The Postal Service issued a 34-cent Lunar New Year: Year of the Snake commemorative stamp in Oakland, California, on January 20, 2001. The stamp was designed and illustrated by Clarence Lee of Honolulu, Hawaii.
This stamp is the ninth in the award-winning Lunar New Year series of twelve stamps. Clarence Lee, an American of Chinese descent, created the stamp art, which combines a paper-cut design of a snake with traditional calligraphy drawn by Lau Bun. The Chinese characters translate as "Year of the Snake."
Sterling Sommer printed 55 million stamps in panes of twenty. The stamps were printed in the offset process with microprinting "USPS."
