Sponsored by the China Merchants Foundation and focused on local tertiary and secondary school pupils, the programme aims to “nurture Hong Kong’s next generation of arts and culture talents” and cultivate their understanding and appreciation for Chinese history and cultural relics.

“Hong Kong has very much been a business city, but in the past 10 years that has changed a lot,” says Dr Louis Ng, director of the HKPM and a staunch advocate of the ambassador programme. “When I was young, we did not have these kinds of opportunities in Hong Kong. That is why I think this is quite important.”

One of the ambassadors in this inaugural cohort is Cherine Yip. A form 4 student at True Light Middle School of Hong Kong, Yip is a museum director’s dream. Even over a spotty Zoom call, the connection juddering along, her tone gushes with enthusiasm, and her choice of words – referring to the Palace Museum as a “new cultural landmark in Hong Kong”, as if she were a seasoned PR professional – shows how eagerly she has embraced her role as ambassador.

Yip is almost nonchalant when explaining why she signed up for the eight-month training programme. When she noticed a poster and saw the activities involved, she “instantly” decided it would be an interesting experience and thought, “Why not give it a try to explore the programme in person?”

Her decision to sign-up was bolstered by a long-standing love of the past. “I’ve always been interested in culture and history and have visited all the museums in Hong Kong ever since I was in primary school,” enthuses Yip. “Not only the ones that cover art and culture but ones like the Science and Space Museum.”

Yip even visited the original Palace Museum in Beijing as a child and remembers feeling overwhelmed by the quality and quantity of exhibits there. “I think that’s the significance of the HKPM, that they have selected only the most stunning exhibits that suit Hong Kong’s people,” she remarks.

It’s not only keen historians that have been drawn to the programme. Another first-year ambassador is Janice Chan, a form 5 student from Kiangsu-Chekiang College. She, like Yip, shares a long-standing interest in museums but is frank in admitting that Chinese history isn’t her favourite class. “It’s a subject I have to learn,” she declares, before revealing psychology is what interests her most. Rather, what appealed to Chan about the ambassador programme was discovering the ins and outs of how a museum works and the hidden efforts made behind the scenes.

Even if Chan is less interested in the specific details of history – the names of ancient emperors or the dates of famous battles – both young ambassadors share a real appreciation for the overall weave of history. “Something we can never forget is history,” Chan says. “It’s how we got here and the story behind that.”

To be selected for the programme, each student had to pass two rounds of selection. The course itself lasted eight months and pupils received training in subjects like exhibition appreciation, object conservation, docent training, as well as attending local field trips to places like the Wun Yiu kilns site in Tai Po, which has a history of porcelain making dating back to the Ming dynasty.

It’s a broad education, as Ng explains: “We want to develop students’ knowledge – to help them appreciate art and culture – but also their skills. For example, their communication and observation skills – but it’s not just about learning. It’s about inspiring students and empowering them. It’s about opening their minds to what they can do. We want to widen their perspectives, broaden their horizons.”

The original aim of the programme was to train the student ambassadors to act as docents who could guide their peers or younger schoolchildren through the museum. However, given each ambassador’s school commitments, Ng admits staff realised it was overly ambitious and “technically quite difficult” to arrange this on a consistent basis. Nonetheless, the young ambassadors attend to the museum and support all its activities and services whenever possible.

This is crucial for the long-term development of the HKPM. The museum has already welcomed more than 1.7 million guests but Ng admits that during the institution’s first year of operation “most of our visitors were mature visitors”. Prior to the student ambassador programme the museum had an existing volunteer programme, but that was comprised entirely of adults. It was for this reason the HKPM came up with the idea of student ambassadors to act as young spokespersons.

Helping to ensure the future viability of an institution like the HKPM is a sizeable weight to bear for young shoulders, but it’s one this first cohort of student ambassadors seems at ease with.

“I wouldn’t say I feel any pressure, I’m really honoured to do this, to be honest,” says Chan. “I know it’s the first year of this programme, so I’m aware it’s really important to make a good impression to keep the programme running and invite more people to join. But it’s an honour to be a student ambassador and to get to share our knowledge and experiences to younger people and the whole entire world.”

Yip too uses the word “honoured” when speaking of her ambassadorial role. She is clearly in love with the HKPM’s collection and excitedly reveals her favourite artefact of all the museum’s many items is One or Two, a famous portrait of the Qianlong emperor. Yip relates how, in it, the emperor is clothed as a Song dynasty scholar, appreciating objects from that era – objects now in the HKPM collection.

“It’s thrilling to find those objects from the portrait here in real life. It demonstrates how exhibits can be interrelated,” she says, “and also, its composition is based on another portrait from the Song dynasty, so you can really feel how history is a dialogue between the past, the present and the future.”

It’s this connection across time that Yip hopes to put across in her role as ambassador.

“The message I would like people to take away is that although exhibits in a museum are on display behind a glass window and we cannot touch them, they were actually basic necessities made for the people in the past – like the tea cups or clothes that we have in our own lives,” Yip says. “Some people think history is very far away from us but through our sharing the stories behind exhibits, and even our personal feelings, I hope visitors will realise that’s not the case.”