In 1955, workers levelling a hillside for resettlement housing in Lei Cheng Uk uncovered a brick-built tomb. The discovery prompted archaeological study and became one of Hong Kong’s most significant finds from the Han period. The Hong Kong Museum of History dates it to the Eastern Han dynasty, AD 25–220, based on the tomb’s layout, brick inscriptions and burial objects. The tomb was declared a monument in 1988 and is now preserved as the Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb Museum in Sham Shui Po.
The find is striking because it surfaced during ordinary city construction, not a planned search for an ancient cemetery. The tomb’s location in today’s dense urban district connects Hong Kong’s modern neighbourhoods with a much earlier past. The Antiquities and Monuments Office explains that inscriptions on bricks refer to Panyu, helping researchers place the area within the administrative geography of the Han period. That evidence is valuable, but it should be read as a historical clue, not a direct map of modern borders.
