Customary and customised: nation-building at the Hong Kong Palace Museum

ABSTRACT

The Hong Kong Palace Museum (HKPM) is the first museum dedicated to orthodox Chinese history in Hong Kong. Opened in July 2022, the HKPM emerged amid an accelerating integration of the city with mainland China and closely adheres to Chinese nationalist ideologies. However, among museums in Hong Kong and mainland China that foster nation-building, it features conventional yet distinctive presentation strategies. We critically analyse the objects displayed, the textual evidence from labels and panels, and the spatial arrangement of the opening thematic exhibitions to deconstruct the nationalistic agenda embedded in the narrative. On one hand, the HKPM guides local visitors to (re)imagine the Chinese nation based on a flourishing, continuing, Confucian-centric, and culturally diverse Chinese civilisation, following customary nationalistic narratives. On the other hand, the HKPM customises its narrative to legitimise Hong Kong’s unification with China and affix Hong Kong’s past, present, and future to the development of the Chinese nation. Together, the exhibitions attempt to bolster visitors’ sense of belonging to the nation through cognitive and affective means, while invoking a sense of obligation to contribute to the nation.

KEYWORDS:

• Museum
• narrative
• nationalism
• identity
• Hong Kong

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to Rowan Flad, Jada Ko, Shuli Wang, Percy Ho, Reynold Tsang, and two anonymous reviewers, whose suggestions helped strengthen the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. While ‘Three Purities tea party’ is explicitly named in the Chinese description on the panel, the English version simply refers to it as ‘tea party’.

2. The concept duoyuan yiti geju was proposed by sociologist Fei (1989). He refers yiti (unity) to the united consciousness as Zhonghua minzu, but in Xi Jinping’s Thought yiti means political unity (Wang 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joyce W.I. Ho

Joyce W.I. Ho gained a Bachelor of Science in Archaeology from University College London, and a Master of Science in Archaeological Science from the University of Oxford. She then worked as a research assistant at the Hong Kong Metropolitan University on heritage studies. She is currently a PhD student in the Archaeology programme at the Department of Anthropology, Harvard University. Her main research interests are archaeology of technology, material analysis, spatial analysis, critical heritage studies, and museum studies.

Lok-Yin Law

Lok-yin Law is an Assistant Professor of Social Sciences, Hong Kong Metropolitan University. Before that, he completed his PhD in Chinese (Humanities) at Nanyang Technological University, MA in Comparative and Public History at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and his undergraduate studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. His research interests include history of Sino-Korean relations, Cultural History of East Asia, History and Culture Heritage in Hong Kong.