Dongguan’s Humen to embrace a culture-driven economy as a state-level philatelic exhibition opens

A touch of cultural glamor will once again be added to Dongguan’s Humen Town as it hosts the Second Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) Philatelic Exhibition on August 26. Beyond promoting stamp-collecting, the exhilarating event, as the GBA’s high-end cultural activity held at the national level, will also increase the cultural exchanges between cities in the region.

On top of a staggering exhibition area of 10,000 square meters housing 1,192 exhibits, the exhibition features a 2,000-square-meter multifunctional hall for side events. Essentially a state-level gathering of competitive stamp displays, the event invites 750 exhibits from the GBA’s philatelic associations, an increase of 300 exhibits from the previous session. And this would be the most appealing and much-awaited highlight. Completing this year’s philatelic event is the show of over 50 types of rare postage stamps, outnumbering any previous Guangdong-hosted exhibition of this kind.

On the side of the four-day exhibition, a wide variety of non-competitive displays were held, said Wang Xiaoqiang, the office director of the secretariat for the exhibition’s organizing committee. What merited attention, he continued, was how the debut of valuable antique stamps, such as the Penny Black, the world’s first adhesive postage stamp, and the Dalong stamps, China’s first set of stamps, and of postage stamps showcasing the GBA’s urban landscape encouraged visitors to savor what these collections had to offer.

Besides the exciting philatelic exhibition, Humen has staged a raft of other events online and offline, including the Dongguan Shopping Festival and a creative night market, in August alone in a way that drives its economy and enables a booming consumer market. The spending of the town’s businesses on promotion as a whole, expected to surpass the 10-million-yuan mark, will generate nearly 50 million yuan in sales of consumer goods.

By hosting an entirely new sort of philatelic exhibition, Humen promises to develop itself into a tourist resort with rich historical and cultural heritage, according to the town mayor Wu Qingqiu. That means the cultural feast will inspire the town to show its culture-rich image, boost consumption, and foster a stable economy.

Source: The Organizing Committee of the Philatelic Exhibition