Wondering what to do with yourself, or the family on these long, hot rainy Hong Kong days? If you are bored of traipsing around soulless shopping centres or cringe at the idea that Sunday brunch is the highlight of your weekend, then you are in for a treat if you head over to Tsim Sha Tsui to the Hong Kong Museum of History. From July 25th to November 26th Hong Kong will host a formidable terracotta warriors exhibition called “The Majesty of All Under Heaven: The Eternal Realm of China’s First Emperor” and it’s set to be the best exhibition in Hong Kong this year.
Visitors will have the rare opportunity to take a closer look at some of the world famous terracotta warriors and over 100 sets of invaluable relics from the Qin dynasty. The highlight of the exhibition however is undoubtedly the 20 terracotta warriors and horses, including a terracotta general, a standing archer, a kneeling archer, an infantryman, an officer, a terracotta cavalryman, an acrobat, a cavalry horse and a terracotta chariot horse. On a few of these, and other artifacts, the pigment is still visible.
Normally mainland authorities impose a ceiling of 10 terracotta warriors to be given on loan to overseas exhibitions, but as Mr. Raymond Young, Permanent Secretary for Home affairs explained, this exhibition has been allowed 20 as it is one of the highlight programmes celebrating the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
A lot of thought and planning has gone into this collection as well as how best to showcase it and involve the visitors. For this reason the Hong Kong Museum of History’s lobby has been transformed into a multimedia zone and technology is used throughout to to bring history to life. Advanced multimedia and audio-visual presentations such as projection, digital animation and augmented reality technology are just some of the ways the museum is bridging the gap between history and the present.
A dedicated website (www.firstemperor.lcsd.gov.hk) has been created for the exhibition where interactive guides be accessed and visitors can download an Apple or Android app created especially for this event.
Entrance tickets cost HK$10 (free Wednesdays will not apply) and the museum will extend its opening hours during the exhibition period remaining open from 9am to 10.30pm daily. Except for public holidays, the museum will be closed on Tuesdays.
Hong Kong Museum of History, 100 Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon.
Museum Website: www.hk.history.museum