By Clara Wong, stamp collector, nostalgia archivist, third-generation Hong Konger

My grandfather had a ritual. Every Sunday, we would slip away to Cat Street, the narrow antique market on Upper Lascar Row where time seemed to collect like dust on jade carvings and porcelain teapots. I was six. He’d hold my hand as we drifted past stalls selling lacquer boxes, Cultural Revolution posters, and gramophones that hadn’t played in decades. But we always stopped at the same table—a small wooden case filled with stamp albums.

One afternoon, he lifted a pale rose British colonial stamp from its sleeve, the profile of Queen Victoria still visible beneath faded postmarks. He placed it in my palm and whispered, “Let this take you places.” The paper was dry and feather-light, but in that moment it felt heavy with promise.

Years have passed. My grandfather is gone, taken by age while I was still in university. I am in my thirties now, back in Hong Kong after a stint in Singapore, and I still carry that Queen Victoria stamp—tucked into a glassine envelope as carefully as a pressed flower. I collect more now, traveling not only to cities but into their postal histories.

On a trip to São Paulo two years ago, I wandered into a flea market and found a 1989 Brazilian stamp honoring Marilda “Martha” Popp, a poet whose work I later searched for online. Printed alongside her portrait was a line in Portuguese:

“Eu nasci num berço de pedras e pedras tem sido o meu leito; de pedras tem sido os meus versos no rolar e bater de tantas pedras.”

This roughly translates to: “I was born in a cradle of stones and stones have been my bed; my verses have been of stones in the rolling and striking of so many stones.”

I didn’t even hesitate—I bought it for the price of a coffee, the seller slipping it into a crinkled paper packet as if passing me a secret.

In London, I stumbled across the iconic UK 1st Class Machin Stamp—the unmistakable profile of Queen Elizabeth II, still moving letters from one end of Britain to the other, but holding it in my hand felt like holding a tiny, enduring piece of design history.

New Zealand offered me something rarer: a 1930 Health Stamp, semi-postal, issued to raise funds for public health. It depicted a nurse—cap perched at an angle—looking calm and assured, a reminder of a time when the world believed in charity through postage. The dealer in Wellington smiled when I recognized it immediately, saying, “Not many know this one.”

And then there was Poland. Warsaw in late autumn, where I found a 1965 Sailing Championship Stamp at an outdoor stall, commemorating the Finn class world championship. A tiny sailor leans into the wind, white spray flicking from the bow. Even on paper, the sense of motion is perfect—you can almost feel the pull of the sail.

These stamps aren’t worth much to anyone else. They wouldn’t make an auction catalogue. But to me, they’re a map. The Brazil stamp carries the weight of its poet’s words. The UK Machin reminds me of rain on brick streets. The New Zealand Health Stamp hums with the quiet dignity of a nurse’s ward. The Polish sailor leans eternally into the wind, chasing a horizon that never arrives.

I still go back to Cat Street. The stalls change owners, prices climb, but every so often I’ll find an old Hong Kong definitive tucked between cheap reproductions—a bauhinia blossom, a Star Ferry chugging across the harbor. I buy them not because they’re rare, but because I imagine my grandfather might have picked them up himself.

Late at night, I sort my collection. I lay the stamps on my desk in rows—by color, by country, by the whim of the evening. The Queen Victoria stamp is always first, the anchor to every journey. When I touch it, I hear my grandfather’s voice again: “Let this take you places.”

And it has.