Bloggin'......

Hong Kong Museum of History

I got a free day today, so I went to Dimsum with my Uncle and Aunt in Tsim Sha Tsui. I love Hong Kong. It's so easy to get around, even though it's such a big city. We caught up over some great dimsum, though I had just visited less than a few months ago. They think it's great, since it seems I visit probably more than their own children!

We milled around for a bit to let our food digest, and then decided to visit the Hong Kong Museum of History. I love history, so learning about new facts and experiences is always exciting for me. The museum tour started out at first a little indistinct, i thought. It had a display of the different rocks, sediments, and minerals found throughout Hong Kong, which gave a pretty generic explaination of the formation of Hong kong about 400 million years ago. Lava flows, rocks form, ice age starts, glaciers split, rocks re-emerged, ice melted, water flowed, and now there's Hong kong.... But then the museum got interesting. From Paleontology to more recent archeology and findings, the museum brings to life the history of Hong Kong through the ages of the Chinese Dynasties, the opium wars and cession to Great Britain, and the subsequent return to the Chinese.

Most interesting was the exhibit about Hong Kong during World War II, and its occupation by the Japanese. It lasted three years and eight months, but was probably one of the darkest periods in Hong Kong history.

My favorite part was learning about the more recent pop culture of Hong Kong, especialy following World War II. Hong kong as everyone knows, became a new manufaturing center for all kinds of toys, clothing, and electronics. My Uncle and Aunt had distinct memories about living in Hong Kong during that time. For me, I was learning about history, but for them it was about going down to the corner store because it was the only place that had radio. They had also, at one time, lived in a section of Shek Kip Mei and had just moved, right before a devasting fire destroyed that section of Hong Kong in 1953.

I learned a lot in this trip.

Posted by Jimmy at August 31, 2005 06:50 AM