China-Hong Kong Palace Museum/Curator

Shotlist

Hong Kong, China – Recent (CCTV – No access Chinese mainland)
1. Various of exhibits at Hong Kong Palace Museum
2. Various of Louis Ng Chi-wa, curator of Hong Kong Palace Museum, working
3. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Louis Ng Chi-wa, curator, Hong Kong Palace Museum (partially overlaid with shots 4-5):
“The cultural relics of the Palace Museum are too precious to be transferred from Beijing in large numbers. In addition, the Palace Museum attaches great importance to the dissemination of the history and culture of the museum, and will not easily give the job of dissemination and interpretation to someone who is not a staffer of the museum.”
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4. Various of exhibits

FILE: Beijing, China – Date Unknown (CCTV – No access Chinese mainland)
5. Various of Palace Museum
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6. Various of Palace Museum

Hong Kong, China – Recent (CCTV – No access Chinese mainland)
7. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Louis Ng Chi-wa, curator, Hong Kong Palace Museum (starting with shot 6/partially overlaid with shots 8-9):
“When I was chatting with the former curator of the Palace Museum, Shan Jixiang, I joked about whether there could be a Palace Museum in Hong Kong. I didn’t know what he was thinking. He made the proposal very formally to Carrie Lam, then Chief Secretary for Administration, during the meeting. At that time, I never thought of the possibility of establishing a Palace museum in Hong Kong,”
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8. Various of exhibits
9. Various of Hong Kong Palace Museum
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FILE: Hong Kong, China – Date Unknown (CCTV – No access Chinese mainland)
10. Various of flag of Hong Kong Special Administrative region, Chinese national flag
11. Various of cityscape

Hong Kong, China – Recent (CCTV – No access Chinese mainland)
12. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Louis Ng Chi-wa, curator, Hong Kong Palace Museum (partially overlaid with shots 13-14):
“We were extremely excited and happy because this project can be said to be so important that it will change the future development of our culture in Hong Kong. It could not be done without the support of the central government.”
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13. Various of Hong Kong Palace Museum
14. Various of exhibits
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15. Hong Kong Palace Museum, cityscape

Storyline

The idea of establishing the Hong Kong Palace Museum came from a casual conversation, according to its curator Louis Ng Chi-wa.

The museum, located in the West Kowloon Cultural District of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), officially opened to the public on Sunday with more than 900 treasures from the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing on display at the opening exhibitions.

Before becoming the first curator of the museum, Ng was Hong Kong’s deputy director of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. However, he never thought of opening such a museum in the city.

“The cultural relics of the Palace Museum are too precious to be transferred from Beijing in large numbers. In addition, the Palace Museum attaches great importance to the dissemination of the history and culture of the museum, and will not easily give the job of dissemination and interpretation to someone who is not a staffer of the museum,” said Ng.

In September 2015, Ng accompanied Carrie Lam, then Chief Secretary for Administration of the HKSAR Government, to Beijing to participate in an event.

As heavy rain caused the delay of their return flight, the two paid a visit to the Palace Museum and chatted with Shan Jixiang, then curator of the museum. It was during the conversation Ng first talked about the idea of the Hong Kong Palace Museum.

“When I was chatting with the former curator of the Palace Museum, Shan Jixiang, I joked about whether there could be a Palace Museum in Hong Kong. I didn’t know what he was thinking. He made the proposal very formally to Carrie Lam, then Chief Secretary for Administration, during the meeting. At that time, I never thought of the possibility of establishing a Palace museum in Hong Kong,” said Ng.

Hong Kong has got the plan to boost its cultural development long ago. As early as in 1998, the HKSAR government proposed in its policy address that the city is going to build a series of world-class cultural facilities in the reclamation area in West Kowloon.

Therefore, after receiving the proposal from the Palace Museum, the HKSAR government submitted a written request to the central government for the establishment of the Hong Kong Palace Museum and received the approval. The project was officially launched in December 2016.

“We were extremely excited and happy because this project can be said to be so important that it will change the future development of our culture in Hong Kong. It could not be done without the support of the central government,” said Ng.

In 2019, Ng officially became the first director of the Hong Kong Palace Museum. Also in this year, the construction of the museum officially began in the West Kowloon Cultural District.

The project was completed at the end of 2021 and more than 900 cultural relics from the Palace Museum arrived in Hong Kong during the first half of 2022.

Among the exhibits, there is one that Ng specifically asked for, a box for transferring cultural relics 90 years ago.

In 1933 when China was fighting the resistance war against Japanese Aggression, 19,557 boxes of cultural relics from the Palace Museum and others were moved south in five batches, transferred from one city in the following 20 years.

None of the more than one million cultural relics were damaged after traveling over 10,000 kilometers, which was a miracle in the history of human cultural heritage protection.

According to the museum, a certain number of Palace Museum cultural relics will be exhibited in the Hong Kong Palace Museum for a long time in addition to the temporary exhibits. As a result, there will be up to 1,000 sets of Palace Museum cultural relics for Hong Kong citizens to appreciate. The museum will also regularly change exhibits often. Visitors may expect more surprises in the future.