Stamp design: To meet demand among philatelists and promote Chinese culture, the Directorate General of Posts has once again asked the National Palace Museum to suggest "Bird Manual" works by palace painters during the Ching dynasty as the basis for 4 stamps to be released on October 9, 2002. ( Earlier sets of bird manual stamps were issued in 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2001. ) The four birds chosen for the stamps are the Vernal Hanging Parrot, White-rumped Munia, White-headed Greenfinch and the Yunnan Greenfinch. Chien Sung-tsun of the National Palace Museum is in charge of planning the stamps.There are a total of 60 page spreads in National Palace Museum's Bird Manual collection. The Directorate has once again chosen four of these for a set of stamps. For aesthetic reasons, exquisite parts of the paintings have been chosen for the stamps and removed from their original backgrounds. Visually striking stamps are the result.