Scott No: -
Serial number: 2016-20
Values in set: 2
Date of issue: August 5, 2016
Denomination: 270 fen
Designer: Zhang Qiang, Hu Xi
Size of stamps: 40 * 30 mm
Perforation: 13
Sheet composition: 20 (10 sets)
Sheet Size: 240 * 150 mm
Printing process: Photogravure
Printing House: Beijing Post Stamps Works

The commemorative stamp set The 31st Olympic Games was issued by China Post on August 5, 2016. It comprises two themed stamps featuring women’s volleyball and men’s relay race, with face values of 1.20 yuan and 1.50 yuan respectively.

On August 5, 2016 (Rio Time), the opening ceremony of the 31st Olympic Games was grandly held at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This marked the first time that the Olympic Games were held in South America in history. The Games featured 28 sports and 306 events, where more than 10,000 athletes from over 200 countries and regions around the world competed fiercely to vie for Olympic medals. All events concluded on August 21. The official motto of the Games was "A New World", symbolizing the aspiration to create a better world that would influence and transform the next generation.

The stamps adopt modern visual expression techniques. The first stamp, dominated by the green, yellow and blue colors of the Brazilian national flag, captures the dynamic posture of a volleyball player leaping vertically. The second stamp employs the red and yellow colors of the Chinese national flag to depict the moment when four sprinters start the race in a staggered formation. Through the overlay of block cutting and gradient color bars, the designer creates a sense of depth in the movement trajectories within the 40×30-millimeter stamp size.

The background of the stamps is rendered with radial light effects. The net lines in the women’s volleyball stamp and the track dividers in the men’s relay race stamp are both arranged in accordance with the golden section ratio. The body shapes of the athletes are abstracted into vector graphics, and highlight white reflections are added at the joint turns to enhance the three-dimensional effect.