Even more Hong Kong

Thursday August 25^th

After such a hot day yesterday, we decided on a cooler day today. So we opted for a visit to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, which has won several awards. Another bonus was that it is in Sha Tin, where we used to live for most of our time in Hong Kong. We managed, for once, to catch the (air-conditioned) hotel courtesy bus to the centre of Hong Kong, and from there it was 2 different metro lines and 2 different trains (all air-conditioned). As soon as the train came out of Lion Rock Tunnel, we looked to see if we could see Worldwide Gardens, but everything was so different. When we moved there, Worldwide Gardens was the only high rise development on the whole hillside and our 5 (I think) 20 storey blocks looked down on all the flower farms in the valley below. Now there are no flower farms, instead there are thickets of other multi-storey blocks all over the valley and right up the hillside. I might have spotted Worldwide Gardens, but I’m not sure.

Sha Tin itself was also un-recognisable, being now a big town with a population of over three quarters of a million – all housed in multi-storey buildings, of course

The Museum was only a very short walk from the station, and of course, it was air-conditioned too. So we had a lovely cool day. The museum itself is stunning, so we ended up spending all day there.

There are a couple of interesting galleries about Cantonese Opera, with very colourful costumes and some recounting of the history of the opera. The galleries are full of the sound of the music of the operas, which Paul did not enjoy. But we found the costumes and the scenes fascinating, and there were lots of details about make-up and back-stage life as well.

The best bit, however, was the heritage galleries, which outlined the history of Hong Kong from prehistoric times.

We were very taken with the old narrow gague steam engine that belonged to the original Kowloon to Canton railway.

There were some superb set pieces, replicas of old traditional shops and crafts, the one below is a traditional quilt-maker's shop. There was also an interesting video of how the cotton quilts were made.

There were other wonderful shops too - a maker of ritual paper (Hell money and so on) a Chinese medicine shop, a shop that sold pottery, baskets and tools. There was a whole street of fisherman’s houses on stilts.

Most of the real stilt houses have now gone, and I had not realised, but most of the boat people have also gone. There is very little fishing left, and the boats were very crowded and unsanitary, so the families were re-housed. Apparently there are only 6 residential boats left, and there used to be thousands when we lived here.

We spent hours in these galleries, and I went to see a video on the boat people. Then we looked at some of the Chinese art in other parts of the gallery. The pottery was particularly superb, but for some reason I don’t seem to have taken any pictures.

We decided to eat in the hotel tonight as we have to pack and get ready to check out – we fly to Sydney tomorrow night.