If you visit only one museum in Hong Kong and you’re prepared to spend at least 2 hours, this should be it. Make it one of your first priorities, so you’ll have a better understanding of what you see during the rest of your trip. Opened in 2001, this is Hong Kong’s ambitious attempt to chronicle its long and fascinating history, starting with the formation of its natural history and its beginnings as a Neolithic settlement and continuing through its development as a fishing village and subsequent transformation into a modern metropolis.
Through displays that include dioramas, replicas of fishing boats, models, reconstructed traditional housing, furniture, clothing, and items from daily life, the museum introduces Hong Kong’s ethnic groups and their traditional means of livelihood, customs, and beliefs. These include the Tanka, who lived their entire lives on boats, the Five Great Clans who settled in what is now the New Territories and built walled communities, and the Hakka, primarily rice farmers.
You can peer inside a fishing junk, see what Kowloon Walled City looked like before it became a park, see the backstage of a Chinese opera, read about the arrival of European traders and the Opium Wars, study a map showing land reclamation since the 1840s, and see how Hong Kong changed under Japanese occupation (surprisingly, the section on Japanese occupation is quite extensive, considering that it takes up less than 4 years of Hong Kong’s history).
There are 10 small movie theaters spread throughout depicting everything from Hong Kong’s beginnings and the Opium Wars to its movie industry, though showings in English are limited. One of my favorite parts of the museum is a re-created street of old Hong Kong, complete with a Chinese herbal-medicine shop actually located in Central until 1980, and reconstructed here. There are also 19th- and early-20th-century photographs, poignantly showing how much Hong Kong has changed through the decades. You can easily spend 2 hours here. Audio guides, providing commentaries on more than 100 exhibits, are available for HK$10 (US$1.30/70p).