Lunar New Year • Year of the Rooster

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, artist Clarence Lee designed the first Chinese lunar stamp, the “Year of the Rooster.” Issued in 1992, the stamp met with such success that he continued to design stamps for the rest of the 12-year series. When designing the first stamp, Lee created a distinctively modern and Chinese design, hence the paper-cut two dimensional look. On each stamp of the series, a professional calligrapher wrote Kanji characters to state the name of each stamp. Kanji is a Japanese adaptation to Chinese characters and can often be read by a variety of Asian groups from differing countries and cultures.