The next day I awoke to find that I was still in Nanjing, and ninja spies hadn’t decapitated me while I slept. This was good because it meant I could go out and spend the day being a tourist as I had originally planned.

The first order of business was to check out an old republican district that was just down the street from the hotel. The pre-WW2 area was mostly walled off, with nice quiet tree lined streets. It reminded me of the Badaguan area in Qingdao, or perhaps an undeveloped version of the French Concession in Shanghai. From what I could tell by peeking into a few of the compounds, the houses had been chopped up to fit way more tenants than was originally designed, like most other housing was during the 60s. Regardless, the buildings looked like they were kept in reasonably good condition and if I were to live in Nanjing, I would pick here.

Next up, was the main event of our stay in Nanjing: The Memorial Hall for Compatriots Killed in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Forces of Aggression. As most of you know, and some of you may not, Nanjing was the site of some horrible shit back during the early stages of Second World War. Relative to other Chinese museums and monuments, the quality of this particular complex stands out as top class, as it should in order to respectfully memorialize the events of such a tragedy.

This one quote by John Rabe caught my eye. I was surprised it was shown so prominently despite the fact it displays the Judeo-Christian concept of forgiveness, which doesn’t feature so much in Eastern Asian cultures. Just ask most Chinese people you meet what they think of Japanese people, and you will quickly see that this quote doesn’t resonate.

I only had two beefs that manifested themselves once we were at the end of the tour through the main building. After you finish the complete story of the Massacre, you go up a set of stairs to the way out. For a short distance here, there is another exhibit on China’s various losses and humiliations at the hands of foreign forces. Talk about playing the victim card. The massacre is one thing, a bunch of unrelated historical events is another, and when you add them onto the main event it comes across as a real sleazy attempt at propaganda. To my relief, it looked like most people were skipping through this section and the small gift shop near the exit door. The gift shop was my other beef. Therein lied a whole smack of Mao memorabilia that can only been one of the sickest forms of hypocrisy I’ve seen to date.

Despite these two little things, it was still a worthwhile place to check out. Just like my old history teacher always said, “If you don’t learn from History, you’re bound to repeat it… in my class next year SUCKAS!!”

With enough depression for one day, the next stop was a little more cheery, the Nanjing City Wall. And we all know, China loves it some walls. It was relatively well preserved, and you could walk around through it. There was some kind of Lantern Festival going on, which demanded a large probably not worth it entrance fee, so instead we skipped that and wandered around the peaceful old Chinese style neighborhoods that surrounded it.

With little time left in the day, we scurried off to a few more places, like the ruins of the Ming Dynasty capital, and good old Sun Yat-sen’s mausoleum. Dr. Sun (commonly known as Zhongshan around these parts), lead the rebel uprising that eventually defeated Darth Vader, the Galactic Empire and the formed of the New Republic. So as you can imagine, he’s a pretty popular guy. Just as we made our way to the gates, we found out they were closed for the day. No matter, all the tourists had vanished into the ether from whence they came, so I could snap a few decent pictures without their endemic presence.

Since everything was closed and it was getting dark, we returned to the hotel post-haste so we could avoid being attacked by ghouls. After realizing that the restaurant we wanted to eat at was located in a building that was now a pile of rubble, we settled for some strange type hot pot I’ve never had before. It was good, but not too good, and certainly not appetizing enough to feast your eyes on. Actually it looked like a pile of garbage served in a big bowl. As far as I know, I didn’t contract any strange diseases from it, which was also a good thing, because the next day we were headed to Soochow, the homeless man’s Venice.

THE STEEL INDUSTRY

This set of stamps is a commemoration of the steel industry. But what isn’t so obvious is what the stamps depict. Thankfully we have a 1200dpi scanner and my imagination on our side, while the stamps have nothing but fading ink on theirs.

5-4 In this image, there’s a glorious steel bar pressing machine, with happy employees working away. The machine looks to be operating on the main floor of hell, what with the inferno in the background. Lady talking on the phone seems to be pretty impressed, probably because she’s got a scroll in her hand that has the sacred recipes for the best satanic pizza you’ll ever know.

5-3 This stamp is straightforward. I mean it’s a giant bucket of molten steel being dumped into another giant bucket of molten steel. Look at the one dude who’s waving at the steel though, if I’m not mistaken that’s definitely a towel around his shoulder, which makes me wonder if he really thinks that he’ll be able to wipe off some molten steel, should it drip on to him. Idiot, he should know the best way to clean off molten steel is with tide to go.

5-5 Here we have a bunch of long steel rods all over the place, a train missing its caboose, a factory in the background and some guys yelling to get the rods inserted in the right places. The boring blue sky is a urine yellow thanks to the steel mill.

5-2 It looks like buddy’s machine blew up or something and started spewing molten liquid steel all over the place. The employees aren’t looking very concerned and I don’t even think they care. Must be unionized. They’re definitely poking it with those metal poles though. I’m not sure how helpful that would be, but I’m no steelworker so for all I know that’s exactly what you do when molten steel spills all over the floor and you’re about re-enact the final scene of Terminator 2.

5-1 This train was recently attacked by combination of Uighur suicide bombers and Japanese kamikaze pilots; it’s definitely seen better days. This stamp reminds people that these two groups of people must be demonized and destroyed at all costs…even if it means wearing crocs, or even worse, crocs with socks.

As it turns out, if you look at these stamps in their proper numerical order, instead of the arbitrary one I’ve given them, they represent the entire steel making process. 炼焦, 炼铁, 炼钢, 轧钢, 成品. And that would be: coke-making, iron smelting, steel making, steel rolling and the finished product. Nevertheless, that isn’t a very interesting way of looking at them, it’s far more enjoyable to pretend they’re scenes from Dante’s Inferno aka Communist China.

WEIRD SCIENCE

This set features four stamps, with distinct colours for each stamp. Each stamp has some kind of technology going on in the main image but in the bottom third there is also a little image outline in a little square. I have no idea what the fuck these are. I will try my best to interpret everything so that if some day monkeys can read, they will know what these stamps mean and how they relate to communism…or banana milkshakes.

Orange: dual tape recorders with a giant gear in the background, possibly some laser beams shooting randomly and a spark from God knows what kind reaction, maybe one of the lasers accidently shot the gear. Small image in the corner looks like a very primitive robotic arm cruising around a skateboard. The tape recorders signify the government having greater power to record conversations and spy on people. The gear is a classic communist symbol what with us being the cogs and all. The lasers are punishment for being caught talking nasty on the phone and being recorded by one of those tape recorders. The spark is of course what happens to your head when the laser hits it, but they seemed to have censored out the brains and skull fragments that would be part of it. The skateboarding arm is actually on its way to get attached to someone who was accidentally targeted by one of the lasers.

Green: a tractor spraying fertilizer/pesticide on fields in between rows of genetically modified trees (you can tell right away that they’re GMO because they all look exactly the same.) In the background there is a crop duster aircraft being piloted remotely by the operator of the tractor or a very intelligent chipmunk. Small image in the corner looks like a gear with a bug’s eyes and nose in the middle. The main image demonstrates that even 30 years ago, Chinese farmers were universally using advance crop science and mechanization to ensure top quality products. The small image more than likely is a warning to humans that us “cogs” will soon be controlled by an all powerful insect overlord, who will make us all farmers, or perhaps farm us as rations for his brood.

Red: We’ve got ourselves a fine strategic nuclear warhead, a nuclear submarine, a group of four paper airplanes being tossed off by someone who clearly doesn’t give a damn and concentric circles around the sun. The small image is a bulky and ineffective satellite dish, used by CCTV to broadcast their brainwashing all around the world. The circles around the sun identify it as the target of the ICBN from the sub, because obviously the red sun represents Japan and everyone knows that China loves Japan so much; they want to give them a nice big nuclear hug. The paper planes are actually an accurate representation of China’s air force at the time, before they upgraded to balsa wood and the current rabid seagulls.

Blue: Atoms spinning around a green nucleus, with sparkling stars in the background, and a double helix replicating itself in the foreground. Small image is difficult to decipher but I’ve narrowed it down to either a medieval warrior helmet, a squid amputee, or quite possibly the shortest, stubbiest rocket to ever be conceived by the human race. After a good long think about meaning these two incredibly symbolic images represent, their impact on the human race and particularly China at this point in history and their use in the future, it finally dawned on me. They mean nothing at all. The sparkles are just there to add pizzazz, kind of like how a 16-year-old girl going out to the bar puts sparkles all over her face in an attempt to look mature, but instead they scream JAILBAIT. The confounding thing in the corner is visible proof that when China wants to make something that people simple cannot understand regardless of how much they try and think about it, they can, with ease. This ability would be put to use often in the 20th and 21st centuries.

1960 “The Birds of Communist Paradise” 中苏反好同盟互助条约签订十周年

This stamp is a glorious contradiction, making it not so different from the concept of communism itself. It actually commemorates 10 years since the signing of an alliance between China and the Soviet Union. If I may, allow me to transcribe what the Chinese are really saying to the Russians: “yeah you can send off as many of those little messenger pigeons as you want, the second your big noses are pointing in another direction we’re gonna hunt them down and cook us up some 黄山炖鸽. By the way, thanks for helping us build all those machine gun factories and nuclear weapons.” Of course the sino-soviet relationship had already gone off the rails at this point, but you gotta give the Chinese credit for playing cool/dumb until the very moment shit hits the fan.

1963 “You’re looking at the Huang Mountain” 莲花峰 迎客松 西海云潮

When browsing through stamps from the 60s, the propaganda slowly started to give way to natural scenes of China, such as these chilled out drawings of different parts of Huangshan mountain. The three I’ve got here are part of a larger series that features about eight or so different “scenic spots” at the mountain. My feelings towards the “scenic spots” regardless, I wish I coulda checked out Huangshan back in the day before the red hat brigades came marching in to take it over.

1964 “Silent But Deadly” 炼油

Still proud of their industry, it wasn’t hard to find more stamps featuring factories, refineries and other industrial buildings that might have fit well in a Super Mario level. China treated industry like a rapper who just topped the charts treats money…flaunt that shit like it’s going out style. But for China, industry never went out of style, factories are still growing as fast as the US trade deficit is, gobbling up the shit they manufacture in the process. I especially like how they put those red commie flags on top of the refinery. You know everyone gets their fair share of that oil. Just some get fairer shares than others.

1964 “Dam Invisible Friends” 新安水电站

According to the titles of the stamps, these two are images of the Xin’an River Hydroelectric Station. Unfortunately I tried searching for this structure on Wikipedia so that I could find the significance of it, and why it merits it not one but several stamps commemorating it, but was I couldn’t find an article about it. As we all know, if it ain’t on Wikipedia, then it sure as shuttlecock don’t exist. Just goes to show ya, China loves dams so much their making up imaginary ones just so they can put them on stamps.

1964 “Brothers From Other Mothers” 庆祝非洲自由日

After googling around I learned that African Liberation Day is the 25th of May. In the late 50’s and early sixties after most African countries got emancipated from their colonial overlords they all got together with some beers and strippers to celebrate. The whole lot of ‘em had such a blast that they decided to make it an annual thing. Or something like that. What I do know is despite China apparently wishing Africans well with the issue of this stamp, many Chinese still look down on people with darker melanin. You don’t even have to look farther than this very stamp to see it, I mean look at the way the Chinese guy is dressed, with a modern jacket, a Mao hat and even some snazzy sunglasses that I’m sure will come in handy when he turns around to face that giant ball of fire behind him. Poor black fella on the other hand is wearing nothing but goddamn bed sheets. What’s up with that? I don’t even think African tribal people wear that. The only possibility is that African Liberation Day has one hell of a toga party and only China is in on the secret. Also note how the Chinese guy is looking strait ahead, while the black guy is looking off, almost like he’s wondering what the hell he’s got himself into. Well my roman robed friend, you got yourself a sweet deal on some Chinese arms in exchange for whatever natural resources you’ve got left.

I set out on a mission to acquire a small collection of PRC stamps from years past. My first foray to the obvious destination of the post office turned out to be unsurprisingly useless. There, they only sell current stamps used for postage, or recently printed collector sets in ludicrous display cases that outweighed the face value of the stamps by several orders of galactic magnitude.

After further trolling around the internets I managed to locate a small back alley type area off of Qingdao’s cultural street (昌乐路). For those out of the loop, many Chinese cities have these cultural streets, or districts that are filled with stores selling reproductions of classic art, giant posters of grass script Chinese poetry, and weird jade formations that look like translucent green feces. It was an easy to miss back alley, but once I ventured past the gates, there was a whole swarm of shops selling eclectic junk like old coins, stamps, bank notes, and magical scrolls for summoning drunken bureaucrats.

I tried to get a selection of stamps spanning the years since the dawn of the PRC. From the time of Mao’s witch hunts for landlords and merchants, to the present days of the CPC’s witch hunts for proletariat and porno, my objective was to see how China pictured itself during different generations. Collecting the physical stamps I could care less about. What I was after was the design and the images, so I scanned them all high rez style and put them here for everyone to ogle over.

1954 “Everyone Loves Communism” （中华人民共和国第一届全国人民代表大会）

This is the oldest stamp I bought, fresh from 1954. This perfect example of communist art has it all, red ink , the cheering masses, industrious factories, and a humongous hydroelectric dam. All this for a bargain face value of 800 Yuan. Assuming that was the price today, the average farmer could easily afford to send one letter, and then spend the rest of the month starving to death. So you better recognize that 1954 had inflation like a blow up doll. Also less obvious is the Chinese writing using traditional characters, instead of the simplified ones that didn’t get shoved down everyone’s throat until a few years after this stamp was made.

1957-59 “I’m in yur reactor, steelin yur secrets”
(武汉长江大桥，原子反应堆，回旋加速器 and unnamed pinko industrial scene)

I liked the drawing style of the first three stamps above, even though only two of them are from the same series, they all comically feature things developed in China with significant help from the Soviets. The Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, atomic reactors, particle accelerators, all from Russia with love of course. I’d like to know what the average Chinese farmer would’ve thought of the particle accelerator and reactor stamps at the time. I mean, back then they wouldn’t even be able to contemplate what a particle is, yet alone a machine that accelerates the fuckin things. Hell, I didn’t even know what they were without looking at the titles (ok ok, I didn’t even know what they were after reading the titles, I had to google that shit). Going into the peasant mindset (aka normal everyday thinking for me), I would have to say the reactor looks like one bitchin mantou oven, and the particle accelerator looks like someone let the engineers drink too much rice wine again. As for the last stamp with all the lovely smokestacks, again I remind you, that perpetual blanket of smog that shrouds most of Asia, it’s been something they’ve been working on there for a while now.