Move over, Madame Tussauds: when a wax museum ‘like no other’ opened in Hong Kong
Hong Kong got its own wax museum when Madame Vivian opened one in Tsim Sha Tsui in the 1970s. ‘Our figures will have movement, and to touch them will be like touching real flesh’, she claimed
“Hongkong will have in about 18 months something many people have been saying for a long time the Colony needs – a waxworks museum,” reported the South China Morning Post on April 26, 1969. The museum would “be like no other in the world – even including Madame Tussauds in London. For our figures will have movement, and to touch them will be like touching real flesh”.
The lifelike waxworks were to be created by Beijing-born Vivian Sun, who was described in the Post as, “young, attractive, with an inner beauty, charm and extraordinary intelligence”, who, “with the aid of a number of several young male assistants”, would make between 70 and 100 figures for the museum. Movement would be created “by means which must stay Miss Sun’s secret for the present,” the Post reported, adding that she had developed a wax that felt skin-like and used human hair to achieve a realistic finish.
Madame Vivian’s Wax Museum opened at Star House, in Tsim Sha Tsui, on August 28, 1970, featuring about 60 life-size models of figures from ancient and contemporary Chinese life and literature. Admission cost HK$3.50.
The museum initially proved popular, but “soaring rents” affected running costs and Sun struggled to keep it open. On August 22, 1974, the Post ran the headline: “House of wax to get the axe”.
In an interview with the newspaper, Sun told of her plans to leave the colony and destroy the entire collection of waxworks. “I don’t want anything to remind me of Hongkong,” she said.
The wax figures were saved at the eleventh hour by the Dai Gum San Chinese village project in Bendigo, an Australian town with a significant Chinese population.
“At least in Bendigo, [the waxworks] would be among an appreciative Chinese community,” Sun told the Post on August 24. “In Hongkong, it probably just happens that few people like art.”
Some of Sun’s waxworks are still on display at Bendigo’s Golden Dragon Museum.
