An elite lives an out of another era life, but one that is not working for the people. Can this be fixed? So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
At first glance this stamp is impressive. A dragon is an ancient symbol of Chinese power and much needed and feared water. At the time in the late nineteenth century, the image of the dragon was tied to the Emperor. Here is the rub though. The Emperor was quite weak and being controlled behind the scenes by Empress Dowager Cixi. The stamp coincided with major humiliating concessions of sovereignty to foreign powers. Even on a postage stamp, the Emperors complicity can be seen in the fact of the English lettering and that the stamp was printed in London. Modern Chinese stamps also have China written in English on them. Today is a different time with world travel and often multi lingual peoples. At the turn of the 20th century, it was a reflection of subservience.
Todays stamp is issue A 17 a two cent stamp issued by Imperial China in 1898. It was part of a 12 stamp in various denominations honoring the Qing Dynasty. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $2.75 used. A mint version of the $5 stamp in this issue is worth $600.
The late Qing Dynasty was a string of weak often child Emperors with regencies speaking for them. The real power was wielded by the Empress Dowager Cixi. She faced an antiquated and apart elite and a vast and very populous realm. Western powers were sniffing around and pealing off ever greater pieces of China for there trading posts. There were even Christian missionaries coming to try to modify the Chinese peoples most basic beliefs. These missionaries were really just a way to get the camels nose under the tent. When the inevitable incidents happened to them, the westerners had their excuse to grab ever more from China.
It seems logical to use the numerical advantage of China to build a modern army capable of defending China. Remember that the elite is apart and old fashioned. For that reason, the average Chinese won’t fight for them and any army they organize will be hopelessly outdated. So there is a string of tough talk from the Empress Dowager and then an acquiescence to the west in return for the Emperor’s rule being allowed to continue.
On the domestic front, there was some push toward educational improvement but little in the way of land reform that might have gone some way to relieving the frequent famines. Of course there were no famines within the Forbidden City. The few reforms attempted were fought vigorously by the beaurocracy and indeed most of the reformers such as Kang Youwei proved to be just out for themselves. Kang went in twenty years from being thought of as a radical reformer to scheming with a warlord to put the last boy Emperor back on the thrown. He did however propose that the Emperor rule over a more socialistic system and has such his memory was somewhat rehabilitated by Mao. The Dowager Cixi died in 1908 by arsenic poisoning and her elaborate tomb was pillaged by a warlord in 1928. Supposedly some of her jewels with which she was buried were later in the hands of Madame Chiang Kei-shek.
Well my dink is empty. One wonders if instead of reforming and giving in to never ending demands if the Dowager had just fought to the death she might have been better remembered. Dragons after all breath fire. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.