There are many passionate stamp collectors in our daily life, among whom, the 74-year-old Chen Fuyou living in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province has added his personal characteristic creation into the collection by drawing various hand-painted images on the envelope according to the stamp patterns.

During the 2022 Winter Olympics, Chen Fuyou collected a lot of stamps about the Winter Olympics. As soon as Chen received the stamps, he began his creation immediately. With a brush and a box of paints, Chen Fuyou used simple painting tools to create a wonderful Chinese-style hand-painted cartoon on the envelope. In a short time, the vivid cartoon images of Bing Dwen Dwen, athletes and other elements of the Winter Olympics came alive onto the paper.

Chen Fuyou introduced his artworks on the display wall (Photo/ Zhejiang News)

With the successful conclusion of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Chen has recently turned his attention to the mascots of the Hangzhou Asian Games, namely, Congcong, Chenchen and Lianlian.

“Jiangnan Yi” or “Memories of Jiangnan (south of the Yangtze River)” is a combined name given to the trio, and it comes from a poem by Bai Juyi, a renowned poet of the Tang dynasty, in which he wrote, “When I remember Jiangnan, most fondly I remember Hangzhou.” Chen Fu has drawn a lot of creative inspiration from the profound histories and poetic descriptions of Hangzhou.

The hand-painted envelopes created by Chen Fuyou (Photo/Zhejiang News)

Speaking of the reason for the creation of hand-painted envelopes, Chen Fuyou referred to it as a coincidence. He was an ordinary philatelist and kept the habits for decades. There was a time when some old friends of his asked him to help them paint some zodiac pictures on the envelopes, little did he know that this painting would open up a new world in his philatelic journey. Over the past 10 years, he has created nearly 10,000 hand-painted envelopes, from zodiac animals to cityscape, from domestic hotspots to international current affairs.

Editor: Huang Yan