Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb Museum

In August 1955, government workers levelling a hillside in Sham Shui Po to build resettlement housing accidentally uncovered a cross-shaped brick burial chamber with a domed roof, a design popular in Guangdong during the Eastern Han period, roughly AD 25 to 220. Archaeologists from the University of Hong Kong, led by Professor Frederick S. Drake, excavated the site alongside Public Works Department labourers. Initial plans called for the tomb to be demolished to make way for the housing project, but strong public interest changed that decision, and the tomb opened formally to visitors in 1957, with the exhibition hall beside it renovated most recently in 2005. It remains, to date, the only Han dynasty brick tomb ever unearthed in Hong Kong. Inscriptions on the bricks and the construction technique date the tomb precisely enough that archaeologists have been able to place it within a known regional building tradition rather than treating it as an isolated find. Fifty-eight artefacts were recovered from inside, the great majority of them pottery: cooking vessels including ding tripods and zun wine warmers, and, more unusually, miniature clay models of a house, a granary, a well and a stove, objects placed in Han-era tombs to provide for the deceased in the afterlife. Eight bronze pieces, including bowls, basins, mirrors and bells, round out the find. No human remains were recovered, but the selection and quality of the grave goods point to an officer attached to the local garrison rather than an ordinary commoner. Visitors cannot enter the tomb chamber itself; it is viewed through a glass panel, with a 3D animation in the adjoining exhibition hall reconstructing what the interior would have looked like at the time of burial, and a full-size replica is displayed separately at the Hong Kong Museum of History for anyone who wants a closer look at the structure.