Chinese Fish

Paintings of Various Subjects
Album Leaves by Xu Gu
the Qing Dynasty

This is one of the oldest postcards in my collection, and definitely the first card I ever received from China. It predates my joining Postcrossing by a fair margin. This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday, hosted by Beth. Her theme this week is fish/April Fool's Day. I thought about posting a generic spring card (I have a lot of Japanese cherry blossoms, for example), but I thought a fish would be more appropriate. I chose this one because it was sent by a friend rather than a Postcrossing stranger. (Same friend who sent this one.)

After I chose it I noticed that it was postmarked March 31, which is tomorrow (except in 2009). The top two characters on the postmark are the name of the city, Xi'an 西安. The same characters occur in Japanese, where they would be pronounced sei-an, and mean "west peace." The bottom four characters are nearly illegible, but the first two are "Wild Goose Tower" which is a building in Xi'an. I am guessing that together this is the name/location of the post office from which the card was sent. You know, since that is generally what is printed on postmarks.


I love it when people draw artwork on the backs of cards.

Not sure about the stamp. I think it's a definitive. I've gotten it several times. If the characters mean something similar to what they do in Japanese, the theme of the stamp is protecting diverse species.


A post for Postcard Friendship Friday. Click on the icon to go to the page and participate!