250 Grams - Food Stamp Xinzhou County, Shanxi

Food grain ration coupons like this one were administered at the county level in China through a parallel distribution system that ran alongside the national currency for decades. By 1991, the national rationing framework was already being wound down in coastal and urban areas following market liberalization, but inland agricultural counties like Xinzhou in Shanxi Province maintained local coupon systems longer than most — the provincial grain bureaucracy was slower to relinquish administrative control than its counterparts in Guangdong or Jiangsu.

Xinzhou was elevated to prefecture-level city status in 1993, making county-issued coupons from the immediately preceding years a brief administrative artifact of a jurisdiction that was about to be reorganized out of existence in its original form.