The postal administrations of the People’s Republic of China and the Kingdom of Sweden signed an agreement to jointly issue a set of two stamps entitled «Rare Birds» with pheasants as their theme.
09.05.1997. Pheasants. Joint issue Sweden-China. Chinese Copper Pheasant (or Lady Amherst’s Pheasant) and Ring-Necked Pheasant, riginally occurring in Asia, they have been introduced to Europe and North America.
Here is a close-up of the postmark from the FDC. There are four Chinese characters on the postmark. The two on the top read as «zhen ching» meaning rare bird(s), the bottom two following the date (1997.5.9) read as «zhong kouk» meaning China. Therefore, the postmark doesn’t specify the place where it was issued. (Information by Ian Rocoto on the Philatelic Newsgroup rec.collecting.stamps.discuss, June 11, 2003).