Difficulties Cataloguing China

I collect pre-1960 China and I seem to go through every China page in Scott every time I get a new stamp. I was wondering if anyone here had some shortcuts or tricks to it. Even separating Republic of China from People's Republic of China would be a great start. I have absolutely no knowledge of the language. Thanks in advance.

Ok, well here is my technique that I use, through if someone could verify it I'd appriciate it.

China (mainland) has this symbol and its always the third character:



And Taiwan has this symbol and its always the last character:



However China can also have Taiwan's symbol but its in the start. For East China and the like I'm still confused about so I have no clue on that one.

Just hard slog Tony,
Bury the pride, and post them here
I now have 1,700 images, and I just dial in the value
tablet and browse the image database, but it still confuses on occaisions.

The most ornery being the "heavenly gate of peace issues"
they exist as well in Taiwan only the clouds differ
on some.
Then you get a Revenue and you can spend 30 minutes
trying to find it in Gibbons

Folks here like to ID, so post 'em.

Tony, this list might help. Sorry I've had to print and scan it, since apparently I can't display Chinese characters here:



Look for all the characters in each string coming together, and of course, in older stamps, they may well be written right to left, and in different fonts.

But if you want a bit of an intellectual exercise, why not try learning the basic of Chinese characters? It does require a bit of memory work, but the characters aren't nearly as formidable as they appear, once you start to learn them.

Thanks Tony... The above picture is superb. Now I'll know what I'll be doing tonight.

Happy to help, scb. If anyone needs any more names, let me know, and I'll post them.

Thanks a bunch, Tony. Sure makes life a lot easier.