【Hong Kong Discovery】Exploring Tai Kwun

1. Introduction

Tai Kwun is a historical and entertaining Centre, which consists of 16 heritage buildings, for example Police Headquarters Block, Armoury, Barrack Block, Married Inspectors' Quarters, Married Sergeants' Quarters, Single Inspectors' Quarters, and Central Magistracy, Superintendent's House & C Hall and Galleries JC Contemporary and Auditorium JC Cube and so on. Also, several interesting and significant exhibits are exhibited in different periods. Through the 45-minute heritage guided tour, it is interesting to explore the name of Tai Kwun which derives from the abbreviation of the former Central Police Station and realize the transformation of Tai Kwun. In the following, the evaluation of the guided tour and the best and worst exhibit of Tai Kwun will be discussed.

2. The evaluation of the guided tour

For evaluating the tour in an effective way, four aspects will be included. Those are tour content, tour presentation, operation management and customer service.

It is believed that content of the tour is good and well-organized. The tour included quite a lot of exhibit with historical and educational explanation. And it is obvious to figure out the significance of conservation. Through the tour, it is interesting for us to discover the duties and responsibilities of the Central Police Station and those emergency cases which had been handled and solved in the past, to imagine of the livelihood of the prisoner and to learn the Hong Kong correctional system in the Victoria Prison. 

The tour guide maintained a good transition to explain the purpose of building Tai Kwun, the characteristic and value of the heritage building, and finally introduces the route of visiting Tai Kwun. It is beneficial that the tour guide showed good presentation skills and I learnt a lot. She has good attitude, memory and motivation when introducing the history of Tai Kwun. As known, it is very easy for audiences to lose their interest when listening to the history of Tai Kwun.

Fortunately, the tour guide did really well as she used the story of mango tree to begin the tour and kept using story-telling to explain different exhibits which can draw guests’ attention easily. She had good tone when sharing the delighted or sorrowful case, her voice was good enough and her explanation speed of the exhibit was normal. 

Moving to the operation management, the design route of the guided tour is smooth and effective, and it is great for those staffs to prepare guests the earpieces which let guests can adjust the volume by themselves. The leaflet of self-guided walk and the audio guides on the Tai Kwun App is helpful as well.

For the customer service, it is obvious that the tour guide and other staffs did well. Before beginning the tour, they checked the booking, helped guests to find out their QR code of the confirmation and explained to the unreserved guests when and what situation that they were able to join the tour as politely as possible which easily get the understanding from those guests. In the meantime of the tour, the performance ‘Lion Dance’, and delivering goods occurred and she handled them well enough.

Moreover, it is believed that always enhancing the quality and attraction of tour is essential. For my opinion, it will be really good if tour guides can make good use of the exhibit for involving guests’ participation, such as using opening questions or MC questions, and sensory involvement. And it will be welcomed if the tour can include more significant and interesting scenic spots or the tour guide can recommend those remarkable places at the end of the tour.  

3. The best exhibit of Tai Kwun

It is enjoyable that there is several life recreations can be found in Tai Kwun, including exhibition, event celebration, contemporary art and performing art, which bring out happiness and experience to the guests. The best exhibit is the court hearing reenactment in the Central Magistracy, “Test your eyesight”, “the chef”, and “the Contagious Cities: Far away, Too close”. And it is obvious that those exhibits include several elements, such as historical information, sensory entertainment and collective memory of Hong Kong people.

In the Central Magistracy, it is exciting to meet the high-profile case of Hong Kong’s history, and guests can involve as one of the      audiences for hearing the case.

In the Staircase Lobbies, it is fascinating to discover the recruitment criteria of the police force from different eras. And it is creative for Tai Kwun to involve police’s content in the exhibit of “Test your eyesight”, which reinforce guests’ impression.

In the Police Headquarters Block, it is interesting to figure out the police’s diets are mainly related to where the chef came from of the day.

In the JC Contemporary, it is skillful for the artists to apply the psychological and emotional dimensions to show the issue of disease and contagion with guests. Artists attempted to use something which we are familiar for drawing guests’ interest, providing us to rediscover what art is, and finally recalling our collective memory.

4. The worst exhibit of Tai Kwun

Needless to say, it is essential that extended background or historical information can assist guests to have better understanding of the exhibits or issues. However, guest might lose concentration and interest if there is too much description of the exhibits, especially when the light is not bright enough. It is suggested that Tai Kwun could use a few of word or topic sentence to summarize what the exhibit is and what they would like us to know. Also, it is difficult to get the information by watching the screen. The reason is that the size of the screen is too small and the level of the light is not appropriate.

5. Conclusion

To sum up, Tai Kwun provides me great opportunity to learn the history, stories and lives of people of the Central Police Station. Through joining the guided tour and self-guided walk, I can find my way for experiencing the past and present days of the historical Central Police Station Compound, which inspires me to enrich my awareness of protecting heritage in Hong Kong as well.