The Year of the Rooster stamp will be released at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle on January 5th, reports NBC News.
“The new stamp’s image of a red envelope with the rooster is a meaningful recognition of Asian American cultural heritage,” Wing Luke Museum executive director Beth Takekawa said.
Artist Kam Mak painted the central design of the stamp: an intricate rooster among flowers on a red envelope. Also featured are the late Clarence Lee’s original rooster design and Lau Bun’s Chinese calligraphic character for “Rooster,” both having been featured on a stamp from the original USPS Lunar New Year series from 1992.
The stamp will also be released January 5th for nationwide purchase as part of the Celebrating Lunar New Year series by the United States Postal Service, .
Red envelopes filled with cash are typical Lunar New Year gifts for children in several Asian cultures. For the lunar calendar, with each year comes a different zodiac animal to represent it, with 12 animals in total; 2016 was represented by the monkey, and the rooster, also referred to as the chicken, will soon become highly visible among many Asian shops for the upcoming 2017 year.
The Lunar New Year gained much more recognition among mainstream media in 2016 during the Year of the Monkey; popular department stores even began to sell T-shirts with monkeys and Chinese characters.
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