Sha Tin Racecourse & Penfold Park
If there is one museum in Hong
Kong you should make a special effort to visit it is the Hong Kong Heritage
Museum in Sha Tin New Town - the biggest, costliest, newest and in its field
undoubtedly the most comprehensive of them all.
Its architecture is patterned after the traditional 'Si He Yuan' style, or a
compound of harmoniously-blended houses built around a courtyard.
Adding to this bucolic scene, the Museum occupies a restful site in a wooded setting far from the concrete canyons of the New Town's melange of high-rise housing complexes.
Opened in December
2000,
the US$100
million-plus facility covers 28,500
square metres and is divided into 12
exhibition galleries, each a treasure house of relics of the history, culture
and arts of early Hong Kong and the nearby South China region.
Special features include a collection of Chinese paintings by the acclaimed
artist Zhao Shao'ang, and an exhibition of the development of Cantonese opera.
A visit to the Museum will also
remove any thoughts that when the British took possession in 1841 Hong Kong was
just a "barren" pile of rock.
Farming hamlets and fishing communities had dotted parts of the territory for
several hundred years before then, and most surprisingly the rice then grown in
Sha Tin Valley had a very special place in ancient Chinese history.
Open hours are Mondays, Wednesday to Saturday from 10am to 6pm; From 10am to 7pm on Sundays and Public Holidays. Closed on Tuesdays and the first two days of the Lunar New Year..
Hong Kong Heritage Museum
