What was the secret that helped the bauhinia supplant The Queen on Hong Kong’s coins and notes?

A small revolution took place in the pockets and purses of Hong Kong’s residents in 1993, four years before the territory’s return to China’s sovereignty.

Coins in seven denominations, from 10 Hong Kong cents to HK$10, were minted with the Bauhinia blakeana flower – also called the Hong Kong orchid – on the obverse to replace the visages of the five reigning British monarchs that had adorned the city’s legal tender since Queen Victoria in 1863.

A new dollar note followed when Bank of China (Hong Kong) joined Standard Chartered Bank and HSBC as the territory’s third note-issuing bank. The bank portrayed its iconic I.M. Pei-designed headquarters building on the front panels of five denominations from HK$20 to HK$1,000, flanked by daffodils, the chrysanthemum, the lotus, the peony and the bauhinia.

The new coins and notes, planned to give Hong Kong residents a more personal feel of the change in sovereignty before the pomp and reverence of the official handover in July 1997 was shrouded in secrecy. For seven years, it was the top agenda item in the Sino-British Confidential Financial Dialogue from 1987 to 1997.

The choice “of the picture that was to adorn our coins was top secret, so much so that no single artist could be entrusted with the information,” said Hong Kong’s former de facto central banker Joseph Yam Chi-kwong, who was the deputy to the territory’s former Secretary for Monetary Affairs David Nendick in 1987 during the talks.

“One of the first things discussed was the politically delicate transition for banknotes and coins in Hong Kong,” Yam said in an interview with South China Morning Post. “The flower of Hong Kong was the most appropriate [choice], because it does not hold any political connotation.”