigorously Building Enclosed Pastures (Caokulun)

With the Inner Mongolia grasslands as the background, fenced enclosed pastures are built on the vast grassland, herds of cattle and sheep graze within the fenced pastures, the red sun hangs high in the distance, and red flags flutter in the wind. The enclosed pasture is a fenced-off grassland used for rotational grazing and cultivating high-quality forage, curbing grassland degradation; it is an important construction method in pastoral areas for windbreak and sand fixation, grassland protection, and stabilizing forage supply.

Scientific Livestock Raising

The background is the snow peaks, forests, and power transmission towers of the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang. Several ethnic minority herdsmen gather together, carefully observing and appraising livestock and selecting fine breeding stock. Promoting improved breed selection and improving livestock breeds is the core content of scientific livestock raising; relying on selective breeding, it raises livestock quality and increases the output of meat, wool, and other livestock products.

Mechanization of Animal Husbandry

The design presents a pasture in the Tibet pastoral area, where herdsmen operate animal husbandry machinery on the grassland, with continuous mountains spreading in the distance. Introducing machinery into grazing, grass cutting, and forage harvesting reduces the heavy physical labor of pastoral areas and improves animal husbandry production efficiency, representing the development direction of raising productivity in pastoral areas.

Artistic Design Features

The set uniformly adopts a horizontal long stamp format and a poster style, with intense, saturated colors; the grassland's blue sky, green mountains and snow peaks, and emerald pastures are clearly layered, with distinctive regional and ethnic characteristics. The three stamps correspond respectively to the pastoral areas of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet, embodying the pattern of common development of multi-ethnic pastoral areas. The photogravure printing has bright colors, and the scenery is expansive and imposing. There is no souvenir sheet for this set. It is a representative JT special stamp set on the theme of animal husbandry construction in the 1970s.