A design featuring the glowing blue sea sparkles of Matsu has won Chunghwa Post’s annual stamp contest.
“In late spring and early summer the sea in Matsu glows blue at night, thanks in part to the glimmering light [emitted by] organisms,” the company wrote in the description of the stamp on its Web site.
The photograph used in the winning design, titled Blue Tears, was “one in a million,” it said.
The stamp, which has a face value of NT$20, was released on Aug. 9 last year as part of a set of four stamps featuring scenic and ecological themes from Matsu, the company said.
The Matsu collection is the third in the company’s Taiwan Scenery series, which previously featured Taitung County and Tainan, it said.
The three other stamp designs in the Matsu collection are a lighthouse on Dongyin Isle (東引島), Cinbi Village (芹壁) and the Chinese crested tern, the company said.
All 760,000 sets were sold out soon after they were released, the company said, adding that postcards with the Blue Tears stamp imprinted on them are still available for purchase in Matsu.
Coming in second in the contest was a design from the “Starfish” collection in the Marine Life series that features the Fromia monilis, followed by the Tainan collection in the Taiwan Scenery series, the company said.
The purpose of the contest is to encourage stamp collection and understand people’s preferences as a reference for stamp designs, company spokesperson Chien Liang-lin (簡良璘) said.
This year’s contest received more than 40,000 physical votes cast through postcards and more than 300,000 online votes, Chien said.
Blue Tears received more than half of the votes, the company said.
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