Nestled in Hong Kong’s verdant Kowloon Park is an imposing five-metre-tall, intricately carved wooden shrine on display in the city for the first time as part of an exhibition targeting improved integration within the Greater Bay Area.
The century-old structure, a top-grade national treasure from Guangdong province known as the Panyu shrine, is part of the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre’s show which the museum said features 170 exhibits dating from the Western Han dynasty (202 BC to 8 AD) to the present day.
The pieces showcase “the culture and traditions of the Lingnan region and the Central Plains, which share the same origin”, according to the Hong Kong government.
Susanna Siu Lai-kuen, one of the curators of the exhibition, which is titled “Under the Same Roof: Origin and Art of Lingnan Traditional Architecture”, said the show highlighted the shared properties of artefacts in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau.
“Every exhibition cabinet features artefacts from all three places … but they do not feel out of place with one other because they share a lot of similarities,” she said.
Siu added she wanted her curation to bring out “the feeling of a family” to echo the title of the show, which evoked the idea of relatives living together “under one roof”, an important part of Chinese culture.
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The exhibition is the first to be co-organised by Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau since the trio signed a memorandum of understanding in November 2022 on exchange and collaboration over archaeological and cultural heritage in the bay area.
The bay area is Beijing’s initiative to integrate Hong Kong, Macau and nine mainland cities into an economic powerhouse.
Most of the items are being shown in Hong Kong for the first time.
Highlights include the palace-like gold-painted Panyu shrine that dates from 1909, the earliest discovered green-glazed barrel tile and board tile, windows and woven bamboo architectural decorations from the Macau Museum and a carved red sandstone column base from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) unearthed in Hong Kong.
Siu said the exhibition also aimed to tell the public about a part of history, in 221 BC, when Emperor Qin Shi Huang unified the country and sent officials to rule over the area of Lingnan, which includes present-day Hong Kong.
The precise borders of the Lingnan region are subject to scholarly debate, but according to Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, the general understanding is that they span the southern coast of China and the mountain ridges “in the borderland between Hunan, Jiangxi, southern Fujian, Guangxi and northern Guangdong”.
Asked whether the exhibition also served to reinforce that Hong Kong had always been part of China “since time immemorial”, a phrase used by local authorities and a concept outlined in the city’s mini-constitution, Siu said she did not want to touch on politics and her research was purely academic.
“For us who work in research, history is history, and culture is culture,” she said.
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Siu added that from an archaeological perspective, the fact that the same or very similar artefacts were unearthed in the area illustrated the unified development in the Lingnan region, which could be attributed to influences such as climate and geography.
The exhibition could help raise interest in Lingnan traditional architecture, she said, pointing to feedback from visitors who wanted to visit original buildings on the mainland after attending.
She said such exchanges could also facilitate better integration within the bay area.
The exhibition, which is free of charge and open every day apart from Thursdays, began last month and will run until June 2.