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2500 Grams - Fine Grains Stamp Zibo, Shandong
| Issuer | Zibo City Grain Bureau (淄博市粮食局) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1991 |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | Central vignette shows a diesel locomotive hauling a passenger train through a hilly landscape, rendered in fine intaglio-style line engraving in grey-black. A blue guilloche underprint frames the composition, with a decorative orange rosette to the right bearing the denomination in Chinese characters. The numeral 2500 appears in blue at upper right and within a cartouche at lower left, with the year 1991 in a panel along the bottom border. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse is printed in blue and pink, with an ornate guilloche border incorporating floral and scroll motifs. A pink rectangular panel at centre carries three numbered clauses of usage instructions in Chinese. A circular red official seal of the Zibo City Grain Bureau (淄博市粮食局) is applied at centre. The denomination 2500 appears in white oval cartouches at left and right. |
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| Comments |
Grain ration coupons issued by municipal and county-level grain bureaus proliferated across China from the 1950s onward, functioning as a parallel currency for staple food allocation under the planned economy. By 1991, the national grain rationing system was already being dismantled piecemeal — several coastal provinces had formally abandoned coupons by this point — which makes late-issue provincial and municipal stamps like this one transitional artifacts rather than routine administrative documents.
Zibo, an industrial prefecture in central Shandong, would have distributed these through state-run grain stations tied to household registration. The denomination in grams rather than jin is the detail worth noting: most municipal coupons used jin (斤) as the unit, and a gram-denominated issue from this period is the less common format.