TO most of us, a bed is just a place to sleep. But Hu Guoxi sees something beyond the pillow. He collects headboards.

His collection of the head panels of beds now numbers 100 and includes some dating back to the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911).

Hu developed an addiction for collecting while still in primary school. At that young age, he collected anything he could get his hands on, from candy wrappers and cigar bands to stamps and coins.

In 1989, burglars stole more than 10 books of a stamp collection he had spent years amassing, including a few rare issues.

Hu didn't have the heart to start all over again, so he turned his attention to collecting antique ceramics and porcelain ware. Soon he had amassed another huge collection.

While scouring the countryside for the antiques, Hu stumbled across old wood-carved bed frames. Many lay in discarded heaps, damaged by sun and rain. They were selling as firewood.

"I felt a prick of pain in my heart, which prompted me to start collecting headboards," he said. "Many had exquisitely engraved wood patterns that spoke to the times of our ancestors."

Motivation

Like most collectibles, if you gather enough of anything carefully enough, yesterday's junk becomes today's valuables. Some of Hu's headboards are now valued in the thousands of yuan, but Hu said it's not money that motivates him.

Rather, it's the intricate artwork that adorns them. Carpenters in ancient times devoted careful attention to carving wooden headboards. Headboards, he said, trace the evolution of culture in terms of where we sleep.

The bed has a long history in China. People in primitive societies used branches or animal hides to sleep on. The pattern of a bed appears in jiaguwen, the oracle scripts carved by people during the Shang Dynasty (16th-11th BC).

Once weaving evolved, the mat became the bed of choice.

The earliest bed of a more formal structure was found in a tomb in Henan Province and is believed to be date back to the Warring States Period (476-221 BC).

The height and decoration of beds in ancient societies were symbols of fortune and privilege.

The headboard is the most conspicuous part of a bed and, therefore, carries the most prominence in ancient furniture.

His collection contains examples of carved historical figures, cranes symbolizing longevity, magpies symbolizing good fortune, peonies representing wealth and grapes giving blessings for more sons.

Hu said his most prized piece is a set of headboards dating back to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). They are engraved with delicate figures of deer and crane, conveying harmony and auspiciousness. Hu said he bought the set for 10,000 yuan (US$1,582.83) in 2005.

"Headboards made in the north have fewer colors and are simple and unsophisticated," he said. "In the south, they were more sumptuous, made with vermilion lacquer and gilding."

Hu's private passion might seem a far cry from his everyday job as manager of the Minhang branch of Insurer Manulife-Sinochem Life. He said his collection is a door to another world, a delightful escape from job pressures and the daily stresses of urban life.

"I hope to publish a book about headboard culture when I retire," he said. "Then I will have the time to do more research on my treasures."

Dear Sir: You may think me valuable

In China, the country credited with inventing modern-day papermaking, email and other wireless modes are fast overtaking letter writing as a means of keeping in touch. Huang Yong rues the passing of what he sees as a golden era in human communications.

Huang is an aficionado of the art of letter writing. He has a collection of more than 3,000 letters.

"Letters are of great value in recording history as well as calligraphy and literature research," said Huang, a member of the Minhang District Collection Research Association. "Most importantly, each letter has a singular value."

A letter was known as chijian during the Warring States Period (476-221 BC) and the Wei and Jin Dynasties, when characters were written on slender bamboo sheets called jian. Ancient letters were also written on thin wooden sheets and silk, using wooden boxes as envelopes.

That all started to change when a eunuch named Cai Lun invented a modern papermaking technique in about 100 AD.

Passion for collection

Huang's passion for collecting began at a young age. He started off with candy wrappers and tickets from tourism spots. Then he evolved into stamps, coins, ink stones and paintings.

His passion for letters started with a chance meeting on a bus with his former primary school teacher Xie Lengmei, one of the founders of the district's Collection Research Association.

They got to talking, and Xie ended up suggesting that Huang turn his passion for collecting to letters because calligraphy works and paintings were already so popular that their prices had skyrocketed.

Huang learnt from Xie that the cursive script hand scroll written by Lu Ji, a literature master in the Western Jin Dynasty (AD 265-316), the earliest Chinese work of calligraphy in existence today, is really a letter.

Xie also shared with Huang his letters from celebrities such as calligrapher Jiang Fengyi, painter Li Dinglong and Qiao Mu.

Huang read the letters carefully and thus was his new passion born.

Huang collected the letters of calligraphers Wang Suichang (1900-89) and Su Juxian (1882-1991), Chen Lifu (1900-2001), a high-ranking official of the Kuomintang government, and painters Shi Nanchi (1908-2003) and Wang Kangle (1907-2006).

Huang's favorite is a letter from Zheng Yimei (1895-1992), a noted historian who himself was a letter collector. Huang has the letter framed on his desk.

Huang has made friends with a number of other collectors who share his passion and exchange information. Among them is Zhou Tuimi, a former staff member of the Shanghai Research Institute of Culture and History, who has helped Huang build his collection.

Thanks to his intervention, Huang was able to buy letters written by Feng Minchang, a famous scholar during the reign of Emperor Qianlong (1735-96), from one of Zhou's friends at a nominal price.

Huang calls the Feng letters the "treasure of my collection."

As letter writing wanes as a cultural custom, letters are becoming a more valuable commodity. That makes it hard for small collectors like Huang.