HK exhibition shows shared culture

Architectural elements showing exquisiteness of Lingnan craftsmanship go on display to the public, Xi Tianqi reports in Hong Kong.

A5.5-meter tall and 4.8-meter wide Lingnan-style structure — the Panyu shrine — was among 170 relics, bearing the same cultural markings, being showcased for the first time in the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui since Dec 12.

The shrine, featuring wood-carvings that date back to 1909, has decorative elements of widely-known Chinese folk tales to symbolize auspiciousness. It was unearthed in the 1950s in Shilou village of Guangzhou, and was restored to its original look in 2015 after painstaking efforts by experts. It is also the largest and most exquisite wooden carving work preserved in the Lingnan region, which covers the Southern China's Guangdong province and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, and is known for Cantonese-style architecture.

In light of the size of the hundred-year-old shrine, the heritage center had to build a temporary hall to house the 26-square-meter grade-one national treasure from the Guangdong Folk Arts Museum.

Huang Haiyan, a research fellow and the director of the Guangdong Folk Arts Museum, speaks to China Daily, about the story behind the exhibition, four years in the making and is called, Under the Same Roof: Origin and Art of Lingnan Traditional Architecture.