'IT IS LIKE an addiction. Once you have one, you want the complete set in your hands!'
Cheung Kam-che's addiction is collecting stamps - in particular those issued between 1935 and 1949 in the communist-controlled area of Yanan in Shaanxi Province, the haven where the Communist Party regrouped after the Long March.
'They issued very few stamps, most of which now belong to foreign collectors,' says Mr Cheung, chairman of the Chinese Philatelic Association.
Each stamp in his collection tells a vivid story. His 'most expensive' item is a 1938 Dr Sun Yat-sen stamp which has a face value - the amount printed on the stamp - of five million currency units at the time. This is because the mainland currency of that turbulent time was worth so little.
'It was one of the last issued before the Kuomintang currency collapsed,' Mr Cheung says.
'The face value was astonishingly high - to send a letter from the mainland to Hong Kong, you had to buy 21 million [currency units'] worth of stamps in those days!'
