1 Kilogram - Food Stamp Xinzhou County, Shanxi

Chinese county-level food coupons of this type were administrative instruments, not currency — they functioned within a rationing framework that China had maintained since the 1950s and was only beginning to dismantle in the early 1990s. Xinzhou County, sitting in the northern Shanxi basin, would have distributed coupons like this through local grain bureaus as part of the residual ration system still operating in many interior provinces well after coastal reforms had moved on. National grain rationing was formally abolished in 1993, making 1991 issues among the last produced before the entire apparatus collapsed.

These small-format local coupons were printed in enormous quantities but rarely preserved — they were consumed by use, not collected.