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Rare Taiwan-blunder PRC stamp sells

A 1968 stamp entitled “The Whole Country is Red” is pictured at an auction in Hong Kong on Sunday. The stamp, which was pulled from circulation because it failed to include Taiwan as part of China, sold for a record US$475,000. PHOTO: AFP

A stamp that was pulled from circulation the day it was issued because it failed to show Taiwan as part of China fetched a record price at auction in Hong Kong on Sunday.

The rare 1968 stamp was picked up by an unidentified Asian buyer, who paid HK$3.68 million (US$475,000), a record for a Chinese stamp.

Six other smaller stamps of the same design were also sold for a combined HK$2.93 million.

Designer Wan Weisheng (萬維生), who watched the hammer fall, said he had feared he would be punished for his mistake.

“For a long time I was really worried that I would be jailed,” he said. “Officials told me that it was a really big mistake, but in the end nothing happened.”

Wan and other designers had been commissioned to make a series of stamps during the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long period of mass political and social upheaval in China starting in the mid-sixties.

His stamp features a worker holding The Little Red Book, a book of Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) quotations, and a red China map in the background.

On the map is written “The whole country is red” (Quanguo shanhe yi pian hong, 全國山河一片紅).

However, Wan left Taiwan uncolored, sparking a recall of the stamps just half a day after their release.
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