20 Shi Jin - Fine Grains Stamp Hebi City, Henan

Grain ration coupons issued by municipal and county-level grain bureaus proliferated across China from the 1950s through the early 1990s, functioning as parallel currency for a population whose food allocation was tightly controlled by the state. This Hebi City issue dates to a transitional moment — by 1983, market reforms were already eroding the collective agricultural system, and many local bureaus were beginning to wind down rationing infrastructure within a few years of printing notes like this one.

Hebi, a coal-mining city in northern Henan established in the late 1950s, had a largely industrial workforce dependent on state-issued food allocations. Local grain coupons from smaller prefectural cities are considerably harder to find than provincial-level issues.