The international city of Shanghai, to which all eyes are now] turned, formerly maintained its own, post office and issued its own poste age stamps, states "The Times." In the early days of the Shanghai Settlement there' were no postal facilities beween the ports of the China coast newly opened to foreign trade. Accordingly, in 1865, the Municipal Council decided institute a local post office of its own, serving not only Shanghai but, certain other Treaty ports, such as Ningpo, Amoy, Hankow, and Foochow. The service proved a real boon to the trading community, who, for an annual subscription of 55 taels, could have all their correspondence handled by the local post office without further charge, Later, to meet the requirements of casual patrons of the post, adhesive stamps wore provided in sceordance with a special tariff, The first Shanghai stamps appeared in August, 1865, and were purely provisional, pending the arrival of a permanent series from. England. They were produced in very primitive fashion by native printers in Shanghai, a dragon being engraved on wood by a Chinese rrtist_ and employed in conjunction with typo-set frames containing the value and inscriptions. Thee curious labels were struck off one at a time ona hand press. Genuine prints and actud counterfeit numerous. 'The emergency lasted until March 5, 1866, when some definitive postage stamps of the Shanghai local' post office engraved and printed by Messrs. Nissen and Parkes, of London, were taken into vse. The vignette common to all values shows a more borate version of the lung oF ky" dragon carrying the miraculous yok-kuang-chu ("Night shining pearl"). For greater convenience of the public tsing the local post, the postage was calculated in terms of brasy cash (1,000 to the taal), and the change is reflected in the values of the postage stamps issued between the years 1877 and 1890.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.