More than 2,100 coupons - once an indispensable part of life in China when they were used to buy virtually everything from soap to meat - were donated to the Shanghai History Museum yesterday.

"The coupons can perfectly record the country's shift from a planned economy to a market economy, and educate our younger generation just like a textbook," museum Curator Pan Junxiang said, praising the gift from Shen Jian, a radio repairman.

Four other local collectors also gave part of their collections to the museum yesterday - including 14 documents from 1950-63 related to Mao Zedong Thought and Marxism, 242 letters in 1956-92 from a father - who was a teacher - to his son, and three street-name signs inscribed on stone that are more than 100 years old.

Shen, 48, who claims to be the city's No. 1 collector of government-issued coupons, donated 2,146 pieces from his collection of 100,000.

Pan said Shen probably has one of the best collections of coupons, which local governments stopped printing in 1993, when the nation's switch to a market economy was already in full swing.

"I choose to collect coupons because they are easy to keep and take up little space compared to big antiques, such as porcelain containers and bronze animals," Shen said.

Among Shen's valuable vouchers that he gave to the museum are a coupon from Jiangxi Province for a pair of socks, a coupon from Shanxi Province for cotton-padded clothes, a coupon from Henan Province for sweet potato noodles and a coupon from Hubei Province for firewood.

"I spend every weekend searching for scarce coupons in the city's coupon markets in Huangpu and Luwan districts," Shen said. "Every day after supper, I organize them."

Shen said he has more than 500 "coupon friends" across the country. He spends about 70 percent of his monthly salary of less than 2,000 yuan (US$240) on his hobby. He calls it "an investment."

Shen began collecting when he was 8. But in 1970 during the "cultural revolution," the then-17-year-old Shen was forced to stop collecting when he was sent to work on a farm in Anhui Province.

He didn't resume collecting until 1987, when he returned to Shanghai, Shen told Shanghai Daily.

(Eastday.com.cn 06/06/2001)