Hong Kong Museum of History

The Hong Kong Museum of History showcases Hong Kong's broad and dynamic history. Great efforts have been made in collecting, conserving, processing, studying and displaying cultural objects which are related to the archaeology, history, ethnography and natural history of Hong Kong and South China. Thematic exhibitions are also held from time to time. It was established in July 1975 when the City Museum and Art Gallery was split into the Hong Kong Museum of History and Hong Kong Museum of Art. But some of the Museum's collections date back to the City Museum and Art Gallery founded in 1962 at the City Hall. In 1983, the Museum was moved to the temporary accommodation in Kowloon Park. It was moved to its present premises on Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui in 1998. The permanent home of the Hong Kong Museum of History, with a gross floor area of 17,500 m2, is housed in a new building constructed at a cost of HK$390M and funded by the Hong Kong SAR Government. It is a comprehensive state-of-the-art museum designed by the P&T Architects and Engineers Ltd., based on the architectural concept of Mr. E. Verner Johnson. The new Museum and the neighboring Science Museum together form a museum complex of a harmonious appearance and color scheme.

The memorials to the past are contained within an incredible building opened in the year 2000. You can easily spend 2 hours here. Hong Kong’s long and fascinating history, starting with the formation of its natural history and its beginnings as a Neolithic settlement and continuing through its development as a fishing village and subsequent transformation into a modern metropolis. Through displays that include dioramas, replicas of fishing boats, models, reconstructed traditional housing, furniture, clothing, and items from daily life, the museum introduces Hong Kong's ethnic groups and their traditional means of livelihood, customs, and beliefs. These include the Tanka, who lived their entire lives on boats, the Five Great Clans who settled in what is now the New Territories and built walled communities, and the Hakka, primarily rice farmers. Visitors can peer inside a fishing junk, see what Kowloon Walled City looked like before it became a park, see the backstage of a Chinese opera, read about the arrival of European traders and the Opium Wars, study a map showing land reclamation since the 1840s, and see how Hong Kong changed under Japanese occupation (surprisingly, the section on Japanese occupation is quite extensive, considering that it takes up less than 4 years of Hong Kong's history). There are small movie theaters spread throughout, though showings in English are limited. One of my favorite parts of the museum is a re-created street of old Hong Kong, complete with a Chinese herbal-medicine shop actually located in Central until 1980, and reconstructed here. There are also 19th- and early-20th-century photographs, poignantly showing how much Hong Kong has changed through the decades.

Apart from the main museum at Chatham Road South, the Hong Kong Museum of History also manages three branch museums — the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defense in Shau Kei Wan, the Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb Museum in Sham Shui Po and the Law Uk Folk Museum in Chai Wan. They attracted, some 182 000, 44 000 and 37 000 visitors respectively.