50 Shi Jin - Fine Grains Stamp Hebi City, Henan

Grain ration coupons issued by municipal and county-level grain bureaus were a structural feature of China's planned economy from the 1950s onward, and Hebi's 1985 series falls near the end of that system's functional life. The State Council formally abolished the national grain rationing framework in 1993, but many local bureaus had already begun winding down coupon issuance years earlier as market reforms eroded the state's grip on staple distribution.

Hebi, a coal-mining city in northern Henan, had a relatively compact but industrially concentrated population — the kind of urban unit where grain bureau records were tightly managed and coupon overruns uncommon. Surviving examples from small municipal issuers like this tend to be genuinely scarce; most were redeemed and pulped.