We may still, as we did in elementary school, scorn philately as a hobby for losers, but now we realize that there's good money in it if you have some business sense. Take for example the first batch of Chinese postal stamps issued in 2007, featuring a pig with five piglets (because the Year of the Pig is coming up) and the characters for ding hai nian (丁亥年), which is the name of the upcoming year under the system used in the traditional Chinese calendar. In Shanghai people lined up outside places where stamps were being sold and predictably, as supply ran low and then ran out, prices rose from the original price of 12 RMB to 45 RMB for a pack of 10. In the article we just linked to, the stamp is called the 富贵猪 (fu gui zhu or "rich pig") while in another article what appears to be the same stamp is called the 和气猪 (he qi zhu) which means "the agreeable or pleasant" pig.

Of course, everyone wants to know what their (mis)fortunes are going to be this upcoming year, and you can read your horoscope here (in Chinese) or in English here. The English one isn't too detailed, let us know in a comment if you find one that's a better read. However, our cursory reading of the English horoscope link suggests that we Snakes are going to be getting laid less than the Goats this year. Even the Rabbits are forecast to screw less than rabbits usually do.

Picture from qianlong.com.