5 Best Sights in Hong Kong, China

This history-meets-culture museum is Hong Kong's largest, yet it still seems a well-kept secret: chances are you won't have much company throughout its 11 massive galleries. The galleries ring an inner courtyard, which are benefitted by exquisite natural light flowing into the entry hall. Although many of the galleries focus on ancient Chinese art and heritage, the museum recently energized its offerings with an exhibition that displays changing exhibits of Hong Kong's pop culture. The T.T. Tsui Gallery of Chinese Art, exquisite antique Chinese glass, ceramics, and bronzes, fill hushed second-floor rooms. In spite of the museum's imposing size, the curators have gone for quality over quantity. Look for the 3½-foot-tall terra-cotta Horse and Rider, a beautiful example of the figures enclosed in tombs in the Han Dynasty (206 BC–AD 220). The Cantonese Opera Heritage Hall is all singing and dancing, and it's utterly hands-on. The symbolic costumes, tradition-bound stories, and stylized acting of Cantonese opera can be impenetrable; fortunately, there are well-done descriptions for even the most esoteric works.

For a comprehensive hit of history, this museum's popular Hong Kong Story should do the trick. The exhibit starts 400 million years ago in the Devonian period and makes its way all the way through to the 1997 Handover, with spectacular life-size dioramas that include village houses and a colonial-era shopping street. The ground-floor Folk Culture section offers an introduction to the history and customs of Hong Kong's main ethnic groups. Upstairs, gracious stone-walled galleries whirl you through the Opium Wars and the beginnings of colonial Hong Kong. Don't miss the chilling account of conditions during the Japanese occupation or the colorful look at Hong Kong life in the '60s.

Allow at least two hours to stroll through—more if you linger in every gallery and make use of the interactive elements. Pick your way through the gift shop's clutter to find local designer Alan Chan's T-shirts, shot glasses, and notebooks. His retro-kitsch aesthetic is based on 1940s cigarette-girl images. To get here from the Tsim Sha Tsui MTR walk along Cameron Road, then left for a block along Chatham Road South. A signposted overpass takes you to the museum.

This museum showcases over 900 artifacts from the National Palace Museum at Beijing's Forbidden City. In addition to its regular showings, the museum regularly hosts special exhibitions across six floors. There is also a number of on-site eateries, including a dim sum restaurant and a pleasant teahouse.

The hands-on exhibits are kid-friendly and include an energy machine and a miniature submarine, as well as cognitive and memory tests.

This restored Hakka house was once the home of the Law family, who arrived here from Guangdong in the mid-18th century. It's the perfect example of a triple-jian, double-lang residence. Jian are enclosed rooms—here, the bedroom, living room, and workroom at the back. The front storeroom and kitchen are the lang, where the walls don't reach up to the roof, and thus allow air in. Although the museum is small, informative texts outside and displays of rural furniture and farm implements inside give a powerful idea of what rural Hong Kong was like. It's definitely worth a trip to bustling industrial Chai Wan, at the eastern end of the MTR, to see it. Photos show what the area looked like in the 1930s—these days a leafy square is the only reminder of the woodlands and fields that once surrounded this buttermilk-color dwelling.