Revamped ‘Hong Kong Story’ exhibition spotlights city’s roots in Chinese culture

“Hong Kong Story” features more than 2,800 exhibits.

Photo: Elson Li A permanent exhibition showcasing Hong Kong’s history reopened on Wednesday after a major revamp that emphasised the city’s roots in Chinese culture, with visitors expressing mixed reactions to the changes.

The “Hong Kong Story” exhibition – which opened in 2001 and closed for renovation in late 2020 – has been reduced from two storeys to a single floor, but expanded from eight to 10 galleries.

The revamped exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of History in Tsim Sha Tsui features more than 2,800 exhibits such as artefacts and historic photos as well as interactive multimedia installations.

In the preface, the exhibition states that the “shifting tides across China’s vast territory” have “inevitably affected” Hong Kong.

It adds that, “though seemingly insignificant in scale, Hong Kong’s unique historical circumstances and developmental path have made its people indispensable participants, witnesses and beneficiaries of the sweeping transformation of modern China”.

The first of four core themes, “Roots of Culture”, presents an expanded timeline that traces Hong Kong’s prehistoric trajectory, highlighting its integration as a part of Chinese territory as early as the Qin dynasty in 214BC.

In the “East Meets West” section, the exhibit briefly touches on the 1989 protests in Hong Kong but calls it “the political turmoil at the turn of spring and summer in 1989”, without mentioning “June 4” or “Tiananmen Square”.

The original exhibit had featured the “large-scale” protests, when 1 million people took to the city’s streets in May that year in solidarity with pro-democracy protests led by students in mainland China, ahead of the June 4 crackdown in Beijing that ended the unrest.

A front page of the South China Morning Post in 1937 is showcased at the exhibition.

Photo: Elson Li The section makes no reference to the 2014 Occupy Central or umbrella movement – when thousands of people blocked major roads in Hong Kong to call for democratic elections – or the anti-government protests in 2019.

The third theme, “Coalition against Japanese Aggression”, covers the city’s occupation from 1941 to 1945 during World War II, and the fourth, “Hong Kong as a Global Metropolis”, charts its development into an international hub.

Alan Wu Ka-wah, 72, who is retired, said the revamped exhibition created a strong “sense of continuity” in narrating Hong Kong’s 6,000-year history and praised the museum’s arch

原文链接: 南华早报