Hong Kong Park & Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware

Hong Kong Park is an 8-hectare oasis in the middle of the most expensive real estate in Asia — a designed landscape of waterfalls, ponds, aviaries, and subtropical gardens wedged between the towers of Admiralty and the Peak. The park was built on the site of the former Victoria Barracks in 1991, and its combination of lush planting, water features, and the glass-walled Edward Youde Aviary (home to 600 birds of 80 species) creates a green microclimate that drops the temperature and the noise level the moment you enter.

The Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware, within the park, is the oldest surviving colonial building in Hong Kong — a Greek Revival structure built in 1846 as the residence of the commander of British forces. The museum houses a collection of Chinese tea ware spanning 1,000 years, and the free tea demonstrations on Sundays provide an introduction to Chinese tea culture (preparation, serving rituals, the aesthetics of tea ware) that is both educational and meditative.

The park's conservatory — a glass pyramid housing tropical and arid-zone plants — and the tai chi garden where elderly practitioners gather every morning at dawn add layers to a park that manages to be simultaneously a designed landscape, a historical site, a nature reserve, and the place where Hong Kong's office workers eat their lunch. The park is free, open daily, and provides the best example of Hong Kong's talent for creating tranquility within density.