One day, I was tidying up the cupboard and found a small bag full of dust. I opened it curiously, and found many receipts in it. I asked my grandmother, "What is this?" Grandma said, "Here are food stamps and coal cake tickets." Grandma didn't even have enough to eat a meal when she was a child, so the country began to implement a "planned economy" to ensure the basic needs of the people of the whole country. At that time, buying goods not only required money, but also various commodity tickets. The older generation experienced a long "ticket era".

Grandma said that there are food stamps, meat stamps, cooking oil tickets, cloth tickets, coal cake tickets, and even dung tickets and urine tickets. A small ticket covers all aspects of life. In addition, tickets can also be divided into local tickets and national tickets.

Food vouchers: Food vouchers for urban residents are issued by the local grain bureau. Residents need to use food stamps to buy food at grain shops designated by the state, and register the quantity of food purchased on the food stamps.

Food stamps: The state implements the policy of rationing food supply, which stipulates that workers who do heavy manual labor can be provided with a few kilograms more food stamps, and those who do light manual labor can be provided with a few kilograms less food stamps, resulting in insufficient family food for their children. Passengers who take trains, ships and other means of transportation can eat in various vehicles and boats, and they must have special food stamps to eat.

Coal tickets: Coal tickets need to be allocated quantitatively according to the population. Every year when the weather is cold, people will bring their old certificates, household registration books and grain books to apply for the coal purchase certificate for the next year. When residents buy coal, they will need coal cake tickets to queue up at designated stores to buy coal.

After the country's reform and opening up, all kinds of tickets were cancelled one after another, and the functions of food stamps and coal cake tickets gradually disappeared and became "old things". These tickets are the "entrepreneurial history" of the Chinese nation and an important "development history" of People's Republic of China (PRC)'s transition from a poverty-stricken period of material scarcity to reform and development and a well-off society after liberation. They run through the life of grandma's generation and will always exist in the memory of this generation. We should also study hard, serve the motherland when we grow up and make the greatest contribution to the development of the motherland.

Tags: object stories