A financer's venture into the cultural field
- By Liu Dong
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Museums as an Exchange Platform
Since the founding of the Chinese Museum of Finance, Wang has envisioned the museum's role as focusing on financial literacy and exchanges rather than collecting exhibits. Shortly after the opening, Wang invited dozens of high school volunteers to visit the museum and raise suggestions about anything that was not clear to them. Wang believes that a museum is lacking something if a high school student can't comprehend its content and function. Since then, he has launched five more museums and operated them according to this idea. All have been wildly acclaimed, as manifested in their growing numbers of visitors.
Apart from taking charge of daily exhibitions, Wang has continuously innovated the museum's particular brand of cultural exchange. Together with other entrepreneurs, he co-founded the Financial Museum Academy and formed regular reading groups under the theme "Enriching Life through Reading." Special guests included carefully selected entrepreneurs and economists whose rich experience and life wisdom benefited other participants. With Wang as the witty and humorous host, these reading sessions became so popular that each one was a sell-out. Later, Wang regularly held "Legend Salons" in the Museum of Global Finance in Beijing, and invited celebrities and renowned men of letters from China and abroad to give speeches and share their stories. These salons share the same popularity as the reading sessions.
"Sharing life experience and wisdom through great vision and prospects can enlighten society and inspire the public. We feel compelled and challenged as well as interested in conducting these exchanges," Wang said.
Wang also considers financial literacy as seperate from traditional education. The former attaches more importance to participants' learning, sharing, and innovation. Its focus is on liberating financial knowledge from a few professionals and certain financial giants and sharing with budding entrepreneurs, consumers, and the public. People may then understand that an excellent financial system can make us happier, safer and more independent.
Over the past few years, Wang, with the help of his six financial museums, has carried on his resolve to spread financial literacy. The museums have held nearly 100 "Reading Parties," "Legend Salons," "Lessons on Leading Financial Topics," "Afternoon Tea at the Museum" and "Financial Story Meetings." In 2015, they invited 40 directors of financial museums in 12 countries to the announcement of the "Beijing Financial Literacy Manifesto," and officially set up the "China Center of Financial Literacy," which has been in operation for four years. Participants are committed to universally improving financial literacy. During the conference they established all sorts of forums, dialogues, and financial salons. Wang Wei's research results have been captured in a book titled The Subversive Power of Finance in History which was a financial literacy bestseller.
In the process of promoting public financial literacy, Wang and his team have also constantly improved themselves. Throughout the successive establishments of the first Chinese Museum of Finance in Tianjin in June, 2010; the Museum of Funds in Suzhou in 2011; the Museum of Global Finance in Beijing in 2012; the Museum of Fintech in Beijing in 2015; the Museum of Mergers and Acquisitions in Shanghai the same year; and the Museum of Industrial Finance in Shenyang one year later, they have constantly upgraded their understandings of each museum's function and role as an educational exchange platform.
The main exhibits of the first Chinese Museum of Finance still comprise various currencies in China and abroad from different historical epochs, financial bills, and financial objects. The accent of the world's first Museum of Fintech located inside the Fintech Industrial Park in Haidian District, Beijing, is digital. As a high-end financial community, the museum presents, through various activities and events, the cutting-edge information revolution and evolution of Fintech. After visiting the museum, I became aware of certain new financial concepts like Bitcoins and the blockchain, knowledge that made me feel like a finance freshman.
Many Fintech (Museum) talks, held at the hall of the Museum of Fintech, have received positive feedback. The various learning and communication activities conducted in the museum have become accepted facets of it, and a popular medium through which financiers may disseminate new ideas and concepts to people from all walks of life.
LIU DONG is a veteran reporter.
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