How to read Chinese numerals

There are two different schemes of numbers. The financial style is used to prevent forgery/alteration in records. You can see how the simple characters can be altered easily.

Currency

 * Chinese stamps and overprints used/use the financial characters.
 * Japanese stamps and overprints mostly used/use the simple characters. The Dragon issues are the most notable exception.
 * For denominations, the currency character always follows the string of numerals.
 * For Chinese stamps, those currency characters are:
 * Cent trad.png = cent
 * Jiao.png = jiao, a dime or ten-cent piece. So two jiao equals 20 cents.
 * Yuan II trad.png = yuan or dollar. When expressed in arabic numerals, the "$" is used.
 * Yuan I.png = also yuan or dollar
 * Yuan modern.png = yuan or dollar, the modern character
 * For Japanese stamps, currency characters are:
 * Sen old.png = sen, found on the Dragon issues. Otherwise, postage stamps have a value expressed in arabic numerals with the currency value sometimes just implied to be "sen".
 * Numbers always include the character for tens, hundreds, etc. So "two hundred and seventy-five" is written as "2-100-7-10-5".

Dates
You'll need to know the basic divisions to read postmarks. They are:
 * Year character.png = year
 * Month character.png = month
 * Day char 120.png = day

In addition, other numeral characters are used in cancels: Be aware that very flat versions of these characters are used in cancels due to space limitations. So "20+5+day character" would be the 25th, just like using the Gregorian calendar.
 * Twenty char.png = 20
 * Thirty char.png = 30

China
Now, some goofball online is going to tell you how to deal with lunar calendar stuff like intercalary months and stems. With the creation of the Republic of China that stuff was no longer needed for dates after that point. The first year of the republic was 1912, so that was year 1 and so forth. This system was and is still used by both Chinas. In other words, add the year date to 1911 and you can determine a (later) year date.

Japan
Things are worse for Japanese dates. Year dates are based on emperor reigns. So, it is useful to roughly know the time frame of the stamps or markings involved. Also, years are based on exactly when the emperor ascends the throne to the day so that Gregorian calendar years can be split between two reign years. Meanwhile, months and days remain unchanged/don't reset. 
 * Meiji era began in 1868. So add the year number to 1867 to get the Gregorian year.
 * Taishō era began in 1912. So add the year number to 1911.
 * Shōwa era began in 1926. So add the year number to 1925.
 * Heisei era began in 1989. So add the year number to 1988.
 * Reiwa era began in 2019. So add the year number to 2018.



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