Och! And what would you say to a few holes of chuiwan, laddie?

Their hand-crafted instruments were made of stone, wood or whatever was left of the animals they ate. They gambled with dice made of bone and drank while playing board games. The people of ancient China didn't waste their free time, they got creative.

Views of ancient history are often clouded by images of war, famine and political struggle. This may accurately characterise the overall evolution of humanity, but it doesn't illuminate how individuals lived their daily lives.

'Very few documents describe ancient pastimes,' says Judith Ng Suet-kwan, assistant curator of the Hong Kong Heritage Museum.

Which is the idea behind Enlightening Trivialities: Ancient Chinese Pastimes, an exhibition of artefacts ranging from ancient flutes to what some say is evidence that golf originated in China.

Co-presented by the National Museum of China and the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, the exhibition traces the evolution of arts and games that people devised to entertain themselves.

History texts tend to gloss over stories of women playing football more than 1,000 years ago, or men gathering for board games and gambling with bone dice in the sixth century. But what some historians may deem minutiae is anything but fleeting. These trivial pursuits of the ancient world - polo, golf, dance, poetry, board games and theatre - helped shape culture up to the present.

In a foreword to the exhibit, which opened on March 21, chief curator Ming Kay-chuen says there's a misconception that ancient Chinese didn't value leisure.