So much fine print, and in Chinese! I’m not sure that this postcard/map is of a large enough scale to be useful, since I can’t even make out the characters without my glasses, and even then just barely. Clicking on the map gives me a scale that might be useful. Guess if I ever find myself on the subway in Shanghai, I’ll have to bring along an iPad. And a Chinese dictionary.

Check out some other great Wednesday postcards today at Postcard Perfect.

I hate to admit it, but the first thought that popped into my head upon seeing this image of a bear and a rabbit was the old joke about whether or not feces sticks to their fur, which is rated PG. But these two are clearly friends. The bear is either copping a feel, or he’s shielding her from all those flying apples. Either way, it’s clear that they’re close.

This card comes from Tun, a young Chinese girl who would like to remind you that “everyday is a sunshine day!”

The Gu-ge (or Guge) Kingdom was founded in the 9th Century, one of many feudal kingdoms in western Tibet. Situated on trade routes from India and Kashmir, the kingdom thrived until the 1650s, when it was besieged by Muslim invaders from the Ladakh kingdom in India. Today, there are no descendants.

The buildings are literally carved out of the rock, and many murals, statues and other artifacts survive today, to the great delight of Tibetan Buddhists.

Today is Postcard Friendship Friday; I wish the U.S. treated its friends a little better. All the “Free Tibet” signs and T-shirts have been put away. The Dalai Lama just visited Washington, DC and the President decided not to meet with him; instead, we lit up the Empire State Building in red and yellow to celebrate 60 years of Communist rule in China. Perhaps the Dalai Lama can take comfort in the fact that, lately, we’ve been snubbing all of our other allies, too.

Vicky sent me this amazing postcard from Hong Kong. Unfortunately, the postcard is completely in Chinese and Vicky’s message (at right), while adorable, did nothing to elucidate me regarding this view.

This building almost seems to be built into the rock. Am I looking at it right? What could this building be? It looks like there’s neon in the window so it may be a shop of some kind, or perhaps a teahouse. For that matter, it wouldn’t look too out of place in Diagon Alley.

The Missive Maven’s postcard of a Shanghai beauty hawking Hatamen cigarettes put me in mind that I have some similar postcards.  This is one of a set of eight postcards featuring reproductions of posters by the Xie Xing Long advertising company, which flourished in the 1920s-1930s.  Naturally, she gets the pretty girl; all of the cards in my set are on the same order as this one, showing a picture of the product, along with the name of the product in Chinese.  Mine is set #2; there are at least 28 different sets of these postcards all made by the same company in Shanghai. Their trademark is pictured at right.

Being Chinese, the back of this postcard is in Chinese fashion, vertical, with the area for the address and stamp in the top half, and the message area in the bottom half. It’s also very large, measuring 120 x 180 mm (about 4-3/4 by 7-1/8 inches).

Thanks to an online Chinese character dictionary, I was able to verify that the Chinese text does in fact say “ha ta men” (read in Chinese from right to left) which, as near as I can tell, means something like “it is the sound of laughter through the gate.”  It may also mean “the sound of her laughter through the gate,” which to me is a much more evocative phrase. I hope it’s the latter.