(Reporter: He Baoxi; Correspondent: Zhou Huashan) On June 18th, Zigui, Qu Yuan’s hometown, was celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival, and the releasing ceremony of the special stamps of Qu Yuan was held there. The stamps were jointly unveiled by heads of the Yichang Municipal People's Government and the China Post Group Corporation Hubei Branch.

　　At the ceremony, a set of 2 stamps and a miniature sheet were issued; the names of the pictures on the stamps are respectively The Sorrow Song of Lisao, Explorations And Enquiry to Heaven and The portrait of Qu Yuan. The full set of stamps has a face value of 8.40 yuan and its designer is Li Yunzhong, a young Mongolian painter, who is good at portraying figures in Chinese classic novels, historical figures and comic strips. And he once designed stamps such as the first and second groups of Chinese Classical Literary Masterpieces - Journey to the West, Xuan Zang and The Moon at Mid-Autumn Festival.

　　The poems shine for thousands of years, and the stamps record past and present things. Absorbing the essence of Chu Ci, the designer integrated his imagination with traditional Chinese painting techniques in the creation of them. In The Sorrow Song of Lisao, Qu Yuan is portrayed sitting in front of the writing desk with a writing brush in hand, thinking and wearing a frown, which recreated the scene of his being estranged from the Chu King and subsequent writing of his Lisao. In the background of the portrait, there are orchid, dragon, phoenix and other things as described in the poem. In Explorations and Questions about the Heaven, Qu Yuan looks up at the sky with one hand held upward, standing against the wind with raging waves pounding on the bank below, which recreated the scene of his creation of Questions about the Heaven in his later years of exile. The drawing reflects Qu Yuan's spiritual activity of exploring political ideals through doubting and querying "the relationship between heaven and human, and the changes of times". In The Image of Qu Yuan, which shows a scholar official’s love for his country, the poet holds a bamboo slip with both hands, walking forward, with rolling waves in the background, a metaphor for the poet’s suicidal jump into the river to end his tragic life. The miniature sheet expresses the immortality of Qu Yuan spirit and people's nostalgia for him.

　　It is reported that it is for the third time Qu Yuan appears on stamps, the first and second times being in 1953 and 1994, which is unique in the history of stamps of ancient Chinese characters, expressing Chinese people’s remembrance and steady inheritance of Qu Yuan's patriotism and noble personality. The theme stamp book Qu Yuan's Hometown, Poetic Yichang issued at the same time, was designed through AR (augmented reality technology) for the first time in the province, thus becoming a highlight of this launching ceremony, with its publicity effect enhanced through multimedia and 3D simulation technology.