Exhibition in Hong Kong

Title : Modern Metropolis: Material Culture of Shanghai and Hong Kong

Shanghai and Hong Kong have developed simultaneously and the pattern of development shared a lot of similarities. The stories of the two coastal cities began more than one hundred years ago. Magnificent architecture appeared along the coast and the building clusters later developed into the Bund in Shanghai and City of Victoria in Hong Kong. In the two cities, the foreign interacted with the local, the traditional merged with the modern, and the new fused with the old to form a unique cosmopolitan lifestyle. This exhibition sets out to illustrate how Shanghai and Hong Kong pioneered China's modernisation, as well as depict the two cities' open, innovative, diversified and commercial way of life through clothing, food, living environment, transportation and culture and entertainment. A collaborative effort between Hong Kong Museum of History and Shanghai History Museum, the exhibition will present some 240 sets of exhibits from Shanghai and Hong Kong, including the metal plaque marking the border of the Shanghai International Settlement, a rickshaw before 1949, a pictorial album with actress Lily Yuen's autograph, a signage for the old Shanghai Race Club, costumes from the early 20th Century, monthly calendars and artefacts of the four major department stores. Please join us in revisiting the cities' social pasts – a cosmopolitan way of life that is prosperous, colourful and in touch with world trends.


Date : 29 April - 17 August 2009 (Closed on Tuesdays)

Address :
100 Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong (next to the Hong Kong Science Museum)

Fee :
^General Opening Days：HK$10
30% discount for group of 20 or more：HK$7 each
50% discount for full-time students / senior citizens /people with disabilities：HK$5 each
^On Wednesdays：Free
^Free Admission for holders of Museum Pass and Weekly Pass

Get more details : The Hong Kong Museum of History

Great Temple of Macua 1843

Façade of the Great Temple, Macao

By Thomas Allom 1843


So slight is Portuguese tenure or title at Macao, that the Chinese maintain here, in neighbourship with this despised of race foreigners, one of the most remarkable, most venerated, and really graceful building in the empire, dedicated to the worship of Fo. Which all Chinese pray for.

The architecture is more intelligible as a design, more perfect in execution, and less Grotesque, than the majority of Buddhist temples, the situation on the water-side, Amidst forest-trees and natural rock, is inconceivable beautiful, and the mode in which the architects have availed themselves of all these accessories to grace and harmony is highly meritorious.

The Neang – mako, or Old Temple of the Lady, is situated half a mile from the city centre of Macao, the temple is not perceived until the visitor comes suddenly upon the steep rocky steps that descend to the spacious esplanade before it. The scene in front, composed of religious votaries, venders of various commodities, jugglers, Ballad singers, sailors, soldiers, mandarins, and mendicants, is common to all the Sea – ports of China. The merits of the building itself are of so peculiar and so Conspicuous a character, that they call for a more detailed description. It is not Grandeur or loftiness, that the Neang – mako owes its charms, but also to Multitudinous details, made out with a minuteness and accuracy that cannot be exceeded. There is not another example, most probably, in all this wide – extended empire, in which the many grotesque features of Chinese scenery are concentrated within so small a compass, buildings, rocks, trees growing from the very stone, would appear to justify the artificial combinations that are madein their gardening, and in their drawings.