MOST senior and middle-aged citizens may still remember the time when there was a variety of ration coupons used in China during the planned economy (from the early 1950s to the mid-1980s), when nearly all commodities were rationed. Since China was short of commodities back then, coupons were allocated by the government for daily necessities, such as grain, oil, sugar, salt, cloth, cigarettes, meat, eggs, soap, bicycles, clothing and shoes. They were regarded as a “lifeboat” for urban Chinese.
The shortage of food and other daily necessities was aggravated in Shenzhen in the first few months after the city became China’s first special economic zone in 1980, when its population swelled from 20,000 to hundreds of thousands. As a solution, Shenzhen announced that it would scrap commodity coupons and implement a free pricing market reform from Nov. 1, 1984. The reform, the earliest in China before the nationwide demise of the coupons in the early 1990s, liberated Shenzhen residents from the rationing system. They rejoiced to find they were free to buy what they wanted even luxuries at more reasonable prices with no need of coupons.
Borrowed birthday noodles
The old days when coupons were used are still a vivid memory for Liu Jingxiu, a native Shenzhen resident in her 50s.
“It was a really hard time,” said Liu, who had lived on Jiefang Road in Luohu District since she was born in the 1950s. “Coupons were treated the same as cash. My mother put them in a biscuit box and hid it in the kitchen.”
Life could not exist without coupons. People needed coupons to buy all daily necessities, even if they had more money.
Liu’s mother had to plan carefully and make every coupon count each month to make ends meet for the whole family.
Grain was severely short in supply. With grain coupons, people could buy fixed quantities of grain at fixed prices from government-operated grain stores. The monthly grain ration was 9 kilograms for Liu when she was a schoolgirl and 13 kg after graduation, the ration for an adult woman. But she could not use all the coupons to buy rice because part of the ration was designated for flour and other coarse grain food as a supplement because of the rice shortage.
“We had to make detailed plans for what we should buy each day and when to buy other food such as sweet potatoes and flour when we ran out of coupons to buy rice,” Liu said.
The situation did not improve after Liu got married and had a son.
Liu remembered an embarrassing time at the end of April 1977 when she planned to celebrate the birthday of her son who had turned 3. “My boy cried to have noodles for lunch that day. But I had used up the grain coupons for the month,” she said.
Desperate to fulfill her son’s birthday wish, she decided to borrow flour from friends.
She finally collected enough to make a small bowl of noodles.
“Looking at my son gobbling his meal, I was so sad. I prayed there would be a time when my baby would be free to eat anything he wanted.”
Cloth smuggled from HK
Families who had relatives in Hong Kong were the envy of Liu since they could always get help from across the border. One hundred Hong Kong dollars sent from Hong Kong could be exchanged for 20 yuan in cash in Shenzhen and the post office would give a receipt for the remittance of the money from Hong Kong and issue an Overseas Chinese Certificate, which was worth more than 20 yuan. With the certificate, people could buy better quality food at special shops for Overseas Chinese, such as various types of rice, flour, oil and pork.
“There used to be an Overseas Chinese shop at the site of today’s McDonald’s on Jiefang Road,” Liu said. “The shop sold things that ordinary stores did not have and commodities there were of better quality. But I could only do window shopping because my parents did not have relatives in Hong Kong.”
She said the cloth ration was also a big problem for large families. The cloth quota for a family was around one meter each month, far from enough. Hong Kong relatives would be a great help in this case.
“Hong Kong residents usually made a cloth bag to hold things when crossing the border,” Liu said. “In this way, the cloth could be easily missed by customs officers and the carriers escaped having to pay duty.”
This tempted more Shenzhen people to try to enter Hong Kong illegally in the hope of making a better life for their mainland families.
Reform panic
A rumor that Shenzhen would soon invalidate ration coupons spread widely in 1984, two months before the official announcement. This panicked local residents, who had been long accustomed to the planned economy system. They were now worried that the changes could make their lives harder. Many wiped out their savings buying goods. Panic buying became a trend. People queued in front of grain shops across the city day and night to buy grain and oil fearing they would be sold out.
Liu got up at 5 a.m. one day in September only to find herself last in line waiting in front of a grain store near her home. She had with her all the grain coupons she had saved over several years. The queue continued to lengthen in the next few hours.
“It was chaos. When the door opened, people swarmed in,” she recalled. “Soon we were told things were sold out. The situation was out of control. Some people were so upset that they attacked the shop assistants.”
Liu returned empty-handed that day and tried her luck at several other stores in the next few days, but to no avail.
She was in a constant state of anxiety for the next couple of months until the announcement Nov. 1. She had not expected the tremendous change would turn out to be “a pleasant surprise.”
“Without coupons, I found shopping much easier. There were more varieties of commodities on sale at cheaper prices. I was so happy to be free to buy things I liked.”
“Our worries were uncalled-for,” she said. “Most of the people were so parochial at that time. As a product of the planned economy, coupons hampered economic development and caused family hardship. It is hard for people to imagine today when they bask in the easy life under the market economy now.” (Li Jing)
