More on Arsenal Stamps DB, DP + Single Chinese character + serial number

[Power Surge]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's NONE of those options.

Chinese characters are very specific, and there can be a huge difference in meaning between a slanted line and straight line between two similar characters.

The lower left leg of the stamp is clearly 90 degrees straight to the left. The Chinese are pretty good with stamps. I can't see them making a mistake like that or being too lazy to slant that leg.

Just my opinion.

[running-man]

Probably best to wait until we get a better image of the stamp. 

[pcke2000]

The options for 西 are:

Xining 西宁市 in Qinghai
Xi'an 西安市 in Shaanxi
and Xichang 西昌市 in Sichuan.

Of the three, I'd guess it would be Xi'an as Shaanxi a is a well known SKS fabrication location. 



We certainly need another (better) stamp image to narrow it down between 西 and 四

very difficult to tell which one the character actually represents (without knowing the arsenal history or the official arsenal codes).

[pcke2000]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's NONE of those options.

Chinese characters are very specific, and there can be a huge difference in meaning between a slanted line and straight line between two similar characters.

The lower left leg of the stamp is clearly 90 degrees straight to the left. The Chinese are pretty good with stamps. I can't see them making a mistake like that or being too lazy to slant that leg.

Just my opinion.

It's common to see different writing styles in actual stamping or writing, which would not cause confusion to native speakers though. For example, if you look carefully at their stamping of '六' and '式' in 'Type 56', you will see the differences.

[running-man]

The options for 西 are:

Xining 西宁市 in Qinghai
Xi'an 西安市 in Shaanxi
and Xichang 西昌市 in Sichuan.

Of the three, I'd guess it would be Xi'an as Shaanxi a is a well known SKS fabrication location. 



We certainly need another (better) stamp image to narrow it down between 西 and 四

very difficult to tell which one the character actually represents (without knowing the arsenal history or the official arsenal codes).

That's the reason for my original guess of Siping as it's the only one I was able to find in the northeast portion of the country. All the others have been found in the NE provinces: Jilin, Heilongjiang, & Liaoning. We haven't seen them sprout up from other areas like Hunan, Siuchan, Chongqing, etc. 

[Boris Badinov]

Haven't read the whole thread, so I'm just tossing this in more or less blindly. Via Google translator:

[running-man]

Direct translation of the character doesn't really give you much info Boris.  We tried that a long time ago and got nowhere.  For example, 丹 = Dān.  Translates to: "Red, Cinnabar, Pellet, or Powder” and 白 = Bái. Translates to: “White, Showy, Arctic, Blank, Clear, Plain”.  There are tons of different meanings just within those two characters, but the context isn't there for us to identify which translation might be right.  The OP of this thread caused us to look at things from a different angle.  In this case, those Chinese characters don't mean what they literally translate to, they are abbreviations of city names.  In this case, 丹 is the city abbreviation for 丹东市 which is the Chinese name for Dandong and 白 comes from 白城市 which is the Chinese name for Baicheng. 

The Chinese have used similar abbreviations for the various provinces on their license plates since a standard was adopted in 1992 with cities identified by an A thru Z code immediately following.  This abbreviation technique didn't spring up out of nothing, so I think it pretty plausible that a similar abbreviation format for cities/provinces has been used since these type 56's were built all those years ago:

[Loose}{Cannon]

Bingo

[Phosphorus32]

The options for 西 are:

Xining 西宁市 in Qinghai
Xi'an 西安市 in Shaanxi
and Xichang 西昌市 in Sichuan.

Of the three, I'd guess it would be Xi'an as Shaanxi a is a well known SKS fabrication location. 



We certainly need another (better) stamp image to narrow it down between 西 and 四

very difficult to tell which one the character actually represents (without knowing the arsenal history or the official arsenal codes).

That's the reason for my original guess of Siping as it's the only one I was able to find in the northeast portion of the country. All the others have been found in the NE provinces: Jilin, Heilongjiang, & Liaoning. We haven't seen them sprout up from other areas like Hunan, Siuchan, Chongqing, etc. 

I favor Siping as being consistent with the Northeast China region. The fact that it's apparently a partial stamp or unfortunate lighting accident in the photo, makes me reticent to throw out the restriction to the three provinces of Northeast China.

In fact, I've been pondering whether the D in DB or DP stands for Northeast, in other words, Dōngběi in Pinyin. Can't come up with anything reasonable for B or P, unless DB means Dōngběi and DP means something else. It'd probably help a lot if I knew Mandarin  Maybe pcke2000 has some ideas.

In the map below the DB cities are surrounded by green dashes and the DP by red. I made this map before the Siping proposal.



I've mentioned before that I'm not in favor of the Destination Bangladesh or Pakistan hypothesis, with my counter-argument summed up as, why English abbreviations?

[Boris Badinov]

I guess I kinda figured the literal translations had already been parsed.

[Boris Badinov]

Two questions:

1) Are the DP and DB guns isolated to a specific date range?
I'm not familiar with the method of dating with all of the serials associated with these stamps --i.e. (721)prefixes, and five and six digit serials with 0 or 00 placeholders. etc.

2) Might the DP and DB designations indicate a method of fabrication instead of a distinct arseanal location?
 
For example-- the various parts and assemblies were manufactured via "farm industry" network, with each distinct part  or assembly manufactured at a different point on the map or within a specific region. The distinct city stamps perhaps possibly indicating assembly locations only, or terminal destination points for shipping/distribution or export. Essentially: there is no specific arsenal stamp because no specific arsenal produced the DP and DB stamped guns.

...just some ideas

[Boris Badinov]

One more question:

Are there any known similarities to with the serial stamps on  Chinese commerical products (radios, electronics etc) produced within the same period as the DP and DB guns?

[running-man]

Two questions:

1) Are the DP and DB guns isolated to a specific date range?
I'm not familiar with the method of dating with all of the serials associated with these stamps --i.e. (721)prefixes, and five and six digit serials with 0 or 00 placeholders. etc.

2) Might the DP and DB designations indicate a method of fabrication instead of a distinct arseanal location?
 
For example-- the various parts and assemblies were manufactured via "farm industry" network, with each distinct part  or assembly manufactured at a different point on the map or within a specific region. The distinct city stamps perhaps possibly indicating assembly locations only, or terminal destination points for shipping/distribution or export. Essentially: there is no specific arsenal stamp because no specific arsenal produced the DP and DB stamped guns.

...just some ideas

They are good questions and unfortunately I don't have the answers.  We've been able to date a very few DB/DP guns, but most have extremely non-standard S/Ns.  The one we have (tentatively) dated actually has double stamps, with a DB and a [0223] arsenal stamp.  See: http://sks-files.com/index.php?topic=1314.0 for a fun read.  Maybe we can get padams to re-upload his photos to flesh out that thread...there were really interesting markings on the bottom of that rifle that lent credence to it being a '72 produced gun...

[running-man]

One more question:

Are there any known similarities to with the serial stamps on  Chinese commerical products (radios, electronics etc) produced within the same period as the DP and DB guns?

No idea on this one.  Interesting thought though. 

[Phosphorus32]

I guess I didn't detail my issues with the DB/DP abbreviations in this thread, so bear with me 

I don't dispute that China has had arms deals with Pakistan and Bangladesh. China's arms exporting approach seems to be: sell to whoever will buy. Therefore, even though these two South Asian countries have not been on friendly terms before, during or since the horrific 1971 war that broke up predominantly Hindu Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) from predominantly Muslim West Pakistan, now simply Pakistan, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised that China sold Type 56 SKSs to both countries, even in the early 70's when the wounds were fresh.

My issue is with the widely accepted meaning for DB and DP, and as I understand it, these meanings are what has led to the widely accepted belief that these were supposed to go to Bangladesh and Pakistan, although these of course came to the US from China, not those two countries. If the DB and DP interpretations followed after some other evidence that China specifically exported these SKSs to Bangladesh and Pakistan, then I missed that and would be very interested in that information.

From Google Translate we have:

English: DB, Destination Bangladesh
Chinese: 孟加拉目的地
Pinyin: Mèngjiālā mùdì de
Bengali: গন্তব্য বাংলাদেশ
Bengali transliteration: Gantabya Bānlādēśa

English: DP, Destination Pakistan
Chinese: 目標巴基斯坦
Pinyin: Mùbiāo Bājīsītǎn
Urdu: منزل پاکستان
There is no transliteration available for Urdu but Arabic is: Alwijhat Bakistan

So, what has been widely accepted is that these SKSs have an English abbreviation for arms that were produced by China and supposedly some of which were exported to Bangladesh or Pakistan, where English is not the official language for any of the three parties and the translations in the official languages do not give DB or DP as logical abbreviations.

I know I'm in the minority in questioning the "Destination Pakistan/Bangladesh hypothesis", that's okay 

My alternative hypothesis of D = Dōngběi = Northeast (China), one of their names for these three provinces, is also a bit weak, since I can't explain the meaning of B or P, but I still think it's more likely than the Pakistan/Bangladesh hypothesis.

Okay, that's my two yuan on the subject 

[Loose}{Cannon]

Your completely right Phos.   The Bang/Pak is a big ole wag that I'm not convinced of either. 

As far as the latin use of characters.... Welp, it wouldn't be the first time. 

[Boris Badinov]

四 is also Chinese for the number 4.

Could it be a number designation of some sort?

[Phosphorus32]

Your completely right Phos.   The Bang/Pak is a big ole wag that I'm not convinced of either. 

As far as the latin use of characters.... Welp, it wouldn't be the first time.

  Yeah, I have no problem with the use of the Latin alphabet on Chinese SKSs, just the interpretation of those letters as abbreviations for English words seems odd.

[running-man]

四 is also Chinese for the number 4.

Could it be a number designation of some sort?

That's interesting. If it is, this would be the first DP gun with a number designator like that. 

Occam's razor is what I'd assume which points me towards the 四 / Siping marking. All speculation at this point, we need some nore examples!!!

[newchi]

These were taken from a Bangladesh story a month or so ago.
Zoom and enhance!