5 Shi Jin - Food Stamp Wuhu City, Anhui

Chinese municipal food coupons (liangpiao) were administrative instruments, not currency — issued by local grain bureaus under the rationing system that governed staple food distribution from the 1950s through the early 1990s. Wuhu's coupons were valid only within the city limits; a resident traveling to another prefecture needed to exchange their local tickets at a grain station for regional or national-issue coupons, a bureaucratic friction that was entirely intentional.

By 1982, national policy was already tilting toward market liberalization, and many urban rationing systems were quietly winding down. This 5 shi jin example predates Wuhu's formal abolition of grain rationing by roughly a decade.