"During early periods, vessels sailing from England to China had to go around the Cape of Good Hope of Africa, and used to take as long as four to six months to get there. Since the completion of the construction of the Suez Canal and its opening in October of 1869, this Sino-England mail route via Suez cut transit time to 40 or 60 days. Furthermore, after the "Via Siberia" mail route was put in use in October of 1903, the time was cut even shorter to three weeks for a letter to reach any country in Europe.
From "Via Suez" to "Via Siberia", these remarkable changes of the mail route for East-West communication were very vital improvements of mail transportation in Postal History... ...
1) Via Suez Mail Route
1869-1903
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Carried on normally.
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1904-1907
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Russo-Japanese War declared, mail transportation between East and West had to shifted to "Via Suez" as the "Via Siberia" route closed... ...
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2) Via Siberia Mail Route
1903-1904
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An announcement was made by the government of the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and international mail route via Siberia was officially opened for use.
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1904-1907
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As the Russo-Japanese War was declared, the mail route via Siberia had to be closed.
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May 1907
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The Siberian Mail Route resumed in operation... ...
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As for the indication of VIA SIBERIA on used covers it is ver rarely seen. The reason is that as the 19th century correspondence sent through the post office were very few and hardly ever collected by philatelist... ..."
Extracted from A Concise Catalogue of Postal Cancellation of China (1872 - 1949) by Paul Ke-Shing Chang, page 508-511.