Opinion | Hong Kong Museum of History must flesh out the city’s story
- The interim exhibit at the museum gives much space to the culture of ‘indigenous people’, although after 1841 Hong Kong was populated largely by immigrants
- It also lacks a sense of how Hong Kong came to be a major commercial and maritime centre
Its earlier incarnation was often described as the best museum in Hong Kong, combining vivid visual displays with a thorough account of history, which was generally regarded as fair and balanced. What would museum designers in the era of President Xi make of this history?
It would be unfair to compare the current exhibition with its predecessor. It is an interim display a fraction of the size. However, if history and identity are, as they should be, closely linked, this new exhibition suggests an effort, conscious or not, to downplay the big themes of history in favour of the harmless and meaningless.
There is little objectively wrong with the displays, nor obvious historical biases. It is what is not there that is striking, as though the organiser were too scared of the subject so retreated into folklorique assemblages of costumes and temple artefacts and collections of mundane objects. Far from “recreating a classic” with “the best features of the Hong Kong story”, it is a shadow of its predecessor.
A large part of a small exhibition is taken up with reconstructions of shops selling grain and groceries, a barber shop, herbal tea shop and the like. The postal service is honoured with a Victorian pillar box and rows of individual postboxes, household objects especially from the 1930s and 1950s – gramophone, sewing machine, camera – figure prominently along with old tourist brochures, and the sort of old bric-a-brac found on Hollywood Road. Old coins and notes abound, but with little context.