Older accounts of the tomb call Panyu a province. The museum states plainly that it was the county which included the Hong Kong region during the Han dynasty. Those accounts also give a public opening in 1957 and a Han Garden completed in 1993, neither of which any official source states, and place the site over a mile inland without anything to support the distance. What is solid: the tomb was found in 1955, has four chambers set around an entrance passage in a cross — the front one domed, the other three barrel-vaulted — is dated by the museum to the Eastern Han, yielded 58 objects and no human remains at all, and was declared a monument in 1988. The interior is closed for conservation and is seen through a glass panel.
The discovery
The tomb came to light in 1955, when the government was levelling a hill slope at Lei Cheng Uk Village, at the north end of Tonkin Street, to build resettlement blocks. It is an accident of public housing that a two-thousand-year-old burial chamber survives in Sham Shui Po at all.
The structure, and the inscription that fixes the place
There are four chambers — front, rear, left and right — joined by an entrance passage into a symmetrical cross. The front chamber has a domed roof; the other three are barrel-vaulted, a distinction older accounts leave out.
The bricks carry inscriptions, and they are what tie the tomb to a place. Three are recorded: Daji Panyu, "great fortune to Panyu county"; Panyu Dazhili, "peace to Panyu county"; and Xue Shi. Panyu was a county — the county that included the Hong Kong region during the Han dynasty — and not a province, which is the error that has travelled furthest.
Both the museum and the heritage office date the tomb to the Eastern Han, 25 to 220 AD, on the basis of its structure, those brick inscriptions and the objects found in it. Older accounts give the same range while labelling it the Han dynasty generally; the Han as a whole began considerably earlier, and the dating here is to the Eastern Han specifically.
What was recovered
Fifty-eight burial objects: fifty pottery and eight bronze. The pottery includes cooking utensils, food vessels and storage containers, along with models of a house, a granary, a well and a stove. The bronzes are a basin, a mirror, a bell and bowls.
No human skeletal remains were found. The museum states the fact and offers no explanation for it, and nor does the heritage office — so the absence is recorded rather than accounted for, and should be left that way.
Visiting
The tomb was declared a monument in 1988 and has been preserved permanently since. The interior is closed to the public for conservation reasons and is viewed through a glass panel at the entrance passage. The adjoining exhibition hall shows the pottery and bronzes, with a display on the tomb itself and a pictorial exhibition on the Han dynasty Silk Road. Admission is free.
Opening is Monday to Wednesday and Friday to Sunday, 10:00 to 18:00, and 10:00 to 17:00 on Christmas Eve and Chinese New Year's Eve. It is closed on Thursdays except public holidays, and on the first two days of Chinese New Year. The address is 41 Tonkin Street, Sham Shui Po.
On accessibility, the museum publishes a ramp and automatic door at the main entrance, a tactile guide path, Braille and tactile floor plans, a wheelchair-accessible enquiries counter, an assistive listening system, and audio-visual emergency alarm signals.
Where it sits in the museum system
This is one of four branch museums of the Hong Kong Museum of History, alongside the Dr Sun Yat-sen Museum, the Law Uk Folk Museum in Chai Wan and the Fireboat Alexander Grantham Exhibition Gallery in Quarry Bay Park. A replica of the tomb stands inside the parent museum, and artefacts from here are shown in its new permanent exhibition — so the tomb can be met twice, in reproduction across the harbour and in the original here.
The Han Garden adjoins the museum, laid out in Han dynasty style with classical pavilions, bridges and a tree-lined pond. No official source gives a completion date for it, which is why the 1993 that circulates is not repeated here.
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