Stamp furore: Row set to dragon and on

IT WAS designed to mark the Year of the Dragon in China on 23 January. But the stamp, which went on sale yesterday, attracting crowds who flock to buy a memento to mark the new lunar year, has been condemned as too ferocious.

Zhang Yihe, a Chinese writer, wrote on her Sina Weibo blog that she was “scared to death” when she first saw the red and yellow creature with scales and claws. Another writer, Tan Xudong, called it an “incomparably ugly dragon-year stamp”.

Designer Chen Shaohua acknowleged the stamp had people blowing hot and cold.