Year of the Tiger

This commemorative miniature sheet features an illustration by Chinese artist Wang Huming.

The miniature sheet seen here, issued by Jersey Post, shows two tiger cubs playing with their mother. The Chinese hanzi (written character) for Tiger is featured in the background at the bottom right of the stamp. The narrative in Chinese characters on the sheet explains the rich history around the Chinese zodiac and the Year of the Tiger.

The Lunar New Year began on the 1st of February. It is celebrated by people from many different Asian cultures. 2022 is the Year of the Tiger, more specifically the Water Tiger. The Chinese lunar calendar has been in use for thousands of years.

The two latest tiger stamps above are from Japan, a country that has the same zodiac animals culture as China.

And below we have a magnificent year of the tiger mint stamp sheet from Japan, issued in 1950, the first zodiac stamp produced by that country.

BULCOLLECTO, one of the organisers of which is the Union of Bulgarian Philatelists, is a serious cultural event in the Balkans and it has become a tradition for collectors not only in Bulgaria but also in neighbouring countries. Here we have a stamp sheet from Bulgaria with year of the tiger images and text in the margins.

Of course we must end with two examples from China, from 1998 and 2010 respectively. More than ninety countries issue Chinese New Year stamps and it’s worth checking out the hundreds of others stocked by PostBeeld, to be found on its freestampcatalogue.com website.