2 Shi Liang - Food Stamp Wuhu City, Anhui

Chinese municipal grain coupons (liangpiao) were a product of the rationing infrastructure put in place after 1955, when the state unified grain procurement and distribution under a single planned system. Wuhu, a Yangtze River port city in Anhui, issued its own local coupons valid only within city limits — a deliberate design to prevent inter-regional arbitrage and enforce household registration controls. By 1983 the system was already fraying; rural decollectivization had been underway since 1978, and urban rationing would be formally wound down within a decade.

Anhui holds a particular place in this history: the province's Fengyang County is where the illegal household farming contracts of 1978 originated, quietly accelerating the collapse of the very system these coupons administered.