10 Best Sights in Hong Kong, China

An extensive collection of Chinese art is packed inside this landmark art museum, which emerged from a years-long face-lift with new exhibitions and experiences. The collections include a heady mix of Qing ceramics, ancient calligraphic scrolls, bronze, jade, lacquerware, textiles, and contemporary canvases. It's all well organized into thematic galleries. The museum sits on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront in Kowloon, a few minutes from the Star Ferry and Tsim Sha Tsui MTR stop.

You have to look down to appreciate the city's walk of fame. Countless local film stars have pawed the wet concrete—you may not recognize many names unless you're a fan of Hong Kong films, but the homage shows how big the local film industry is.

For a comprehensive hit of history, this museum's popular Hong Kong Story should do the trick. The exhibit starts 400 million years ago in the Devonian period and makes its way all the way through to the 1997 Handover, with spectacular life-size dioramas that include village houses and a colonial-era shopping street. The ground-floor Folk Culture section offers an introduction to the history and customs of Hong Kong's main ethnic groups. Upstairs, gracious stone-walled galleries whirl you through the Opium Wars and the beginnings of colonial Hong Kong. Don't miss the chilling account of conditions during the Japanese occupation or the colorful look at Hong Kong life in the '60s.

Unless you're with kids who dig models of cavemen and bears, skip the prehistory and dynastic galleries.

Allow at least two hours to stroll through—more if you linger in every gallery and make use of the interactive elements. Pick your way through the gift shop's clutter to find local designer Alan Chan's T-shirts, shot glasses, and notebooks. His retro-kitsch aesthetic is based on 1940s cigarette-girl images. To get here from the Tsim Sha Tsui MTR walk along Cameron Road, then left for a block along Chatham Road South. A signposted overpass takes you to the museum.

The hands-on exhibits are kid-friendly and include an energy machine and a miniature submarine, as well as cognitive and memory tests. That said, this is more of a rainy-day time-killer than a must-see.

A structure behind the art museum that looks like an oversize golf ball sliced in half houses a planetarium, a solar telescope, and an Omnimax theater. It's all fairly unremarkable, though, and children under 3 aren't allowed to view the Omnimax shows.

Hong Kong's largest Islamic worship center stands in front of Kowloon Park. Visitors can call ahead to arrange for a tour or simply drop by the building, which was designed by noted Indian architect I. M. Kadri. In addition to prayer halls, the complex includes a medical clinic and a library.

These 33 acres, crisscrossed by paths and meticulously landscaped, are a refreshing retreat after a bout of shopping. In addition to children's playgrounds, a fitness trail, soccer field, aviary, Chinese garden, and sculpture garden, on Sunday and public holidays there are stalls with arts and crafts, as well as a kung fu corner.

Running for several miles, this street is filled with hotels, restaurants, malls, and boutiques—retail space is so costly that the southern end is dubbed the Golden Mile. The mile's most famous tower block is ramshackle Chungking Mansions, packed with cheap hotels and Indian restaurants. The building was a setting for local director Wong Kar-Wai's film Chungking Express. To the left and right are mazes of narrow streets with even more shops selling jewelry, electronics, clothes, souvenirs, and cosmetics.

Though a little bit farther west than Tsim Sha Tsui’s main attractions, the West Kowloon Cultural District makes for a nice change of pace. The entire project is slated to be completed in 2017, but already the grassy harbor-front park offers a nice getaway from Kowloon's crowded corners. It hosts music concerts, food festivals, arts exhibits—whatever’s on the docket. Rent a bike and pedal around for some fresh air and striking harbor views.

After years of construction, portions of this massive development project—slated to convert 40 hectares (99 acres) of harborfront into green space and to transform Hong Kong into “Asia’s arts and cultural capital”—were finally completed in 2018. The first openings included the M+ Museum, one of the world's largest visual arts museums with 17,000 square meters (183,000 square feet) of performance and theater space, and the Xiqu Centre, a beautiful Cantonese opera center, with the 1,000-seat Grand Theatre and more-intimate, 200-seat Tea House Theatre. Come 2022, the cultural district will welcome the waterfront Lyric Theatre Complex for music, theater, and dance; the Hong Kong Palace Museum, devoted to imperial Chinese art; and an Art Park, complete with an outdoor cinema, bar, café, and live-music stage.

SmartBikes, which you can rent with cash or an Octopus card, make it easy to explore the vast peninsula.