Slania's Chinese Signatures
by Chong Meng, Singapore, June 2002

This short review of Slania's Chinese signatures tries to put some order to the way his signature changed over the years. The first table tries to make some sense of the changes that took place in his Chinese signatures, and the second table are copies of his Chinese signatures used from 1976 to 1997.

Slania's name is made up of 4 Chinese characters.  There are 6 known specimens of his signature in Chinese, although the last is probably not used.  Please read below.

• 1a)  
  This specimen are the characters used at the bottom left of the Mao Tse Tung label (used in 1976).
  Traditional Chinese characters had a more complex way of writing (traditional) which was simplified (simplified characters) after 1950. For many years, Hong Kong, Taiwan (and even Singapore) used the Traditional form, refusing to adopt the mainland's simplified form. Singapore changed in the late 60's and for a period of time, there was a mix usage (outside mainland China which used entirely simplified characters).  In this specimen, Slania used a mixture of traditional and simplified.  The second character (marked A1 ) was an old simplified version of Lan which is the word for orchid. The 4th character (marked B1) was a traditional character.
• 1b) 
  In this specimen the simplified version of Lan was used (marked A2) (Used in 1987). The 4th character was still a traditional version.  In both 1a & 1b, the fourth character (marked B1) was the old traditional way of writing Ya ( a word that addresses a person in general or a word for the sound YA).  

A blow-up of the printed signature from the bottom left corner of the Mao-Label 1976.

• Specimen 2 
  this traditional version of the character was replaced by the simplified version (marked B2) used in 1997.
• Specimen 3 
  was shown to me by Slania when he was in Singapore in Aug 1999. His mainland Chinese friends suggested he changed the first character to sound like "Sue" so that his name reads Su La Ni A. 
• Specimen 4 
  was shown to me also by Slania in August 2001 with the first two characters changed to Su A instead of Su La. It would appear that Slania has become more conscious that his name should be read by the traditional Polish pronunciation rather than the Su La Ni adopted since emigrating to Sweden. 
• Specimen 5 
  that reads Su Wa Ni A was suggested as a better sounding alternative to him during that same visit in Aug 2001. 

The actual signatures used by Slania are shown in the below table.

• Type 1a was found on the (1976?) Mao Tse Tung politician label.

• Type 1b is the signature on the 1987 Hafnia-Exhibition Card displayed on this site's page 11.   

• Type 2 is the signature on the May 1997 card that he sent me from Xian for the Pheasant Joint issue with Sweden.  For discretion reasons Mr. Chong's address has been removed digitally by the webmaster. 

While Slania brought to my attention the gradual change from Slania to Suwania, I am not sure if he has autographed for anyone using Specimens 3 and 4.  

However, I had the honour of giving a template on how to write the new versions of his name - so who knows he might have practiced writing them. With his more frequent visits to Asia, and his having expressed a love to come out here, I am sure there must be lots of his Chinese signatures floating around. (He had long autograph sessions in China during the Sweden Joint issue launch.)

While specimen 5 was discussed, he did not make a copy of it so - it is unlikely you will see this anywhere unless he is better in Chinese than I thought.  If anyone has some philatelic material with his Chinese autograph, it would be appreciated if you could scan a picture for me.  

Singapore, June 15, 2002
Chong Meng 

Addendum 17th February 2003 

He signed a card using both his romanised shortened signature and a Chinese signature type 4 during the Hafnia01 occasion in Stockholm,  I have uploaded this card and an enlarged signature.  The card was sent to me by Thomas of Atlas Häftes.  He met Slania who offered to autograph the card using his "latest" Chinese signature.  He sure is quick to use that he has decided to change!!

Singapore, February 17th, 2003
Chong Meng 

• The stamp used on this postcard from Sweden to Singapore is Sweden 1991, Scott # 1906, SG 1604.