Postal merchandise for Year of the Rabbit unveiled

Highlights from this year's offerings include a stamp album produced in collaboration with the Palace Museum in Beijing. It includes stamps showing rabbit-themed artifacts in the collection of the former Forbidden City. Another album includes selected stamps issued by China Post since 1983 to show the development of postage and stamp design through four decades.

The company will issue the annual zodiac stamps on Jan 5. Every year an artist is asked to design two zodiac stamps, and the designer for the Year of the Rabbit is Huang Yongyu, age 98, who has been commissioned with the task several other times. One stamp shows a blue rabbit holding a pencil and an envelope and text wishing for wisdom; another stamp shows three rabbits colored white, yellow and light blue running head to toe in a circle with a red background showing sketches of curling clouds. At the center is the Jade Rabbit, a companion of Chang'e, the moon goddess in Chinese mythology, making the elixir of life under a magic laurel tree.