Exhibition

Law Uk

Once the site of several Hakka villages, the original rural setting of Chai Wan has been transformed by urban development in the last few decades. Today, the memory of these Hakka villages is preserved in Law Uk (uk is Cantonese for "house"), a village house named after its original owner, a Hakka family whose Chinese surname is phonetically transliterated as "Law". The house's history can be traced back to over 200 years ago, when the Law family built it during the reign of Emperor Qianlong (1736-1795) in the Qing dynasty. Law Uk was declared as a historical monument in 1989. It is preserved as the sole remaining architectural example of its kind in Chai Wan.

Law Uk is a typical Hakka village house. The house's interior is symmetrically arranged around the main hall. On the sides there are bedroom and work area with lofts. In front of the hall is a light well with kitchen and store room on both sides. To give viewers the ambience of how the interior would have looked and how the original inhabitants would have lived, the house is furnished with village furniture, utensils and farming implements selected from the Museum's collection.

There are reader rails with texts and photos in the open ground of Law Uk featuring the history of Chai Wan, the history and architecture of Law Uk, and the Hakka customs.