Month: June 2025

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China 1947, the KMT’s third and final mainland phase

Chiang Kai-shek had attempted to rule China as a one party state. After the Japanese withdrawal in defeat in 1945-6, it was time to reimagine what post war China would look like. A new constitution was written, that granted the Chinese people new rights and political freedom, but was only in effect for five months. Even afterward in Taiwan it was superseded by emergency provisions for over 40 years. 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.

Today’s stamp shows the Constitution of 1946 during the brief time it was in effect along with the Great Hall in the then capital of Nanking. The Great Hall had been built in 1936 to house the National Assembly. Interestingly when built it was not expected that the National Assembly would be meeting very often so the building was also to be the host of plays put on by the National Institute of Drama. Nanking experienced some drama itself in late 1937 when Nanking fell to the Japanese. There is some hyperbole about how rough the Japanese occupation was, no there was not a contest between Japanese officers on who could kill a 100 Chinese by sword in the shortest time. It was a much rougher occupation though than say the American occupation of Tokyo. Imagine instead Tokyo being occupied in 1946 by Chinese, Mao or Chiang. Anyway the building still stood to host the National Assembly in 1946 and still stands today.

Todays stamp is issue A89, a $3000 Yuan stamp issued by the KMT government on mainland China on Christmas Day 1947. It was a three stamp issue in high inflation battered denomination. There was an earlier version of the stamp with the same image of the Nanking Great Hall but no constitution. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 50 cents unused.

The constitution granted a great deal of rights to the people of China. It was the KMT’s long promised third stage of Chinese development. There was to be no discrimination based on sex, religion, ethnicity or political party. If arrested, the accused had a right to see the charges against  him in writing and to have a trial within 24 hours of arrest. Julian Assange would have appreciated that provision. The National Assembly was to work a little differently, it elected the President to a six year term. It set out three principles for the people, nationalism, democracy, and livelihood.

Writing the Constitution was mainly the work of John Wu. He was a Chinese born Catholic that was educated at the University of Michigan Law School. For many years he kept up a friendly correspondence with then American Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Oliver Wendel Holmes. At first the Communists participated in the drafting, they proposed dividing the Assembly on a fixed ratio of 33% communist, 33% KMT, and 33% everyone else. When this was not done, they withdrew support and announced that the constitution would not be enforced in areas held by them. After the Revolution John Wu taught law at Setan Hall University in the USA and wrote novels. He eventually retired to Taiwan.

John Wu

5 months after the constitution theoretically went into effect in KMT held areas in China, it was superseded by the National Assembly. The country was in civil war and martial law and emergency powers were the order of the day. These emergency provisions traveled with the 1946 constitution to Taiwan. I guess if if you want to get the third stage of development right, it shouldn’t be rushed. The National Assembly, now in Taiwan in 1954 decided officials elected on the mainland under this constitution in 1947  would remain in office until there could be new elections on the mainland. Thus Taiwan put off those pesky elections until the 1990s.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast John Wu. It is amazing to think how much influence these Christian, American educated folks had in China. I wonder to what extent people worried about them being foreign agents. Come gain soon when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

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Afghanistan 1984, Antonov An-2, the ultimate bush plane

A sign that an aircraft model is not replaceable is a long production run. Turboprop versions of the An-2 are still in limited production in Ukraine and China having first entered production in 1947. The continued existence of the two factories allows many more older airframes to be refurbished and modernized. What has proved more challenging is designing a replacement. 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.

This stamp from Afghanistan points to the usefulness of bush aircraft in so many places around the world. Due to where industrial capabilities lie, most bush airplane designs came from Russia and Canada. Most operators though have small fleets and so there is not a clear economic case for a replacement model. Luckily there still is the ability to refurbish, but it will be interesting to watch how long the old airframes can go on.

Todays stamp is issue A441, a one Rupee stamp issued by the Soviet puppet government of Afghanistan on June 29th, 1984. It was a seven stamp issue in various denominations celebrating 40 years of aviation in the country. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents unused or cancelled to order.

In the early days after World War II, the Soviet Union drew up plans for a a 12 seat utility airplane to be built by Antonov in the Ukraine. It would use a license made Wright Cyclone piston engine. The plane was a biplane to give strong lift and allow for takeoff and landing runs under 700 feet. The An-2, Russian nickname Annie, NATO code name Colt had a very low 30 mph stall speed. It thus in a 35 mile an hour headwind, not uncommon at altitude,  the plane could fly backwards relative to the ground. The plane was useful for supplying distant outposts, crop spraying and skydiving.

In 1960 production of the AN-2 moved to Poland and got going in China. Over 18,000 airplanes have been built. Poland stopped making the An-2 in 1991 and for a while some production moved to Russia. During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese AN 2s attacked an American spy base in Laos and were chased off by Huey helicopters where the fighting was guys shooting out of open doors with automatic rifles. In the Yugoslav Civil War of the early 1990s, Croatian crop duster AN-2s were dropping improvised barrel bombs out of the open door at Serbian/Yugoslav targets. In todays war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Azeri unmanned An-2s are being used as drones for surveillance and bombing. Armenia claims to have so far shot down seven of them.

There was a fairly notorious 1976 crash of a An-2 in Novosibisk, Siberia. A recently divorced pilot attempted murder suicide by trying to crash the plane into the apartment of his exes in-laws where his ex wife and toddler son were staying. He instead hit the buildings stairwell and the plane’s 200 gallons of fuel started a large fire. Despite quick work by the fire department, four small children died from burns. None of the pilot’s targets were hurt.

Antonov no longer provides type certification for the An-2, so the for the many examples in the west, it is illegal to use the An-2 for business purposes. I mentioned above there are modernized versions with turboprop engines, cabin air conditioning, and GPS based navigation. There is of course the issue of how many improvements you can make before the plane is no longer simple enough to operate in the bush.

The currently offered, again from Ukraine, An-2-100. These can be built new or converted from old airframes

Well my drink is empty and so I will have to wait till  when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

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USA 1893, A Columbian Exposition brings the worlds eyes on Chicago

Coming up on the 400th anniversary of the voyage of Christopher Columbus, America thought it a great time to celebrate it with a World’s Fair. They further decided to hold it in the west in Chicago to display how far things had come on the “frontier”. 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.

First we should take a little time with this stamp issue. In my opinion a masterpiece of a stamp issue. Rather than just show the World’s Fair. Instead we get a 15 stamp issue taking us through the history of Columbus’s negotiations with Queen Isabella, the highs of the first landing, the difficulties of the new colonies, the lows of Columbus being returned in chains to Spain and even the redemption he experienced in Barcelona late in life when people realized the magnitude of what Columbus accomplished. All this from 1893 when most stamps were royal portraits.

Todays stamp is issue A72, a 2 cent stamp issued by the USA in 1893. It was a 15 stamp issue with denominations as high as $5,( at least $132 in todays money, the CPI calculator only went back to 1913. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents used. High values in the set seem to stick with unused, never hinged copies especially the few imperforates and those with no gum. The $5 stamp is up at $9500.

It was an ambition of the USA to host a World’s Fair comparable with earlier ones in London and Paris. An earlier one in Philadelphia was unsuccessful. The Columbus anniversary was the excuse and Congress had to decide between bids from New York City, Chicago, and Saint Louis. Financial packages were heavily considered and it was quite the effort but Chicago outbid New York. It was also argued that Chicago had more space, cleaner air, and better represented a country whose center of gravity wasthen moving west.

Chicago also had a great advantage of new urban architects including Daniel Barnham  and Fredrick James Almsted to work on the project. They designed a beau arts style “White City” with a large reflecting pool representing Columbus’s ocean journey. There were 42 pavilions displaying different countries and record producer Sol Bloom designed an amusement park for the kids.

The Reflecting pool and the temporary buildings of the Fair

The fair started as a success. One of the displays was a “street in Cairo” that featured America’s first belly dancer doing the suggestive dance called the Hokky Pokki. The dancer was known as Little Egypt and was really from Syria and married to a local Greek restaurateur. The tune she moved to was composed by Sol Bloom and is today known as the Snake Charmers song.

Dancer known as Little Egypt doing the Hokie Pockey

The Fair ended early after the mayor was assassinated and it was thought more appropriate for the fair to close early. Surprisingly given the time, the Mayor wasn’t killed by an anarchist but a crazy man who thought that railroads were killing too many people at crossings and the Mayor should have fixed it. Clarence Darrow took the assassins’ case hoping to have him declared insane. The prosecution pointed out that he had loaded his revolver for safety by not having a bullet in the first chamber showing a right mind. It was one of Clarence Darrow’s few trial losses.

You can probably gather that the fair would not pass the smell test of the modern politically correct. Even in the period, black civil rights leader Fredrick Douglas wrote a pamphlet complaining that black people’s contributions to Columbus were being ignored. In more modern times the tact changed. Now the idea of an idealized white city is thought racist. The country pavilions were recast as freak shows. Special attention was directed at the Woman’s Pavilion which had a display of woman made Indian, Samoan, and African crafts under the banner of “Woman’s work in savagery”.

The powers that be in Chicago have changed a little since 1893. The Mayor is now a mixed Indian/African American lesbian named Lori Lightfoot. Earlier this year she authorized the removal of the Christopher Columbus statues in Chicago.

Chicago removing statue of Columbus in the middle of the night between protests.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the people who put fairs together that celebrate progress or perhaps spill it on people that would take it all down. Come again soon when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.