A row over the Hong Kong Heritage Museum is a window on China

The Hong Kong Heritage Museum is beguiling and eclectic. Visitors wander through a colonial-era reading room and a full-sized replica of an opera house made of bamboo. An exhibition on Bruce Lee features quotes of the actor urging people to “be formless, shapeless, like water”—a pro-democracy protesters in 2019. It may be a hotch-potch collection, but it represents “our collective memory”, says Kacey Wong, a Hong Kong-born artist who has exhibited there: “So it’s very important.”The museum affirms and protects the city’s distinct culture. Around 451,000 people visited last year. But it may not exist for long. Hong Kong’s wants to build the city’s first major museum dedicated to China’s “grand development and achievements”. It recently outlined a plan to commandeer a site in the bustling tourist district occupied by the Science Museum and move the Science Museum into the Heritage Museum—disbanding the Heritage Museum’s collection. After pushback local media now report the government will overhaul the Heritage Museum to focus only on pop culture.