China? Revenues?

I will appreciate any opinion or a definitive answer :)

Definitely China revenues.

They are usually referred to as the 1913 series. I assume that yours are cancelled, though provinces overprinted the stamps in an endless variety...maybe 20,000 varieties? I can't rule out an overprint on yours.

Thank you very much, CJD.

revenue usage cancel

Thanks, k!

The cancels are the same "Office in Shanghai" (Chinese characters). These are examples of the revenue stamps used on two different sales contracts. The contracts are "poster-size", the right one dated 1912 (early usage) and the left one 1921 (late usage).

Very nice, Fotofila!

Fotofila, I've been looking and looking at the cancels in the OP, and I just can't see 'Office in Shanghai'. I can see 'Office' in the second line, but the top line appears to read Zhu Yi, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense - to me, anyway.

The cancels on your two documents also seem to be from Liaoning Province. Or am I missing something again?

I assumed Fotofila was just showing an example contract, not necessarily for Shanghai. Yes, it appears to be Liaoning.

Not sure the formal translation, but I also thought the phrase "Zhu4 Yi4 // Ban4 Shi4 Chu4", was just a generic stamp for Office of the Clerk (Clerk's Office), rather than for a specific city, business, or organization. I don't see Shanghai in there either.

But I don't collect revenues, nor postmarks, nor am I anywhere near fluent in reading Chinese, so I defer to you both...

My dear khj and Tony: You have to be a Chinese to read and understand the character for Shanghai in short form, similar to TX for Texas, MI for Mississipi. In that cancel, which is not postal cancel, it is a private seal, the top line two characters, reading from right to left,zu-hu, zu means stationed at, and hu is short form for Shanghai. The bottom line, reading from right to left, ban-su-chu, means "place of conducting business", in English, simple OFFICE.
On mine, you have identified the character ning, the name is xhiu-ning. It reads "Chamber of Commerce of Shiu-ning Prefacture." I admire your patience for checking up these character in the dictionary you have.

Thank you, Fotofila!

k

Well, that's the advantage of having the originals to hand. Now that you mention it, I can see something at the top of the character 'hu' which I didn't pay attention to on first reading.

So, Tony, are you a Chinese?

Dear all, I surely believe I've learned a lot on chinese today !

So the characters on the cancel should be like this;



-edited for typo, image error

- unechan

Fotofila, No: good Irish-Australian stock. However, my day job is translating Japanese and Chinese, among other languages.