The 'Money in Hong Kong' Exhibition

inSight

17 Aug 2000

The 'Money in Hong Kong' Exhibition

The HKMA's summer exhibition ended its tour of Hong Kong earlier this week. The strong response from the community suggests that it was a worthwhile event.

Our Exhibition 'Money in Hong Kong' closed earlier this week at its final venue in Pacific Place, Central, having been presented at Discovery Park, Tsuen Wan and Festival Walk, Kowloon the previous two weekends. We estimate that a total of 75,000 people visited the Exhibition, and this does not include people who just passed through. The visitors were of all ages and from all walks of life, and all of them seemed to get something out of the Exhibition. The average visit was around 15-20 minutes, and many stayed to read all the panels and to watch our 20-minute video montage all the way through. The computer games and quizzes were very popular as well.

The main focus of interest was banknotes and coins. This is not surprising, given the concerns recently about counterfeits: the Commercial Crimes Bureau demonstration of how to identify counterfeits was especially popular. But the design and history of coins and banknotes are a subject of perennial interest, and we were pleased to see so much interest in the historical panels. There was nostalgia among some of our older visitors: our staff at the exhibition were touched by their memories and anecdotes about the days when some of the historical exhibits were in daily use. Our younger visitors seemed to like the computer quizzes the most. Quite a few of them succeeded in memorising all of the quiz questions in both Chinese and English so that they could show off their skills to their parents or grandparents: this shows remarkable determination and concentration. Our very youngest visitors got the most satisfaction out of dancing on the moving lights on the exhibition floor. So it seems that there was something for everyone, whatever the age.

Although, understandably, they were not the most popular exhibits, the panels explaining the work of the HKMA attracted some concentrated viewing from quite a number of visitors. Our colleagues on duty at the Exhibition were impressed - and occasionally challenged - by the detail and complexity of some of the questions asked on the Linked Exchange Rate and on the management of the Exchange Fund. Listening to the performance of some of the contestants in the quiz the HKMA sponsored on RTHK2 over the last few weeks, it is clear that there is a strong body of knowledge in the community about financial and economic issues - even on some very esoteric points. I send my congratulations to Connie, who won the final of this quiz, against tough competition, earlier this week - and to all of the contestants for battling with some very tough questions.

The main lesson for us from this exhibition is that there is an appetite in the community for more information about our monetary system, about the work of the HKMA, and about our society's historical experience of money and banking. There is also widespread support for our policies, including specifically our exchange rate policy. Through conversations with those who approached me on that subject, this support is based on an impressive degree of appreciation of why the link to the US dollar is appropriate for Hong Kong, although there is still a continued need for assurance. We shall be taking this into account as we develop our policies on public education and in planning further community projects of this kind. Meanwhile, let me express my thanks to the many organisations and individuals who helped us to stage the exhibition, to our able and hard-working student ambassadors, who were on hand to explain the exhibits, and to the tens of thousands of visitors who made it all a success. For those who missed the exhibition, a great deal of the material from it will be permanently available on the HKMA website from this weekend onwards, and we shall be reprinting the exhibition booklet for use in the educational and other programmes we have planned for the remainder of the year.

Joseph Yam
17 August 2000

Related article:

Related information:

  • Money in Hong Kong (Interactive Version) (October 2001)
  • Money in Hong Kong: A Brief Introduction (November 2000)

Click here for previous articles in this column.

Document in Word format

Latest inSight
Last revision date : 17 August 2000