Odd stamps : 08 Stamps with special cuts - 01 j

It has been a while since I posted some round stamps.

Round stamps are not an exception anymore, but still the shape is special.
It will not easily fit in standard albums, with individual holders and in classic albums, it tend to roll away.

Today I present a special set of stamps, that were issued in 2005.
Two round stamps depict the two Giant Pandas Chuang Chuang (male) and Lin Hui (female) from the People's Republic of China. Both pandas are ambassadors of friendship in the so-called Panda-Diplomacy of the P.R.China.

A panda showing his tongue,
and a panda eating bamboo

 

They are residents of the Chiang Mai Zoo since October 2003. The pandas are on 'loan' from the Zoo of Chengdu and will help to learn Thai about wildlife conservation.
Both pandas were supposed to return in 2023, but unfortunately, on September 19, 2019, Chuang Chuang passed away, aged 19.

The sudden death of the Giant Panda, has put some stress on the diplomatic relations between both countries, as millions of people in China (P.R.) questioned the cause of death of the male bear.
Chinese experts arrived later on to investigate the case.

Apart from the two individual stamps, also a souvenir sheet was issued.

2005 Thailand Giant Panda sheet

 

This issue was the first round emission in Thailand, followed by the emblems of the different regions in 2007 (see previous posts)

Chinese Food Coupons : National Food Ration Coupons 1 a

National Food Ration Coupons are coupons that circulated throughout the country and therefore could be exchanged in all parts of China.
They are among the oldest coupons and were used for the first time in 1955.

Coupons having the above header, are National Food Ration coupons.
They have 2 similar inscriptions as another type of coupons, that I will show in a later post.

Coupons of this type could circulate throughout the country for purchasing food in all parts of China.

1965 National coupons

1966 National coupons

There were numerous numbers of coupons issued, and each type has several pieces in a set.
As mentionned in previous posts, the highest and lowest value of each set are often the most rare and expensive ones. All coupons in between, are relatively cheap.

The coupons in my collection are - so far :
1965 : 半  市斤  : Bàn shi jin : half a shi jin : 250g rice/grains
1965 : 壹  市斤  : Yi shi jin : one shi jin : 500g rice/grains

1966 : 半  市斤  : Bàn shi jin : half a shi jin : 250g rice/grains

1966 : 叁  市斤  : San shi jin : 3 shi jin : 1,5 kg rice/grains

1966 : 伍 市斤 : Wu shi jin : 5 shi jin : 2,5 kg rice/grains

Anyone with some basic knowledge on chinese numbers will say that 3 (san) is written as : 三,and not as 叁.
That's correct, but when it comes to comptability, banknotes, or other kinds of financial dealings, a whole other set of characters is used.
This is to prevent fraude : imagine an transaction for 30 Yuan, written the 'simple' way :

三十 (30),  but by adding 3 strokes it becomes : 五千 (5000).

The 1966 set consists of 4 values (half, one, three and five JIN) but there are 7 notes issued.
The 3 Jin has been issued on paper with 2 different watermarks, the 5 Jin has been issued on 3 different watermarks.

5 (shi)JIN - watermark stars

The note in the picture has stars as watermark (see purple indications).
This type of coupon also exists with 1982 as date.

Chinese Food Coupons : Intro 0 c

There are diffent ways to collect Chinese Food Coupons.

* By year of issue
* By state or province
* By type (rice or grain, cloths, oil, other objects, ....)
* By weight, unit, amount, ...

On each coupon, normally we can easily find this info.
I wrote about the dates already, and the cities or provinces will be explained in future posts.

Similar coupons, can be sorted out by city or province, or issuing administration.

Food coupons - city or province is marked

Central on each coupon, we find the number of kilograms, grams, units ... of each value.
Most of these units return on each coupon, therefore some examples :

Food coupons - amount and unit is marked

When there are 3 characters, the first one indicates often the amount, the last two indicate the unit.

A "shi-liang" equals 50 gram of cerials.
Coupons of 2 市两 , represent 100 gram of grains/cerials

shi liang

A "shi-jin" equals half a kilogram of cerials.
Coupons of 1 市斤, represent 500 gram of grains/cerials

shi jin

When there's a number in arabic numbers and one character, the last (only) character indicates the unit. Sometimes the unit is so obvious, that the preceding characters only can indicate a number.
In Chinese counting, 500 is written as 5 100 (2 characters) - 5000 is writte as 5 1000 (two characters),
2500 is written as 2 1000 5 100 (four characters).

This goes for 'gram' or 'ké' - often the unit is preceded by arabic numbers - sometimes with multiple chinese characters.

ké - gram

Coupons of 500 克 , represent half a kilogram.

Another common unit is "sheng", or liter.
In the old days (pre 1915) a 'sheng was slightly more then one liter. But due to standardisation, it became 1 liter in 1930.

wu (5) sheng (liter)

Coupons of 5 升 , represent 5 liters of fuel.

(市) 升 - 1 liter - 2.113 US pint - 1.760 UK pint

to be continued ...

Chinese Food Coupons : Intro 0 b

In these series of articles on the Chinese Food / Ration coupons, we will concentrate on the front side of the coupons.
As in most cases, the back side is always similar. Here there are 3 lines, some coupons only have two lines in the back.

Food / Ration coupon

Inscription Content

说明：
（1） 凭本票在西藏地区部队内部就餐或购买粮食。
（2）本票面额的每市斤为十市两。
（3）本票如有遗失不补发。

Inscription Transliteration

Shuoming:
(1) Ping ben piao zai Xizang diqu budui neibu jiu can hou goumai liangshi.
(2) Ben piao mian’e de mei shijin wei shi shiliang.
(3) Ben piao ruyou yishi bu bufa.

Inscription Translation

Instructions:

(1) This ticket may be used within the restricted military area of the Tibetan region to purchase food or grain products.
(2) When using this ticket, 1 shijin comprises 10 shiliang.
(3) Lost tickets will not be replaced.

In most cases, these coupons came in sets up to 30 different values/weights/units.

And most of them are very cheap.
However, since there was often only one coupon per person, they are more scarce then real banknotes.
Therefore, the highest and lowest value of each set are often very hard to find and prices can go up to 3-digit numbers.

Don't spend hundreds of euros/dollars in buying the coupons. They are often available for as low as 10 cents each.

In my next post, i'll go deeper into the different types of coupons.

Chinese Food Coupons : Intro 0 a

There are thousands ... the Chinese Food (and other) coupons that were issued mainly between 1960 an 1990.
Many of us have (seen) them, but if you're not a native chinese speaker, it's difficult to distiniguish them.

Chinese 'Food' coupons

In 1955, a ration system started in China P.R., when commodities were scarce, until in 1990, when there was a substantional growth of industrial and agricultural production. The coupons where introduced to stabilize the grain market and to balance demand and supply.
If you were wealthy, or poor, you could not buy more meat, grain, ... without the coupons.
There was a limited amount of grain for men*, and for women*.
Although we know the coupons now as 'food coupons' there were coupons for all kinds of foods, fuel, but also bicycles, cigarettes, televisions ... Without a coupon, you were not allowed to purchase those goods.

* the average ration for men was 15 kilograms each month, and 13 kilograms for women.

In this set of posts, I will try to give an idea of the numerous coupons that were issued, and how to sort them out.

some coupons and their characteristics

Without going too much in details, there are - in general - four things to look for on the coupons:

1 (light green):
City or Province the coupons were issued for.
There are 32 different institutes that provided the coupons!
In the following articles, I will go deeper into this subject

2 (dark green):
The year the coupon was issued - this can be in arabic numbers or chinese numbers
There are different ways to write chinese numbers :

chinese numbering system

For the date on the coupons, you have to look at the column with Lower case-writing.

3 (light blue):
The amount in items, grams, or quantities are in Upper case numbers.
Sometimes arabic numbers are also used to indicate the amounts, sometimes in both writings

4 (purple):
The unit (grams, quantities, ....) is written behind the amount.
Some of those units are used very frequently.

Some of those coupons were general coupons, other only local, some were also issued for military only.

to be continued ....