For someone that rarely visits a museum, I somehow ended up visiting two in as many days. However, both had to do with Australia’s history and its links to immigration, so the topics were of interest to me.
I visited the Chinese Museum in Chinatown, where the entrance fee is $11AUD. It is a smaller museum than the Immigration Museum that I had visited the day prior. The museum is spread over 3 floors, and they recommend that you start on the top floor, take the stairs down to the 2nd floor, then take the elevator down to the basement, before finishing up on the entry level.
The 3rd floor displayed the history of Chinese immigration to Australia. There were all sorts of interesting details about how Chinese immigrations arrived in Australia, and descriptions of how these people were able to make a living in a foreign land.
The 2nd floor held a temporary exhibit about the Han Dynasty, one of the most prominent dynasties in the history of China. During this time, there were many scientific advances, and China was quite a ways ahead of the rest of the world.
The basement level had some interactive exhibits where you could partake in some activities that were popular with immigrants. Then, you followed the lion up the ramp and you were back on the entry level, at the exit of the museum.
The museum was very interesting and I really appreciated that this existed, so that tourists and locals alike could learn about the history of Chinese immigration to Australia. One thing I found extremely disappointing was that the museum chose to use Simplified Chinese characters on all of their plaques to display the information. This is not quite in line with the many immigrants that came to the country in the past, as simplified characters were only put into place after the Communist government came into power. I’m guessing they chose to use simplified characters to keep all of the tourists from China happy.
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