1 Liang - Sesame Oil Stamp Zibo City

Chinese municipal commodity ration coupons from the early reform period are poorly documented in Western catalogs, and this Zibo City sesame oil allocation stamp is a good example of why. The Zibo Municipal Grain Bureau issued these through a parallel rationing infrastructure that operated entirely separately from the People's Bank note system — denominated in liang (市两, the traditional tael weight measure), not in yuan, because the coupon entitled the holder to a physical quantity of oil, not a monetary value.

By 1982, national oil rations were being administered at the municipal level, and individual cities printed their own coupons with wildly inconsistent production quality. Zibo's issues from this period were printed in limited runs and rarely survive outside the region.