09/Oct, I went to the post office to get a new First Day Cover and a commemorative stamp sheetlet.
However, I am a very niche philatelic enthusiast in China, because in China, most philatelic enthusiasts collect old or rare stamps (such as Daocheng Yadang stamp); I don’t collect stamps, I like to collect all kinds of envelopes and postmarks (like this postmarked First Day Cover), and I bought a souvenir sheet purely as a gift.But actually, very little generation-z people are philatelic enthusiasts.
Of course, in philatelic culture, the difference between the our generation-z and the older-generation is too huge, and we generally think that stamps are a kind of securities, and if they are not used, they are a piece of paper that has no value (I think so too); And our generation-z generally likes to collect envelopes (such as special-shaped envelopes and first day covers, and there are also train enthusiast and civil aviation enthusiast who collect clean bags from China Railway and Airlines as envelopes, Haha, I also use clean bags as envelopes).
October 9, 2024 is the 150th anniversary of the founding of the UPU, and this is a magical story!
On October 9, 1874, 22 countries signed the “Berne Treaty” (now known as the “Universal Postal Convention”) to form the “General Postal Union”, It was “incorporated” by the United Nations in 1978 and became a specialized agency for international postal affairs, eventually becoming the Universal Postal Union, which has 192 member states today.
It is now so convenient to send pen pal letters, send work contracts, write postcards and wishes, or just collect the postmark of overseas post office. All you need to do is attach the full number of stamps or postage labels of the sender country/region and drop them in the mailbox on the street or in front of the post office. Even if you want a traceable registered letter, you only need to go inside of the post office, and the staff at the manual counter will handle it for you within a minute! It is so convenient because of the work of the UPU.
However, before October 09, 1874, this was very different, in the era of no Email, no WhatsApp, no QQ, the letter was the primary means of communication, but then sent a letter or postcard, not only could not be traced (no “tracking number”), and if it was an international mail, it required extremely high postage. In the days before “PAR AVION”, when there was no unified coalition, you needed to affix stamps from each of the countries passing through, and to prevent mis deliveries and temporary route changes, you needed to “defensively” affix stamps from more countries around you, so many stamps that they could cover the back of a large envelope. Finally, under the forwarding of postal departments in many countries, your mail finally arrives at the destination, and it even takes more than 1 year to arrive.
After the establishment of the Universal Postal Union, the member states that signed the convention only need to paste the stamps of the sender country/region, the transit country recognizes the postage of the same convention country, and if it is sent to other convention countries, the convention country also has the obligation to forward it to the correct destination country free of transfer, so far, there is no need to paste the entire envelope of stamps, this behavior officially entered the history.
In subsequent years, the UPU continued to improve the efficiency of delivery, and the postal system. In the days after 2015, the rise of express (small pieces) and logistics (large pieces) has made countless new generations of kids no longer know this history of letters and stamps (it seems that the generation-z does not know, I am an exception), but the low postage of traditional mail, such as China Post CN￥1.2 or Hongkong Post HK$2.8 can send to all of China, for track the number, add the registration fee, and the most important thing is that the postmark has legal effect, which is still the choice of countless people.
What’s more, the UPU controls the postage levels of all its member countries! You will find that no matter how high the level of consumption and wages in that country, the maximum postage for ordinary letters sent by any member country to the world will not be higher than 1 euro, including plutocracy countries, the Universal Postal Union will make this level of mandatory control, so that every ordinary person can easily communicate with the world.
Today, SF-Express, as it is known to the Chinese people, is also an observer member of the UPU (observer members are not subject to postage levels).
As Postcrossing(PC) said in an email to us on October 09 (UTC+8 is already October 10):
The UPU is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates postal policies among its 192 member nations. In short, their work is the reason we have a unified and truly global postal network that works predictably across the world (and allows our hobby to exist).
The UPU allows our hobby to exist!
We send pen Pal letters, writing stories and emotions; HAM exchanging QAL cards to “visualize” the “forever” radio waves; PCer and PUer who play with postcards exchange witness thousands of kilometers of cards and postmarks.
This is the story of countless people, also countless people’s expectations.