1000 Dollars Hong Kong International Airport

Issued to mark the opening of Chek Lap Kok airport in July 1998, which replaced the notoriously cramped Kai Tak after nearly three decades of white-knuckle approaches over Kowloon rooftops. The new airport, built on a leveled and expanded island off Lantau, was one of the largest civil engineering projects of the twentieth century — and it opened just days after the handover of sovereignty to China, making the timing politically charged in ways the official commemorative framing carefully avoided.