This Chinese style red band cover was postmarked on February 28th, 1913 in Peking (Beijing). It was sent from Beijing Telephone Company to Xiang-ju weaving plant (祥聚織布廠) outside of Chongwenmen (崇文門). Chongwenmen is the name of a gate that was once part of Beijing's city wall, which was torn down during the city expansion in the 1960s.

The stamp on the envelope is a one cent dragon stamp (蟠龍郵票) which was commissioned by the Chinese Imperial Post and produced in London during the Qing dynasty between 1989 and 1910. When the Qing dynasty was overthrown by the Republic of China (ROC) in 1911, new stamps could not be prepared in time, so those imperial dragon stamps were overprinted with vertical text of the Republic of China (中華民國) by various printing plants, including the Printing Plant of Maritime Custom Service, The Commercial Press and Waterlow and Sons in London. Although the ROC released its own stamps on December 14th 1912, it was not until March 31st 1914 when those overprinted dragon stamps were finally abolished.