Remember A Day | Gold floods out of Vietnam and ICAC busts 40 police officers over drug links: headlines from four decades ago
A journey back through time to look at significant news and events reported by the South China Morning Post during this week in history
Forty years ago this week, Beijing had just begun to allow Chinese people to travel more freely within the country. Before then, China had been isolated from the world, and many parts of the nation were known only to local residents. For those who know China today, with mainland tourists contributing billions of dollars to international tourism, it may be hard to believe that most of the country was barely mobile. Hong Kong, meanwhile, has never been short of ingenious ideas to tap the tourism market. Read on to find out more.
September 18, 1977
● Reports on this day revealed that millions of dollars worth of gold and cash were changing hands in Hong Kong and Bangkok every week as the Chinese community in Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, tried hard to get their money out of Vietnam. Most of the money was intended to be used to support Vietnamese-Chinese businesspeople and their families, whose livelihoods had been shattered by the nationalisation of the country’s economy by new communist rulers.
September 19, 1977
● It was reported on this day that the Hong Kong Tourist Association’s director, John Pain, might have discovered a tourism gold mine when he welcomed 35 newlywed Singapore couples to Hong Kong on a honeymoon package tour. The couples, who had tied the knot in a group ceremony in the Lion City a few days earlier, received certificates from Pain to mark their stay in the city.