Saturday 14 November 2015

HONG KONG - Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China / 中華人民共和國香港特別行政區


Hong Kong (Chinese: 香港,), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (HKSAR), is a metropolitan area and special administrative region of China in the eastern Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With over 7.4 million people of various nationalities in a 1,104-square-kilometre (426 sq mi) territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world. Hong Kong is on China's southern coast, 60 km (37 mi) east of Macau, on the east side of the mouth of the Pearl River estuary. It is surrounded by the South China Sea on all sides except the north, which neighbours the Guangdong city of Shenzhen along the Sham Chun River. The territory's 2,755 km2 (1,064 sq mi) area consists of Hong Kong Island, the Kowloon Peninsula, the New Territories, Lantau Island, and over 200 other islands.

Hong Kong became a colony of the British Empire after the Qing Empire ceded Hong Kong Island at the end of the First Opium War in 1842. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War, and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898. The whole territory was returned to China in 1997. As a special administrative region, Hong Kong maintains separate governing and economic systems from that of mainland China under a principle of "one country, two systems".

Hong Kong is a highly developed territory and ranks fourth on the UN Human Development Index. The city also has the largest number of skyscrapers of any city in the world and its residents have some of the highest life expectancies in the world. The name of the territory, first romanised as "He-Ong-Kong" in 1780, originally referred to a small inlet located between Aberdeen Island and the southern coast of Hong Kong Island. Aberdeen was an initial point of contact between British sailors and local fishermen. Although the source of the romanised name is unknown, it is generally believed to be an early phonetic rendering of the Cantonese pronunciation hēung góng. The name translates as "fragrant harbour" or "incense harbour". The simplified name Hong Kong was frequently used by 1810. The name was also commonly written as the single word Hongkong until 1926, when the government officially adopted the two-word name.

The postal system in the British colony of Hong Kong began in 1841 when the Royal Mail established the first General Post Office in the region. Between 1841 and 1862, no stamps were issued, and postmarks were used to certify payment of the postage instead. The earliest postmarks were used by military field offices, and read "MILITARY POST OFFICE CHINA" (c. 1842) and "MILITARY POST OFFICE HONG KONG" (1841-1842). An assortment of postmarks were used for civilian purposes, their contents usually a combination of "HONG KONG" and "PAID". All such postmarks were not used after the issuance of the first stamps in 1862.

The death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and the reign of King Edward VII saw the release of a new series of definitives, commonly referred to as the "bald man"'s definitives by local philatelists and stamp collectors. These definitives saw a change in spelling for the name of the colony, from "HONGKONG" to "HONG KONG". This change was kept in the definitives of King George V but was reverted to "HONGKONG" for the definitives of King George VI. No stamps for King Edward VIII were issued in Hong Kong. Apart from the differences in spelling, the stamp designs also did not agree on the translation of "cent" in Chinese. Victorian stamps featured either "先時" (sin-si) and "" (sin). Stamps of Edward VII featured "" (sin), until it was finalized as "" (kok, see Chinese jiao) during the reign of George VI. Hong Kong surrendered to Japan on 25 December 1941, marking the start of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. Postal services resumed in early 1942, with 20 or 21 Japanese definitives were introduced for use in Hong Kong. These were also overprinted with "Office of the Governor of Hong Kong" (Japanese: 香港總督部)

A set of commemorative stamp, celebrating the handover, was issued in 1997. The first definitive stamps were issued by the government on 18 October, 1999, bearing the name "HONG KONG, CHINA". The stamps featured local sights and scenes. Between 1999 and 2020, three more sets of definitives were issued: The "East and West" series (2002), the birds of Hong Kong series (2006) and the "Hong Kong UNESCO Global Geopark" series (2014).
The cover sent on October 2015, received on November 11, 2015.



Here You can see a series of stamps written as just 'Hong Kong' instead of 'Hong Kong, China'. I feel this is the perfect stamps set to prepare exclusive Hong Kong  cover because no other country's names.

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