饭票

飯票
fànpiào
noun #31,669

Measure Word

一张饭票 zhāng

Meanings

  1. 1 meal ticket (literally)
  2. 2 meal ticket (figurative — someone who pays the bills)
  3. 3 food coupon

Examples

Xuéshēng shítáng yǐqián yòng fànpiào fù qián.
Student cafeterias used to pay with meal tickets.
Tā kāiwánxiào de bǎ nánpéngyǒu jiào chángqī fànpiào.
She jokingly calls her boyfriend her long-term meal ticket.

Tips

culture
Before the 1990s, urban workplaces and university canteens in China issued paper 饭票 — meal stubs you traded for food. In the planned-economy era they were used alongside (liángpiào, grain coupons) and (yóupiào, oil coupons). Most have been digitized into campus IC cards or QR codes today, but the word survives.
register
The figurative sense — calling a partner one's '长期饭票' (long-term meal ticket) — is a half-joking, half-cynical reference to marrying for financial security. Carries the same edge as the English idiom; use carefully.

Stroke Order

fàn
piào