5 Shi Jin - Food Stamps Pingxiang City, Jiangxi

China's grain rationing system, in place since the 1950s, operated through a parallel bureaucracy of local grain bureaus — each city and county issuing its own coupons, redeemable only within its jurisdiction. Pingxiang, an industrial coal-mining city in western Jiangxi, would have issued these primarily for its urban registered population, whose grain allocations were tied to household registration under the hukou system.

By 1984 the national rationing apparatus was already beginning to fracture, as market reforms quietly undermined it. Full abolition came in 1993.