Ancient pottery displayed at Hong Kong’s MTR Sung Wong Toi station
- Archaeological finds from 1,000 years ago, some never seen before, go on display at Sung Wong Toi MTR station
- Exhibits, displayed by their traditional design patterns, include roof tiles, teaware and jars, some stamped with family or shop names
The ancient artefacts on show at Kowloon’s Sung Wong Toi station include tiles for roofs and eaves with peony and lotus designs, as well as wine jars and teaware.
The exhibit was designed to allow travellers a glimpse into the way of life of Hong Kong’s people a thousand years ago, although a small number of items from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries are also on show.
Pottery exhibits in the “Treasures from Sacred Hill” exhibition have been on show at the station since 2021, but hundreds of never-before-seen items have now been added.
The items on show are some of the 700,000 fragments of Song-Yuan period ceramics recovered by archaeologists between 2012 and 2015 as the station was being built.
Visitors can see a fragment inscribed “the second year of Daguan”, corresponding to 1108, the only relic with an exact date on it found in the excavation site, in the new part of the exhibition, in the paid area near exit D of the station.
Other pottery jars have stamps such as Qingxiang, which means “refreshing fragrance”, and Lizhai – Li Family – as well as shop names and places, believed by researchers to reflect the boom in commercial activities at the time.
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Hong Kong’s centuries of involvement in maritime trade is also in evidence.
Wine containers and tea bowls are on show, among them a rare ewer with a short spout and single handle and some fine tea bowls made in mainland China’s Fujian and Zhejiang provinces.
Siu Lai-kuen, the Development Bureau’s chief heritage executive for antiquities and monuments, said the station exhibits were just 0.1 per cent of the discoveries made at the site.
Siu said the team was also trying to get in touch with China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration in the hope mainland experts could help with research.
The bureau also created a new mural to give a timeline to illustrate the changes to the Sacred Hill area since the 1860s.
It was a small hill near the coast of Kowloon Bay used for sea salt production during the Song-Yuan period. The Song dynasty began in 960 and ended in 1279, while the Yuan dynasty ran from 1279 to 1368.
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A giant rock with three huge Chinese characters, “Sung Wong Toi”, which means “Terrace of the Song Emperors”, was on top of the hill, in memory of a legend that two young monarchs from the Southern Song dynasty once fled there to escape from a Mongol army.
The hill was bulldozed to make way for the expansion of the former Kai Tak Airport in the 1950s.
But the rock was removed and installed in the Sung Wong Toi Garden, where it can still be seen.
The MTR Corporation said it hoped it could build Sung Wong Toi station into “a museum on a train track” and that visitors would add the station to their travel bucket list.
