I refer to the letter by Dr Patrick H. Hase, headlined, 'Museum has never tried to sell political line' (South China Morning Post, March 30).
I appreciate that the Museum of History aims to focus on the everyday and ordinary lives of Hong Kong citizens, and I agree that a museum should not take a political side and understand the difficulty in objectively and impartially portraying controversial subjects. However, this does not explain why more space has been dedicated to an artificial neolithic forest than to the 20th century. Is it not possible to show how the changes Hong Kong has undergone in this century have affected the lives of ordinary people? How can you effectively tell the story of an entire half-century of dynamic change from three computer terminals in a tiny room? Why not include any of the following scenes (to name a few) in exhibits? A shanty town from the 1940s and 1950s. The assembly line of a clothes factory in the 1950s or '60s. A queue of people waiting for water from a stand-pipe during the drought of '63. A scene from the riots of '67.
All these affected ordinary people, or were part of their daily lives.
In addition, how do you explain to a resident of Tuen Mun that the new towns are not part of ordinary life? Is anything that occurred in the past 50 years too recent to be put into a museum? It is not surprising that Victoria Finlay (article, Post, March 13) therefore felt that the Museum of History's planners were carefully avoiding 'sensitive' issues, resulting in a 'cautious and shallow' interpretation of history.
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