The Museum of History in Hong Kong is excellent. It’s a huge museum that takes you for a walk through timeof Hong Kong, through various tableaux, exhibits, recreations and films. It starts at the very beginning when Hakka settlers from China came to Hong Kong on their live-aborad Junk boats.

I think it would appeal to all ages, and English was used everywhere. It was astonishingly cheap to enter (HK$10), and we spent almost three hours there. Walking though this museum is truly an education in Hong Kong history. At the end of the tour, there was a film about the handover day back to China in 1997. I would have been longer, but it was closing time.

We did pay an extra HK$10 for an audio headset, but found that we didn’t really need this since the written information provided next to all the exhibits were generally sufficient.

The Hong Kong Museum of History is an interesting place to visit. Our visit was unplanned. We were looking for the Rosary Church and were there hours before the scheduled time for the English mass. So, to kill time, we thought of walking around and viola, right across was the Hong Kong Museum of History. It usually has a special exhibition and during the time of our visit, they were featuring the Ancient Chinese Civilization which zeroed in on the Treasures of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou Dynasties from Henan Province. The said special exhibition is running from February 14 to May 14, 2007 at the Special Exhibition Gallery. We paid HK$10 as entrance to the gallery. At the special exhibit, they displayed pottery and bronze wares, jade articles, and ancient music instruments. But a must see is the permanent exhibition which is The Hong Kong Story with just a HK$10 entrance. Since 2001, the Hong Kong Story never fail to amaze visitors through its eight galleries housed in two floors with a total of 7,000 square meter area. It has 4,000 exhibits that has 750 graphic panels.

It started with the Natural Environment 400 million years ago to the Prehistoric Hong Kong. Then it took us to the various dynasties, the folk culture of Hong Kong to the Opium Wars, and the Cession of the Hong Kong. The latter part was the Japanese occupation, the modern Hong Kong and the reunification of Hong Kong with China in 1997. The exhibits have life-size wax figures of human beings and animals. In most periods, there are small theaters that show a short documentary pertaining to that era. You can view the galleries in the Hong Kong Story exhibit in about two hours. It opens at 7am from Wednesdays to Mondays. It closes at 6pm except on Sundays and public holidays wherein it extends till 7pm. The museum is closed on first two days of the Chinese New year and on Tuesdays except on public holidays.

Contact details: Tel. No. 27249042 Fax No. 27249090

Email: hkmh@lcsd.gov.hk  Website: http://hk.history.museum