Asia Society (By Jacob)

While we were in Hong Kong, we went to place called the Asia Society, with one of my grandma's friends. I learned it was started by Jon Rockefeller in 1950. He started it right after World War II, and it was a place where people could go and learn about Asia. At that time people really disliked parts of Asia because of all the bad stuff that happened during WW2.

The Asia Society in Hong Kong is built around the old British gunpower storage. The reason why it was British is because they owned Hong Kong for 99 years. One thing I found interesting was that the British installed tracks to push the gunpowder into the storage rooms. Also, in the rooms where they stored the gunpowder they had soft ground like black top, like the ones for playgrounds. The reason behind the soft floors is that when they pushed the carts on hard ground it could create sparks, which could then catch the gunpowder on fire.

While at the Asia Society, we went into the art gallery.  The art was all done by people from southern Asia. The piece of art I liked the best was the bomb ponds of Cambodia. The ponds date back to the Vietnam war. The bomb ponds were made because the USA didn't like how the Vietnamese fled to Cambodia, and the only way the USA thought to get the Vietnamese back to their country was to bomb Cambodia.  Where the bombs dropped, craters formed, and these became ponds.   The gallery had a video of a man talking and he said that he saw some family members get blown up. It was weird because in the pictures the water filled the bomb holes up perfectly, but when you learn the history behind the holes, you realize how sad and scary there lives were.

To learn more about the exhibit we saw at the Asia Society, you can look here.