2 Shi Jin - Cooking Oil Stamp Harbin City, Heilongjiang

Chinese food ration coupons of the 1980s operated as a parallel currency system administered entirely outside the People's Bank — each city, county, and work unit could issue its own, redeemable only within its own jurisdiction. This Harbin City Grain Bureau coupon for cooking oil is a product of that deliberately fragmented system, which the central government maintained as a rationing control mechanism well into the reform era, even as Deng Xiaoping's market liberalization was already dissolving the command economy around it.

Heilongjiang's cooking oil rations were particularly tight given the province's industrial rather than agricultural character. The "Shi Jin" unit — a market jin, equal to 500 grams — was the standard measure for edible oil allocation in northeastern Chinese cities during this period.