Let’s Talk About Money!

Lately, I’ve been spending chunks of my free time futzing with cheap microwave doppler radar sensors and soda-can antennas. Last night, it was all about hooking up teensy all-in-one MP3-players and itsy bitsy little OLED screens to Arduino boards. I’ll write more on that soon. Right now, let’s talk about money. Or, rather, the latest manifestation of Hong Kong’s pathological, Scrooge-McDuck-is-just-a-dilettante-level obsession with accumulating money. Of course, nearly all of that money gets vacuumed up by a tiny handful of family-run real estate development conglomerates, but that’s a separate issue.

Did you know that, in Hong Kong, Money Month is fast approaching? Neither did I until I spotted the poster above next to the start of an up-escalator in an MTR station.

The poster is an apparently new prong in a government-run propaganda campaign of which I’ve been vaguely aware for a while. There’s a related Youtube account, stocked with videos about the importance of having money, one of which I accidentally saw on local free-to-air TV. The dialogue in the PSA is reasonable-sounding and has the ring of common sense, like the slogans on the poster, but the visuals ensure that, overall, the animation gives off a distinctly less sane vibe.

Money, The Chin Family full version music video appears to insist, is the most important thing in life, bar none. Watch Grandpa Chin’s investments, in the form of a giant gold coin, evaporate before his very eyes. See Ma and Pa Chin engage in, literally, a tug-of-war over possession of another humongous gold coin (spoiler: the mom wins and a look of existential despair flashes across the dad’s face). The Chin kids frolic amid a shower of smaller gold coins (and consumer electronics, skateboards, etc.) falling from the sky. It is much of a muchness. Compared to the Chins, Gordon Gecko was a moolah-hating hippie—who doubtless died, forgotten, penniless, and barefoot in a ditch because he didn’t beg, borrow, or steal enough money.