5 Shi Jin - Food Stamp Xichang City, Sichuan

Chinese local grain ration coupons of this type — issued by municipal and county-level grain bureaus rather than any central authority — proliferated across the People's Republic from the 1950s through the early 1990s, forming a parallel distribution system entirely separate from currency. Xichang, the administrative center of the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in southern Sichuan, operated its own bureau-level issues independently of both provincial and national grain coupon series. The 1981 date places this squarely within the early reform period, when the ration coupon infrastructure was already beginning to strain against the first liberalizations of agricultural markets under Deng Xiaoping.

Local issues like this one were non-transferable in principle, restricted to registered households within the issuing jurisdiction. In practice, a secondary exchange market existed in most cities.