5 Shi Liang - Anhui Province Food Stamp

Chinese provincial food stamps — liang piao — were ration coupons issued at the provincial level and valid only within their issuing province. A holder traveling outside Anhui would need to exchange these at a local grain bureau office for nationally-issued coupons, a bureaucratic friction that made inter-provincial movement genuinely cumbersome during the late Cultural Revolution period. The 5 shi liang denomination — roughly 250 grams — reflects the granular rationing increments applied to urban residents, whose monthly grain allocations were calculated and distributed almost to the handful.

The official red inked stamp applied at issue was the primary anti-counterfeiting measure, which tells you something about the printing infrastructure available to provincial grain bureaus in 1972.