China has issued a stamp album with over 5,000 stamps, to date the largest number of stamps in a single collection.

Inaugurating the collection on Sunday, Yang Zhikui, architect of the collection, said the 5,387 stamps in the collection were all issued half a century ago, and more than 99 percent of them had been issued to commemorate special people and events.

Limited numbers of the commemorative and special stamps are being issued, so they are very much worth collecting, he said.

The stamps depict Chinese personalities, places of interest, flowers, paintings, classic works, relics and rare animals.

The collection groups precious stamps from various periods, including stamps issued during the Kuomintang's rule on the Chinese mainland (1919-1949) as well as stamps from the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), said Liu Pingyuan, chairman of the All-China Philatelists Federation.

(Xinhua News Agency January 17, 2006)