From 1899 until 1920, Russia operated post offices in China and used special stamps for mail in these areas. The first stamps were Russian stamps with the overprint КИТАЙ (the Russian word for China). There were over two dozen different denominations of old stamps used with this overprint; there were no surcharges on these.
In 1917, Russian stamps appeared for use in Chinese post offices operated by Russia without the КИТАЙ overprints, but with surcharges in dollars and cents (printed in English). Again, several stamps were used in this way, ranging from one cent to ten dollars.
