The State Post Bureau (SPB) confirmed on January 20 that China will resume a post office at the Changcheng (Great Wall) Station in Antarctica.

The mail service is only available in Beijing.

From Thursday to February 1, residents are able to send a letter or postcard to the Changcheng Station. The post office on Antarctica will send it back with the rare postmark, the SPB source said.

"We would like to record our history of Antarctic exploration by mail record," said Wang Shuguang, director of the National Bureau of Oceanography, in his congratulation telegraph to the post office Thursday.

The mail will travel 17,051 kilometers from Beijing to the Changcheng Station via Chile. Each mail weighing 20 grams or less will cost 7 yuan (84 US cents) and a postcard will cost 4.5 yuan (54.4 cents). The mail will leave Beijing on February 4.

According to the source at the Beijing international post office, trial service began this month delivering mail once a week, said Chi Tao, an official with the office.

A temporary post office was set up when the Changcheng Station, one of the two Chinese inhabitancies in the southernmost continent, was founded on February 20, 1985. It closed eight days later, reopened on Nov. 15 the same year and then had been "suspended" since March 1, 1986.

The Changcheng station is on the King George Island out of the Antarctic Circle.