Sam Tung Uk Museum

Sam Tung Uk was built in 1786 by a Hakka clan that had moved into the area, a walled village on a rectangular plan with an ancestral hall on the central axis, side lanes of dwellings, and an entrance gate in the surrounding wall. In 1978 the government resumed the site for the Tsuen Wan MTR line, the clan moved out in April 1980 to a new village on Cheung Shan, and the buildings, declared a monument in 1981, were restored and opened as a museum in 1987. Rooms are furnished with agricultural tools, furniture and household objects to show how the village worked, and the contrast is the point: a low grey-brick village of the eighteenth century enclosed on all sides by residential towers.

History

The Chan clan, whose ancestors had moved from northern China to Fujian in the Hongwu era, built the village under their patriarch Chan Yam-shing in 1786, calling it Chan Sei Bit Tong; its oldest part, perhaps from as early as 1756, was laid out in three parallel rows, which gave the name "three-beam dwelling". Built for the patriarch's own family, with a house for each of his four sons, it was home to the clan for more than two centuries and 22 generations, until the site was resumed in 1978 for the Tsuen Wan MTR line; the clan left in April 1980, the village was declared a monument in March 1981, and the government turned it into a museum in 1986-1987 (Wikipedia, Sam Tung Uk Museum).

What's there

• The ancestral hall on the central axis - the ordering principle of the village.
• Furnished dwellings - rooms set out with tools and household objects.
• The surrounding wall and gate - the defensive plan of a Hakka village.
• Towers on every side - the new town built around the monument.

When to go

Year round. One to two hours. Closed Tuesdays. It is free and five minutes from the MTR, which makes it an easy addition to any New Territories trip.

Before you go

It is small and quickly seen. The reconstruction is tidy in a way a working village never was. Interpretation is basic. There is no atmosphere of a living settlement, since nobody lives here.

Nearby

Tsuen Wan is around it; Shing Mun reservoir lies north.

Key facts