250 Grams - Fine Grains Stamp Zibo, Shandong

Chinese municipal grain ration coupons from the early 1990s occupy an awkward historical moment — the national grain rationing system was being dismantled province by province, and many local bureaus issued their own coupons in the final years before the system collapsed entirely in 1993. Zibo, an industrial city in central Shandong built around its ceramics and petrochemical sectors, would have used these primarily for urban registered households, whose grain allocations were tracked through the hukou system.

Prefecture-level coupons from this period are substantially harder to find than provincial issues — smaller print runs, purely local distribution, and no organized preservation effort after the ration system ended.