‘We didn’t know about the lives of Hong Kong people’: how a pictorial history of the then British colony changed a museum director’s life
- When Brian Lam was at school in Hong Kong he was taught nothing of its social history. A book about life in the British colony in 1870 helped him change career
- Reading Hong Kong 100 Years Ago: A Picture-Story of Hong Kong in 1870 made Lam want to convey history not by being a teacher but a curator of exhibitions
Originally the catalogue of an exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of History, “Hong Kong 100 Years Ago: A Picture-Story of Hong Kong in 1870” (1970), edited by John Warner, is a treasure trove of images of the city as it was in the 19th century.
Brian Lam Kwok-fai, museum director of the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, tells Richard Lord how it changed his life.
It’s a book that I bought when I first visited the Hong Kong Museum of History, in 1990. Before that, I hadn’t visited any museums in Hong Kong. These days, you can see museums like M+ and the Hong Kong Palace Museum on television and social media, but in the 1980s museums didn’t have the same publicity.
I visited in 1990 because I was studying in the education department of Chinese University of Hong Kong. After I graduated, in history, I wanted to be a teacher, and I was studying for a diploma in education. Our tutor told us to visit the Hong Kong Museum of History and use it as a resource.
At that time they had very good displays about Hong Kong history. We could find out how to use stone inscriptions, public records, booklets and other manuscripts to enhance our teaching content.
Our tutor encouraged us to make use of the museum’s materials in our classes. I bought this book when I was there, but at that moment I didn’t imagine that I’d be a curator.
I found that I didn’t have good knowledge of Hong Kong history, even though I was thinking of being a history teacher.
When I was a secondary school student, we only had Chinese history and world history, not Hong Kong history; as an undergraduate, I mainly studied Chinese history.
We knew about the opium wars and the Qing government dealing with the British, but we didn’t know much about the lives of Hong Kong people in the past. What did they do in their leisure time? What did the buildings in the city look like then?
Reading the book was an eye-opening experience. It showed the old buildings, and you could also see the faces of the inhabitants of Hong Kong Island in the 19th century.
Sometimes we can’t know much about the lives of ordinary people, and these photos are a precious resource for us to have a better understanding of those lives.
In 1990 and 1991, I was a teacher in a secondary school. I found I wanted to go back and study for a master’s in history. Then the history department of the university offered me a tutoring role, which I could combine with studying. It changed my career path.
I graduated, and saw a job advertised in the student office as a curator in the History Museum. It was my goal to teach people history; if I work in a museum, I can achieve that goal.
I find the book’s content very rich; it covers many aspects of the lives of people in the 19th century. It’s a very good reference when we are preparing exhibitions and I need information about Hong Kong history. There are all kinds of things I can find in that book.
