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1 Shi Liang - Cooking Oil Stamp Harbin City, Heilongjiang
| Issuer | Harbin City Grain Bureau (哈尔滨市粮食局) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1985 |
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| Value | Log in to see details |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Blue and black letterpress on a light ground with a red guilloche underprint; the left vignette shows a European-style building with a pointed gable flanked by trees, printed in black. A red floral rosette at right carries the denomination 壹市两 in blue, with numeral 0.1 in two corners. The year 1985 appears in a blue ornamental banner along the lower edge. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Blue ornamental border with four corner cartouches, each bearing the numeral 0.1. A central pink guilloche panel headed 使用说明 (Instructions for Use) contains three numbered clauses in Chinese text. A circular red official seal of the Harbin City Grain Bureau (哈尔滨市粮食局), bearing a central red star, is applied over the text. |
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| Comments |
Chinese commodity ration stamps occupy an awkward category — neither banknotes nor fiscal paper in the strict sense, but they functioned as currency for specific goods during the decades when China's planned economy allocated edible oil, grain, and cloth through coupon books rather than market prices. Cooking oil rations persisted in many cities well into the late 1980s, even as broader market reforms were already underway. Harbin, as a major northeastern industrial city, maintained its rationing infrastructure longer than some southern counterparts.
Provincial and municipal grain bureaus printed their own stamps independently, which is why Heilongjiang issues differ visually and materially from those of neighboring Jilin or Liaoning. Survival rates for used single stamps are low — most were collected in bulk and pulped.