"Exhibition on China's First Manned Space Mission," due to open Saturday in the Hong Kong Science Museum, was rescheduled to run overnight as Hong Kong citizens responded enthusiastically to its free-distributed tickets on Wednesday.

Secretary for Home Affairs Patrick Ho said it is a historic event as never has a public museum in Hong Kong provided overnight service before.

The Home Affairs Bureau began to distribute free tickets of the exhibition to public from 6:00 am Wednesday at 18 outlets on a first-come-first-served basis. Each person is allowed a maximum of two tickets.

All the 60,000 tickets have been collected by Wednesday afternoon. The bureau said 90 percent of the tickets was collected by 4:00 pm.

Another 27,000 tickets for overnight visit are being distributed at the 18 outlets as well.

At the Space Museum, one of the 18 outlets, the queue was so long that every queuer had to wait for about two hours to get the tickets. However, none of them made complaints.

Ms. Lam was the first queuer to wait outside the space museum as she arrived at 12:00 pm Tuesday night, waiting to get two tickets for her children. "It is a good educational opportunity for children to know more about space technology," she said, without mentioning her fatigue from waiting overnight.

At another outlet the Elizabeth Stadium on the Hong Kong Island, there were hundreds of citizens queuing Wednesday morning. An old citizen said he came to fetch tickets for his grandchildren. "We should let our children understand the meaning of China's first manned space mission," he said.

The success of China's first manned space mission has given pride to all Chinese people around the world. Hong Kong people, sharing the joy and excitement when the Shenzhou 5 spaceship was launched into orbit, had expressed their eager hope for astronaut Yang Liwei to visit Hong Kong.

Yang, along with the Delegation of China's First Manned Space Mission, will arrive in Hong Kong Friday night. They will attend the opening ceremony of the space mission exhibition.

The exhibition will provide overnight service for three consecutive nights. Shenzhou 5 Space Capsule, Yang's space suit and samples of his space meals will be on display.

(Xinhua News Agency October 30, 2003)