5 Shi Liang - Food Stamps Fengdu County, Sichuan

Chinese county-level grain rationing coupons of this period were administrative instruments, not currency — they entitled the bearer to purchase a specific weight of grain at state-controlled prices rather than representing monetary value in themselves. Fengdu County sits in what was then Sichuan Province (now administratively part of Chongqing Municipality following the 1997 reorganization), and its grain bureau operated within the national rationing framework that had been in place since the 1950s.

By 1982, the broader reform era was already beginning to erode the rationing system in coastal and urban areas, but inland county bureaus continued issuing local coupons well into the late 1980s. Fengdu examples from this transitional window are now collected precisely because the system was dismantled so thoroughly — most were redeemed or discarded, not preserved.